Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
European gas traders are speculating on a significant increase in gas prices by the summer. According to the Bloomberg news agency, prices could rise to 80 euros per megawatt hour. This trend has driven the shares of investment funds that rely on rising gas prices to almost a record high.
European gas storage facilities are emptying faster than expected. Traders are betting on rising prices, while the planned subsidy from Economics Minister Habeck is receiving sharp criticism. According to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe, storage facilities are currently only 49 percent full (as of February 8, 2025). By comparison, the filling level in the previous year was around 67 percent. Meanwhile, gas prices are reaching a level not seen for two years (berliner-zeitung: 10.02.25).
A gauge sits on pipework on top of a storage silo as construction work continues at the liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal, a unit of Electricite de France (EDF) SA, in Dunkirk, France, on Tuesday, March 15, 2016. The terminal, near the Belgian border, is poised to go into operation as LNG tankers head to Europe after demand waned elsewhere. Photographer: Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg
Traders are betting on price increases
European gas traders are speculating on a significant increase in gas prices by the summer. According to the Bloomberg news agency, prices could rise to 80 euros per megawatt hour. This trend has driven the shares of investment funds that rely on rising gas prices to almost a record high. Many retailers are now refraining from buying gas for the summer months. This carries the risk that the storage facilities for the coming winter could be insufficiently filled.
European gas stocks are falling faster than expected – storage facilities are only 49% full – traders expect prices to explode
The EU had introduced fixed stock targets in 2022 to secure energy supplies. By November 1, the storage facilities in each member state must be at least 90 percent full. Normally, traders buy their gas cheaply in summer and sell it more expensively in winter. But the current price structure makes this model unprofitable. Higher summer prices ensure that retailers do not fill their storage facilities in the first place.
Legal requirements under pressure
Low temperatures in winter and so-called dark doldrums put an additional strain on the gas supply. In addition, there is the end of Ukraine transit, which further increases the pressure on the market. The reference price TTF, the most important indicator for European gas trading, is at its highest level in two years.
Despite the tense situation, the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) is relaxed. A spokeswoman told the Berliner Zeitung that the gas supply in Germany remains stable. “The security of supply is guaranteed,” is the assessment. Nevertheless, economical use of gas remains crucial to avoid bottlenecks.
Subsidies exacerbate the problem
Another driver of the rising prices is the planned subsidy from Economics Minister Habeck. This is intended to compensate gas traders for the unprofitable business of summer filling. Trading Hub Europe (THE), market area manager in the German gas market, confirmed on request that a subsidy for storage is imminent.
Experts are critical of the subsidy. James Waddell of Energy Aspects Ltd. warns that such measures could push summer prices further up. The American consulting firm Auxilione also sees risks. The subsidy would put an even greater burden on the so-called summer-winter spread – the price difference between summer and winter contracts.
“Europe is currently on a downward curve,” explains Francisco Blanch, commodity strategist at Bank of America. Retailers have little incentive to build up inventory. The legal requirements are also increasing prices, so that gas storage is becoming less attractive. Blanch only sees price volatility as a way to make a profit.
The results of the European parliamentary elections are in.
As expected, they represent a repudiation of the centre-Left politics that has governed Europe for the past generation. The dominant Christian Democrats of the European People’s Party (EPP), the Right-leaning ‘soft’ Eurosceptics of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the nationalists of Identity and Democracy (ID) all added seats. The big losers, meanwhile, were not only the liberal centrists of Renew but also – and above all – the Greens.
The results of the European parliamentary elections are in.
As expected, they represent a repudiation of the centre-Left politics that has governed Europe for the past generation. The dominant Christian Democrats of the European People’s Party (EPP), the Right-leaning ‘soft’ Eurosceptics of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the nationalists of Identity and Democracy (ID) all added seats. The big losers, meanwhile, were not only the liberal centrists of Renew but also – and above all – the Greens.
It is too early to say what this will mean for the future direction of the EU, except in very broad terms. As Green influence over the EU wanes, there will be less political capital to spend on climate insanity. The EPP, which has been a terrible collaborator in abominations like the Green Deal, will probably be forced to seek more support from the parties to its Right instead. There may be some shift in momentum, but I am pessimistic that we will see any great change from this election alone. The EU is by design well-insulated from the popular will, and the great centre-Right villain of the past decades, the EPP, has only grown in strength.
