In the London Times, Diana Furchtgott-Roth traces the economic suicide of Western Europe:
At the Munich Leaders’ Meeting in Washington DC this week, vice-president JD Vance put his finger on a major cause of Europe’s recent decline. “One of the things that the Germans were very good about,” he declared, “is that they had kept the industrial strength of their economy consistent with the first world standard of living. But now what we see in Europe is a lot of our European friends are de-industrialising.” Hard power, he continued, requires strong industry.
It’s tough to be a naval power, for example, if you don’t make any steel and don’t build any ships.
[Europe’s] industrial base is getting whittled away by net zero policies, with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to preserve the environment placed ahead of almost everything else, including economic growth. Worse, China is ramping up coal-fired power at the same time. The net effect is not likely to be net zero but economic suicide for the West.
The European Union is trying to reduce CO2 emissions by 90% by 2040. That can’t be done, and won’t be. Nor would it have any discernible impact on climate, even if you believe the warmists’ own formulas:
[A]ccording to the Heritage Institute’s Climate Calculator, based on government economic and climate models, reducing Europe’s entire CO2 emissions to zero would have a net temperature mitigation of only about 0.12 degrees Celsius by 2100, assuming the highest climate sensitivity to carbon.
What “net zero” will do, however, is destroy Europe’s industrial base, and thereby impoverish its people and render Europe irrelevant in world politics:
Due to higher prices for electricity in the West, energy-intensive manufacturing has been shipped to countries like China, which do not so slavishly follow net zero nostrums. Europe’s progressive policies are effectively contributing to China’s industrial might.
England once rode coal to its status as the premier world power. Not it is China’s turn:
[C]oal-powered generation [in China] rose from under 1,000 TWh in 2000 to 5,864 TWh in 2024, highlighting the ongoing expansion of coal power in China.
With the election of Donald Trump, I think the U.S. has turned back from the brink of “green” destruction in the nick of time. If Europe continues to de-industrialize in service of environmental folly, it can only be regarded as deliberately suicidal.
