WELL, TO BE FAIR, THE WHOLE THING IS ABOUT VIRTUE-SIGNALING AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRAFT. PLANET-SAVING IS JUST AN EXCUSE, AND THUS OPTIONAL. A Hollow Treaty: The EU Can’t Keep Its Climate Promises.
Of all the stakeholders at the negotiating table in Paris this past December, the EU was perhaps the most vociferous in its attempt to try and hammer out an international climate treaty. The document the summit produced requires nations to submit plans for how they’ll reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and notably lacks any sort of robust enforcement mechanism. Now, it seems the EU ought to be thankful that the climate treaty turned out to be so flimsy, as it’s on track to emit two billion more tons of carbon dioxide than was agreed three months ago, according to a European Commission document. As the Guardian reports, the bloc’s lackluster Emissions Trading System is to blame. . . .
In the meantime, the EU apparently has no intention of beefing up its emissions reduction targets until 2020 at the earliest, despite the fact that the Paris treaty “requires” signatories to review their climate goals in 2018. The thinking in Brussels seems to be that the current target—a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030 as compared to 1990 levels—is sufficient for at least another four years. According to a draft text (seen by Reuters) that EU environment ministers will work off of at a meeting later this week, the aforementioned goal “is based on global projections that are in line with the medium-term ambition of the Paris Agreement.”
Still, whatever the reasoning, it’s a bad look for the EU—supposedly the greenest bloc of countries in the developed world—already to be flouting the review process of a treaty drafted not 12 weeks ago. And even if the targets it’s currently working off of are sufficient past 2018, there’s still the question of whether one of its most important tools for achieving those reductions—the bloc’s carbon market—is up to the task. We’re already seeing how hollow the Paris treaty really is.
Like I said, it’s about virtue-signaling and graft, so it’s accomplishing its goals.