But that is less than half the story. The EU parliamentary elections are not only about the EU; they are also an informal referendum on national politics, and here the seemingly minor shifts in party representation have had astounding consequences. In France, the National Rally party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella bested Manuel Macron’s Renaissance party by 31.4% to 14.6%. In response, Macron has announced new elections and dissolved the National Assembly. In Belgium, where they hold elections for national and regional parliaments alongside the European election, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo has resigned in the face of strong gains by the New Flemish Alliance and Vlaams Belang.
We will not get new elections in Germany, but what is happening here is no less dramatic. The three parties of the coalition Government barely cracked 30% in Sunday’s vote, with the social democrats posting their worst results in history, and the Greens down a full 8.6 percentage points compared to their 2019 showing. It is a stinging repudiation of the traffic light coalition. Alternative für Deutschland, despite an endless string of media smears and manufactured scandals, came in at 15.9%, the second-strongest party in the Federal Republic behind the centre-Right CDU – and by far the strongest party in the East.
Graphic from Alpine Pravda: 2024 EU parliamentary election results for Germany by party (top bars), compared to 2019 (lower, faded bars). The Greens are by far the biggest losers, ceding a full 8.6 percentage points in just five years.
There are four points to make about these elections and their significance for Germany:
1. The Scholz Government has been Humiliated
As the election results rolled in and Macron announced new elections, the German Chancellor maintained a deafening silence. It took him a full day to acknowledge the defeat.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz first commented on his party’s performance on Monday evening. … “The election result were bad for all three governing parties,” he said.
“No one is well advised to simply go back to business as usual,” said Scholz. “At the same time, however, it is also important that we do our work to ensure that our country becomes modern and moves forward.”
With this European election, voters have… issued the coalition Government a death certificate. For months, the polls have shown that this Government is the most unpopular in history… Now the Germans have dramatically deprived their leaders of legitimacy. Any normal Government would draw the consequences and signal to the population: “We have understood.” … In France, President Emmanuel Macron is demonstrating in a particularly consistent way what this can mean with his decision to call a new election.
Scholz does not appear to have this courage. In fact, the Chancellor is apparently planning the opposite. Despite the result, which has been dubbed a ‘debacle’, a ‘lesson’ or a ‘disaster’, he appears unimpressed … In plain language: the Chancellor will not take responsibility, and he hopes to muddle through and sit out the crisis.
Whether he can do that is far from certain. His junior coalition partner, the liberal FDP, will use the election results as a reason to increase its intransigence in the ongoing budget negotiations for 2025. Being in Government has been a disaster for the liberals, and they face a serious chance of disappearing from the German Bundestag entirely in next year’s elections as they continue to bleed voters. Thus, as Weimer writes, “the budget dispute represents for them an opportunity for heroic resistance and even a last-ditch way out of the coalition”. It may be in the interests of the FDP to bring down the Government rather than continue to associate itself with this catastrophe.
Weimer further notes that the SPD has lost 40% of its voters between 2021 and today, and that in the coming elections in Brandenburg, Thüringen and Saxony it will be humiliated yet again. It is not beyond question, for example, that the SPD will fail to meet the 5% threshold and disappear from one or more eastern state parliaments entirely. The internal pressure on Scholz is only growing, in other words, and nothing would be more in keeping with the history of the social democrats than for his own party to bring him down before the voters get their chance.
The decisive factor for the Greens… is that their issue of climate protection has not attracted voters, but rather deterred them. Since Economics Minister Habeck’s Heating Ordinances, the mood has increasingly turned against climate protection and more and more against the Greens.
“We have overestimated the willingness to change,” Green veteran politician Jürgen Trittin said …
The problem for the party is that it cannot hope that anything will change here… One way forward might be to distance themselves from climate issues, and rather to emphasise that they will not leave people to fend for themselves when it comes to climate change … and to ensure social balance. “We have to tell the story differently,” a leading Green politician says.
When the party leaders… appeared before the press… on Monday afternoon, it seemed as if they wanted to put this realisation into practice straight away. They spoke of “security” again and again. This kind of talk is otherwise familiar only from the CDU …
On Sunday evening, some admitted that this tactic had limited prospects. After all, the federal Government is currently negotiating an austerity budget. More social support is hardly possible.
The Leftist parties are caught in a trap of their own making. Their insane home heating ordinances merely accelerated the gradual decay of climate change as a political issue in the Federal Republic, and since the courts ruled against their budgetary wizardry last November, they have no money. A Leftist party that cannot increase entitlements and that manages to be more terrifying than its own sermons about the climate apocalypse has nothing to offer anyone.
This is one facet of a much bigger political shift that will mark the coming decades. Social democracy is already in long-term decline, not only in Germany but across Europe, and if indeed it is true that the Greens have had their moment and are facing a future as a marginal party too small to play coalition king-makers, you have to ask what will become of the Left more broadly. They have no successor movement waiting in the wings, and their own political clients – the migrants they have welcomed to Europe by the millions – have an entirely different illiberal political vision.
3. The Fight against the Right Amounted to Nothing
And after all of that, the AfD is still the second-strongest party in Germany. Yes, it claimed only 15.9% of the votes, well below its polling high around 23% last autumn. Part of that loss, however, is down to competition from the new party of Sahra Wagenknecht, and in any case we must remember that the regime has thrown literally everything it has at the AfD for half a year now. Fake Nazi hysteria, strange stories about collusion with Russia and China, even the late-breaking scandal over Maximilian Krah’s interview with Italian media and the ensuing split with the Identity and Democracy faction – for months our media would talk about little else. The blitz was powerfully reminiscent of the Covid insanity, and in the end the AfD is still standing.
If anything, the attacks have only hardened the convictions of its core voters. Fully 95% of AfD supporters “think it’s good that the party wants to further limit the influx of foreigners and refugees”, 90% “think it’s good that there’s a party that wants to fundamentally reform the EU”, and 82% “don’t care that the party is considered partly Right-wing extreme, as long as it addresses the correct issues”.
The affairs surrounding the AfD’s leading candidates for the EU parliament have clearly not harmed the party at all. Nor has it been harmed by the fact that the other Right-wing parties in the European Parliament have turned away in disgust from the Right-wing populists centred around Maximilian Krah. The secret meeting in Potsdam, at which AfD representatives (and also CDU members) pondered the mass expulsion of migrants, did not diminish the AfD’s success either. Neither did the categorisation of high-ranking party representatives as Right-wing extremists.
It is clear that the AfD has become a popular party in the East. And it has successfully immunised itself against criticism. It can now expect the votes of a core constituency, no matter how scandalous the party may appear. … This is also due to the fact that the party has created its own counter-public – primarily via social media. It reaches young voters like no other party via TikTok. Sixteen and 17-year-olds in Brandenburg can also vote in the state elections in the autumn.
4. The East-West Split
The German election results, colour coded by dominant party and broken down by district, yield a clear pattern:
Alpine Pravda: Black is CDU; blue is AfD; green is the Greens; pink is SPD.
Aside from the urban centres, German voters are no longer divided about whether the Right or the Left represents the best path forward for the nation. Instead, they are divided about which flavour of ‘the Right’ they prefer, with the Union parties continuing to command the plurality of support in the West, and the AfD becoming overwhelmingly the choice of the East.
In light of these results, Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) has warned of a growing divide between East and West Germans. “In social networks after the European elections, I now read sentences like: ‘Where is the gratitude of the East Germans?’ These are questions that we don’t need right now,” Ramelow said. …
“The East has nothing to apologise for. It should rather be seen as an opportunity. Instead, emotional unity is increasingly collapsing. And the fact that East Germans are expected to be grateful [for reunification] is fuelling this spiral,” Ramelow continued.
Hendrik Wüst, who is CDU Minister President of Nordrhein-Westfalen, wants more cultural exchange between the East and the West, apparently because he imagines that the easterners are just under-socialised or something:
“It’s time for a Unification Treaty 2.0 that not only brings formal unity but also brings people together better – for greater trust and cohesion between East and West,” Wüst said… “Because dialogue creates trust and opens up prospects for greater mutual understanding.”
What Wüst and many others like him are too stupid to realise, is that it’s the West that is the anomaly here. Consider France, where the ‘Right-wing extreme’ National Rally and Reconquest together claimed well over 30% of the vote in most districts. In Italy, the Fratelli d’Italia and the Lega together saw similar results. The preferences of East Germans in this context just look normal. It’s the Wessies who are outliers and isolated with their insanity in the broader European context, who are out of step with the political preferences of younger generations, and whose lectures for all of these reasons will only grow more strident and less convincing every day.
Climate impacts on economic productivity indicate that climate change may threaten price stability. Here we apply fixed-effects regressions to over 27,000 observations of monthly consumer price indices worldwide to quantify the impacts of climate conditions on inflation. Higher temperatures increase food and headline inflation persistently over 12 months in both higher- and lower-income countries. Effects vary across seasons and regions depending on climatic norms, with further impacts from daily temperature variability and extreme precipitation. Evaluating these results under temperature increases projected for 2035 implies upwards pressures on food and headline inflation of 0.92-3.23 and 0.32-1.18 percentage-points per-year respectively on average globally (uncertainty range across emission scenarios, climate models and empirical specifications). Pressures are largest at low latitudes and show strong seasonality at high latitudes, peaking in summer. Finally, the 2022 extreme summer heat increased food inflation in Europe by 0.43-0.93 percentage-points which warming projected for 2035 would amplify by 30-50%.
But farmers will apparently be able to adapt to these upheavals, “once temperatures stabilise”;
… Although the empirical evidence indicates that adaptation to temperature shocks has been limited historically, we explore the potential of adaptation via adjustment to changing temperatures to reduce these future impacts. We do so by using empirical models in which temperature shocks are defined relative to a 30-year moving average rather than a constant baseline (Fig. S6k–t), and by evaluating potential impacts using future temperatures defined in this way. This method indicates that adaptation via adjustment could substantially reduce future impacts (Supplementary Fig. S14). In particular, in a low emission-scenario most impacts could be removed by adjustment once global temperatures stabilise (Supplementary Fig. S14c, d). However, in scenarios of un-mitigated warming, persistent impacts of considerable size remain despite introducing adjustment of this type which has not been observed historically (Supplementary Fig. S14). …
The study authors also admit renewables may be increasing sensitivity to adverse weather.
… Second, our empirical results refer predominantly to food and headline inflation, whereas we find a limited response of other price aggregates to weather changes. However, the strong response of electricity demand to temperature5,6 suggests that impacts on electricity prices are plausible. Indeed, we find that electricity prices show some consistent and persistent response to temperature increases (Supplementary Fig. S1k), but with much larger uncertainty which precludes statements of significance at conventional levels. Lesser data availability for this more detailed price aggregate as well as complex and heterogeneous electricity price-setting practices may contribute to these large errors. However, as electricity supply is increasingly met with renewable sources, the price sensitivity to weather may change. A detailed analysis of electricity and other price aggregates may be a fruitful avenue of future work. …Read more: same link as above
Naturally the study makes heavy use of RCP 8.5.
In my opinion, citing 2022 in Europe as an example of climate disruption caused food inflation is absurd. The problems being experienced by Europe are because of EU incompetence, not climate change.
In 2022, in response to fertiliser shortages triggered by the war in Ukraine, there were crazy policy responses to the looming food shortages. The Scottish Agriculture Minister refused to release more land for agriculture to help farmers maintain food supply. “We are still in a nature emergency that hasn’t gone away… so it’s a no“
Europe experienced fertiliser shortages in 2022, because of their reliance on Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine and Russia are (were?) major suppliers of fertiliser, because they have lots of cheap energy. Producing fertiliser is energy intensive.
Europe’s disastrous green energy policies have made it uneconomical to produce fertiliser in Europe, which made Europe vulnerable to the supply shock caused by the Ukraine war.
In addition the EU operates a strict tariff regime, The European Common Agricultural Policy, which taxes imports of food, and restricts Europe’s ability to combat weather shocks by importing more food from outside the EU.
I’m not disputing that in 2022 Europe suffered adverse weather conditions, but there were confounding factors. If Europe hadn’t made such a mess of their agriculture, climate and energy policies, there would have been a lot less food inflation.
As for adaption, why would a regime of continuous warming be so different to stabilisation at a higher temperature?
Are the researchers suggesting farmers are too dumb to pick up the phone? Why would persistent impacts remain in scenarios of unmitigated warming? Can’t farmers talk to their friends down South, to discover what crops and techniques work in warmer climates?
Farmers all over the world adapt the same crops to radically different temperatures. Subtropical Bundaberg can grow Maine potatoes at 25 degrees South of the Equator, a few hours drive from the 23.4 degree tropic of Capricorn, the boundary of the Southern tropics, because they plant the potatoes in Fall, then harvest them in Spring before the Summer heat kills them.
If temperature rose significantly every year, farmers would adapt by borrowing last year’s planting practices from their friends 50-100 miles South, or switch to new crops.
The Potsdam researchers are wrong about farmers not adapting to a warmer climate. Canadian Geographic admitted in 2020 that global warming is opening millions of square kilometres of new agricultural land. This is a continuation of the process which begun with the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850. Farmers will move into these lands the moment they become viable, unless agriculture hating politicians prevent them from doing so. Similar land openings would occur in Greenland and far Northern Europe, were global warming to continue.
As for drought and flood, there is no evidence extreme weather is getting worse. Upgraded water infrastructure could capture and store floodwater, and transport water to where it was needed. If Western governments spent a fraction of the cash they squander on useless renewables, on building infrastructure which is actually needed, floods and droughts would be much less of a problem.
Here’s the problem, however. All the major European governments, including the UK of course, are still fanatically committed to net zero, and that stops them from responding properly.
Instead of sparking a manufacturing renaissance in Europe, the pursuit of net zero is leading instead to imminent deindustrialisation.
In the United States, there are massive subsidies. In China, there is an industrial strategy pursued with ruthless effectiveness. And yet in Europe, there are just “deadlines and fines”.
Luca de Meo, the boss of the giant French car manufacturer Renault, didn’t mince his words when he called this week for a coherent response from Britain, France, and the rest of the major European industrial nations, to the threat posed by imports of cheap foreign electric vehicles.
Sure, it would be easy to dismiss that as just another industrial leader calling for soft loans and tariffs to rescue an uncompetitive industry. And yet de Meo is on to something. Net zero has turned into a Chinese weapon aimed right at the heart of Western competitiveness. The Telegraph has the story.
If we don’t wake up and recognise soon that we have to figure out a better way of combatting climate change, our industries are about to get wiped out.
The transition from petrol to battery-powered vehicles is not working quite as planned. It was meant to spark a wave of investment, create a swathe of “well-paid green jobs” and dramatically cut carbon emissions at the same time.
Renault, in turn, looked set to play a leading role. With models such as the ZOE, the company was an early pioneer in the space of relatively affordable EVs. It looked as if it was all set to become a global leader.
“The UK may no longer be part of the EU, but on this issue I think we face the same challenges together,” argued De Meo in an article for Autocar.
“With the internal combustion engine, our leadership was undisputed…and it was a barrier to entry for newcomers. Today, Europeans find themselves in a position of relative fragility”. His argument is that the EU and the UK have to work together to fight back, and protect what remains one of the continent’s most significant industries.
He is certainly right about that. In the US, President Biden has launched a tax credit scheme that will pour nearly $400bn into subsidies, and while not all the money will be well spent it will give America a chance to build a substantial industry.
Meanwhile, China has funnelled massive amounts of money into building EVs, it has taken control of critical minerals needed to make them cheaply, and it is now about to flood the West with models that could well outcompete European manufacturers on both quality and price.
Instead of sparking a manufacturing renaissance in Europe, the pursuit of net zero is leading instead to imminent deindustrialisation. It might be starting with the mighty automotive industry, in which the Continent once led the world, but it is being repeated again and again elsewhere.
Indeed only this week a group of major European industries launched the “Antwerp declaration”, calling on the EU to relax regulations, lower energy costs and increase investment, while it still has some industry left.
Signed by 73 major companies, from 17 sectors including chemicals, pharmaceuticals and engineering, it argued that “sites are being closed, production halted, people let go…Europe needs a business case urgently.”
Here’s the problem, however. All the major European governments, including the UK of course, are still fanatically committed to net zero, and that stops them from responding properly.
Take cars for example. Normally, the EU or Britain would likely launch an “anti-dumping” action against cheap imports of Chinese EVs, and impose tariffs to allow our manufacturers to compete.
Europe’s picturesque landscapes, adorned with sprawling croplands and pastures, have long been part of the continent’s agrarian identity. However, a wave of farmer protests have intruded on this peaceful scene and extended into cities.
Europe’s picturesque landscapes, adorned with sprawling croplands and pastures, have long been part of the continent’s agrarian identity. However, a wave of farmer protests have intruded on this peaceful scene and extended into cities.
From the rolling hills of France to the windswept plains of Poland, farmers have driven their tractors onto the streets, united in a fight against a threat to their livelihoods. As I write this, thousands of French farmers are on the outskirts of Paris, blocking roads in an act that has been dubbed the “siege of Paris.” The city of Toulouse, home to 800,000 people, was cut off from the rest of France due to protests.
Likewise, in cities across Belgium, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Germany, farmers have blocked roads and conducted targeted protests at public buildings. Tractor convoys, road blockades, and impassioned speeches reflect the agricultural community’s deep frustration with attempts to reduce farmlands and ban fertilizer use.
The primary policy target of farmers is a so-called Farm to Fork program that seeks to halve pesticide use, reduce fertilizer use, cut by at least 10% agricultural areas and mandate a conversion of 25% of the European Union’s agricultural land to “organic-only” farming. The initiative also includes removal of subsidies for agricultural diesel used in tractors and machinery.
Farmers argue that all these policies jeopardize food security and undermine the rich agricultural heritage that has defined European societies for centuries.
Behind all this is the EU’s climate change agenda’s obsession with reducing harmless industrial and agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases, which include carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane. Farm to Fork is a subset of the bigger Green Deal and Net Zero programs.
France’s largest farm union, FNSEA, says it wants a change in the “very philosophy of the Green Deal which assumes degrowth.”
“French farmers are united in their opposition to absurd, extreme and unworkable environmental policies,” said the president of Coordination Rurale, a French farming group. “Those in power do not spare a thought for the impact of these policies on the livelihoods of farmers, the food security of the nation and the cost-of-living crisis facing ordinary people.”
The farmer unions have a point, and a serious one. Reducing the use of fertilizers would require employing more land for agriculture, but the EU’s green policies intend to decrease the amount of farmland. This amounts to forced agricultural suicide that threatens hunger, death and societal collapse.
In other words, the fight goes beyond the immediate use of land and fertilizers and to the well-being of generations to come. Farm to Fork won’t be resolved until there is an end to the Green Deal and Net Zero programs.
The European agricultural crisis is a warning to citizens of other governments planning to adopt similar policies for agricultural production to avert a nonexistent climate crisis.
So called green policies would kill the greenest parts of our world as they destroy ordinary people’s dream of a decent life with access to basic necessities for living.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K.
How much more would the car lovers and petrol-heads of Europe take? In draconian style, last February, the EU declared all petrol and diesel cars would be banned from 2035. It was their star policy for the Net Zero push.
How much more would the car lovers and petrol-heads of Europe take? In draconian style, last February, the EU declared all petrol and diesel cars would be banned from 2035. It was their star policy for the Net Zero push. Car makers would have to cut their emissions by a shocking 55% by 2030 and an unthinkable 100% by 2035. It was to be the end of an era.
The idea was so big and embedded in the EU that only one month ago an insurance insider warned that his company was already devising elaborate plans for a world where everyone had an EV and the insurance giants and the government got access to all your data. Police would be issuing your speeding tickets while-you-drove, and insurance companies would be granting drivers a discount if they allowed them to sell all their data to the highest bidder. Indeed, the word was that insurance companies wouldn’t even insure petrol cars. Obviously only the rich were going to be able to afford a petrol car or an EV “with privacy”.
But now, the largest party in the EU is drafting a policy to ditch the same ban they voted in a year ago. The European People’s Party (EPP) is theoretically a “centre right” party, despite acting like the radical left, but that means they stand to lose their voter-base in a blink as the reality of the bans sinks in, which it has.
BRUSSELS — Europe’s biggest conservative force, the European People’s Party, wants to massively bulk up the EU’s external guard force and drop plans to phase out the combustion engine across the bloc by 2035, according to a draft of the party’s manifesto obtained by POLITICO. With its heavy emphasis on migration control and call to “preserve our Christian values,” the manifesto reflects the growing strength of right-wing parties across the bloc.
In other news, the EPP wants to triple the number of border guards in the EU, and to relax some of the rules protecting nature. The European Commission president Mrs von der Leyen is as green as they come, but decided maybe wolves don’t need so much protection after one of them killed Dolly, her beloved horse.
By sheer coincidence the next EU elections are in June.
The mass farmers protests and electoral shocks in the Netherlands are making their marks.
“Net Zero is now a toxic vote loser”
Ralph Schoellhammer wonders if the whole Net Zero plan will be next as right wing parties realize how much traction they can get by attacking climate policies:
The European Right has discovered anger against Net Zero policies as a powerful theme for mobilising disenchanted voters, as demonstrated by farmer protests in countries such as the Netherlands and Germany. A number of parties across the continent, from the Austrian FPÖ to the German AfD and the RN in France, have been quick to make this a main campaign issue.
What was once an issue for left-of-centre parties to win over voters has now become a toxic vote-loser. This shift shouldn’t surprise us: Europeans support taking action on climate change — just so long as it doesn’t affect their lifestyles.
Once it becomes clear that reducing emissions comes at a significant cost, support for corresponding policies falls dramatically. The German example of the last two years has shown that the green transition is not leading to more jobs and prosperity, but instead the opposite. Germany was the worst performing major economy in 2023
The EU looks like it will have to remove the ban, but presumably they’ll think up other painful, stupid ways to coerce us into EV’s.
The Australian government, meanwhile, is just about to repeat all the EU mistakes but in the most sparsely populated, petrol loving, first world nation on Earth.
The riddle of unhinged EU support for the Zelensky regime in Kyiv is now solved. Anyone inclined can unravel why the Germans, in particular, backstabbed Russia in the Minsk peace boondoggle. Lithium.
The riddle of unhinged EU support for the Zelensky regime in Kyiv is now solved. Anyone inclined can unravel why the Germans, in particular, backstabbed Russia in the Minsk peace boondoggle. Lithium.
Energy Monitor’s parent company, GlobalData, recently released a report showing that Europe’s biggest lithium reserves lie in the Donbass region of Russia. The former Ukrainian Shevchenkivske field in the Donetsk region and the Kruta Balka block in the Zaporizhzhia region are now part of Russia. These reserves add tremendously to Russia’s humongous Lithium deposits (now 1.5M metric tons) and solidify the country’s top ten position globally. If we consider other BRICS nations’ reserves, including China (2M metric tons), EU industry is at a leverage point.
What’s most significant about this is that the EU, and Germany in particular, desperately need the rare mineral to manufacture green energy technologies such as wind turbines, electric vehicles, and a wide variety of electronic devices. This text from the Critical Minerals Thematic Intelligence Report overview is telling:
“Critical minerals are key to transitioning to a low-carbon world. There are over 70 countries globally that have set net-zero targets and pledged to lower their emissions. However, these widespread measures for a greener future are straining natural resources, especially the minerals required to produce energy transition technologies such as electric vehicles (EVs) and solar panels…”
The report goes on to reveal how these rare minerals are monopolized by just a few regions and how supply chain problems affect their recovery and distribution. In short, if Europe does not procure more Lithium, the energy transition EU President Ursula von der Leyen toots her horn about every other day will either be delayed or made unfeasible because of demand shortages.
While the United States, Australia, and a few Latin American countries hold the lion’s share of Lithium reserves, EU access to these supplies will be expensive. In addition, the U.S. and these emerging nations will surely use the biggest part of their reserves for domestic needs.
The demand (need) for European Lithium supply is so intense, German CDU MP Roderich Kiesewetter came right out and admitted the Russia-Ukraine conflict is all about the 500,000 tons or more of the mineral under the ground of the Donbass region. Kiesewetter said, “The European Union supports Ukraine because of lithium deposits in the Donbass.” The politician also took note of the Donbass being part of Russia now, means Berlin’s dependence on Moscow.
Kiesewetter, a retired colonel, is also suggesting that Germany provide Zelensky’s regime with the highly accurate Taurus cruise missiles, which have a 500km range. The Swedish/German air-launched missile carries a 1,100-pound warhead and is essentially a bunker-buster type weapon. The missiles would be far more useful for Zelensky’s remaining Nazi battalions than a few rusty old Leopard tanks. What the MP’s statements mean, however, is that Germany and the EU intend on taking Ukraine’s vast resources by force now. The Euromaidan Coup only got the Western elites’ feet in the door, and now the singular order has few options left since the failed Ukraine offensive.
The EU commissars are in the process of slitting their own throats. Just the other day, the commission passed another round of sanctions aimed at Russia’s luxury diamond exports to the bloc. This will not affect the average EU citizen, but the upper-middle class and the wealthy will have to fork over more Euros to get pretty round diamonds. The Americans (or British) blowing up the gas pipelines, the potential for grain shortages in the EU, and other key minerals Russia and nations friendly to her export begin to take their toll on an already shaky confederation of member states.
Consider what EU member states manufacture and export to elevate their GNP. In the lists here, you’ll click on two vital exports. Cars and/or refined petroleum are vital to every country. Cars are, by far, the biggest import and export commodities. So, when these autos finally go electric, just imagine how desperate EU industry and consumers will be for Lithium! The Europeans will flounder if forced to import quantities of this strategic mineral from distant sources that have their own batteries to make. If there is a WWIII over the Russia/Ukraine situation, I am sure we’ll be able to name it “The Great Lithium War.”
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
In the wake of the EU’s decision to delay plans to push European households to shift to heat pumps, campaign group Net Zero Watch is warning Rishi Sunak that if he sticks to his guns, it will hit Conservative Party support still further.
In the wake of the EU’s decision to delay plans to push European households to shift to heat pumps, campaign group Net Zero Watch is warning Rishi Sunak that if he sticks to his guns, it will hit Conservative Party support still further.
The group’s director, Andrew Montford, said:
It’s clear that people don’t want heat pumps, don’t trust heat pumps, and don’t trust the politicians who are pushing them. If the Government insists that households get them anyway, they will suffer at the ballot box. The EU seems to understand that, but the penny doesn’t yet seem to have dropped for Mr Sunak.
And Net Zero Watch is warning that delaying measures is unlikely to convince anyone. Mr Montford said:
The EU clearly thinks they can reintroduce the same measures after the elections, but nobody is fooled. Across the continent, it’s clear that Net Zero is in retreat and sceptical parties are on the rise. Unfortunately, Mr Sunak seems to want to stick with his failed eco-religion for now. His MPs will pay the price.
Quarterly sales figures of heat pumps in Europe are in a slump amid a 14% drop compared to last year’s quarter, which the industry says was caused by political uncertainty and dropping gas prices.
Quarterly sales figures of heat pumps in Europe are in a slump amid a 14% drop compared to last year’s quarter, which the industry says was caused by political uncertainty and dropping gas prices.
Energy used in heating and cooling the EU’s more than 100 million buildings represents almost 50% of the bloc’s final energy consumption. Heat pumps are expected to contribute the lion’s share of reducing demand and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Euractiv.com has the story.
There is just one problem: sales of the magical technology that turns one unit of power into three of heat by concentrating ambient energy are down 14% compared to the same quarter in 2022 across the EU’s biggest markets.
In the third quarter of 2022, some 565,000 heat pumps were sold in Europe. One year down the line, that figure has dropped to some 485,000 or by 14%. The biggest drops were recorded in Finland and Denmark, traditionally strong markets.
Strong sales figures in Germany at 120,000 and the Netherlands at 38,000 propped up the quarterly result for the market.
EHPA, the association of Europe’s heat pump producers, attributes the slump in sales to mixed messaging from politicians – like during Germany’s multi-month heat pump row – and the massive drop in natural gas prices.
The Dutch price tracker TTF sees prices three times lower than the year before, having almost reached pre-crisis levels.
The turn away from the bloc’s future heating mainstay spells trouble for the EU’s ability to achieve its climate targets for 2030 and beyond.
One EU target may be at risk more than any other: Europe plans to install 30 million heat pumps by 2030 as part of REPowerEU – EHPA says 60 million are necessary – in order to get rid of the bloc’s dependence on Russian gas.
“Policy must aim at reducing the cost of electricity for residential, commercial and industrial applications. It should not be more than twice the price of fossil gas,” urged Thomas Nowak, EHPA’s secretary-general.
More payments and costs for an unknown future with no apparent success. Greetings from the medievial indulgence trade.
China’s ambassador to the EU criticised the EU’s actions as “unjustified and regrettable,” cautioning last week against political confrontations jeopardising climate cooperation.
The need for agreement to tackle global warming is “higher than ever”, but it has never been harder as the geopolitical backdrop complicates international cooperation, the European Union’s climate chief said on Monday (30 October) ahead of next month’s COP28 summit, reports Euractiv .
Climate Action Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra also said the EU would not accept an outcome at COP28 that only reached deals on less contentious topics – such as increased use of renewable energy – if it failed to solve tougher issues such as phasing out fossil fuels.
“This is not an à la carte menu. It is actually all that is on the menu that needs to be delivered on,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of a preliminary COP28 gathering in Abu Dhabi ahead of the UN summit starting at the end of November.
The challenge of getting countries to agree is all the greater as Israel has escalated its bombardment of Gaza, Russia’s war on Ukraine continues and tensions run high between the US and China.
At the same time as “geopolitically very challenging times” make agreement on the climate harder than ever, the need is “higher than ever,” Hoekstra said.
Scientists have blamed global warming, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, for extreme weather this year, which is on track to be the hottest on record.
Israel has so far rejected international calls for a temporary pause in its bombardment of Gaza and politicians have warned of the risk of a wider conflict.
Tensions have also risen between Europe and China as Brussels investigates whether to impose tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle imports that it says are state- subsidised.
At the same time as “geopolitically very challenging times” make an agreement on climate harder than ever, the need is “higher than ever,” said Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s climate chief. [Photo: European Union, 2023. Source: EC – Audiovisual Service]
You must be logged in to post a comment.