GWPF Newsletter - Climate Rebellion: Ten Countries Block EU Climate Target Change

German Government Waters Down Climate Bill 

In this newsletter:

1) Climate Rebellion: Ten Countries Block EU Climate Target Change
EurActiv, 7 October 2019
 
2) German Government Waters Down Climate Bill
Deutsche Welle, 7 October 2019

 
3) Poland Defies EU By Vowing To Stick To Coal
Financial Times, 2 October 2019
 
4) The Apocalyptic Death Cult We Should Ridicule Out Of Existence
Brendan O'Neill, Spiked, 7 October 2019
 
5) Electric Vehicles Are Being Outpaced By The Growth Of SUVs
Nick Butler, Financial Times, 7 October 2019
 
6) Chinese Electric Cars 'Worthless' When It Comes To Resale
Asia Times, 29 September 2019
 
7) Dominic Lawson: The Sheer Folly Of Today’s Eco-Protests
Daily Mail, 7 October 2019
 
8) Nuclear Fusion Research In The United Kingdom
Dr John Constable: GWPF Energy Editor, 6 October 2019

Full details:

1) Climate Rebellion: Ten Countries Block EU Climate Target Change
EurActiv, 7 October 2019
 
Environment ministers agreed on Friday (4 October) to “update” the EU’s current emission reduction pledge next year but fell short of saying by how much. Ten countries blocked attempts by the others to commit outright to an increase there and then.

At an environment council meeting in Luxembourg, the EU’s 28 national delegates gave their blessing to a joint position ahead of the UN’s annual climate conference in December.

Ministers agreed to a text that again says the Council will complete its work on a pending climate-neutrality goal for 2050 by the end of the year. But the final conclusions on the EU’s 2030 target were watered down.

Under a first draft of the text, the EU would increase its so-called Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) of 40% “in a manner that represents a progression of ambition beyond the current one and that reflects the EU’s highest possible ambition”.

That part was ultimately cut from the final version, which now simply reads “in 2020, the EU will update its NDC as agreed in Paris”.

EU climate chief Miguel Arias Cañete said in a press briefing afterwards that “under the Paris Agreement parties have to ‘update’ or ‘communicate’. Here, we’ve chosen ‘update’.” He also quoted the draft conclusions, labelling the final version a “progression of ambition”.

Ten countries – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Malta, Poland and Romania – blocked efforts to include more explicit language. Of those ten, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland are the last hold-outs on the 2050 deal.

“A long-awaited decision to massively scale up EU emission cuts has been delayed yet again at a time when millions of people take to the street to protest against government inaction,” said Wendel Trio, head of environmental group CAN Europe.

He added that “the EU needs to commit to a much higher target in early 2020 to encourage other countries to do the same”.

Incoming European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has pledged to increase the NDC to 50% and to bump it up to 55% when appropriate. Cañete reiterated on Friday that current EU policies mean the bloc is de facto on course to hit 45%.

While Germany and Eastern European countries continue to oppose raising the EU’s 40% emission reduction target for 2030, a new analysis insists the bloc will actually manage at least 50% cuts under a business-as-usual scenario taking into account the latest coal phase-out pledges.

Not a bad result

EU diplomats were not overly disappointed with the result of the council though and even praised the fact member states had come to an agreement ahead of COP25 in Chile, which was the main objective of the meeting.

According to officials contacted by EURACTIV the lack of unanimity on ratcheting up the target at this stage was expected but they warned that patience with countries still dragging their feet is beginning to wear thin.

The Czech Republic and Poland in particular refuse to commit to new targets until the costs of ditching fossil fuels are explained fully. Polish energy officials last week insisted that the idea of going carbon neutral by 2050 is “a fantasy”.

Full story
 
2) German Government Waters Down Climate Bill
Deutsche Welle, 7 October 2019

German government is preparing a law to fight climate change, but many of its elements have now been cut or scaled back, the Spiegel magazine has reported. The news comes ahead of an Extinction Rebellion rally.

 
Climate activists have been camping out in front of Angela Merkel's office

The final draft of the new climate protection law, set to be adopted by Germany's government this week, has been significantly watered down from earlier proposals, Spiegel magazine reported.

German officials have cut the goal to limit national CO2 emission by 2040, according to the Sunday report.

Also, the latest version of the bill drops the pledge that Germany would reach greenhouse-gas neutrality by 2050. Instead, it only says this goal should be "pursued."

Another change considers the national climate council, the body of experts appointed by the government. The final draft removes the demand for the council to produce a yearly evaluation report. Also, the experts would no longer be required to provide advice to ministries on adjusting their CO2 rate to keep them on track.

However, the bill keeps the goal for Germany to reduce its CO2 emissions by 2030 to a level corresponding to 55% percent of what the nation's output was in 1990.

Conservatives opposed

The partners in Germany's ruling coalition, Angela Merkel's conservative bloc and the center-left SPD, debated on a new climate protection bill in March. The proposals circulated at the time envisioned a much deeper change than the law's current iteration seen by Spiegel. Even so, climate activists and political opponents slammed the original draft as insufficient.

The conservative bloc has since pushed for the law to be scaled back, according to sources inside the ruling coalition cited by the magazine.

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3) Poland Defies EU By Vowing To Stick To Coal
Financial Times, 2 October 2019

Energy security is higher priority than EU emissions goals, says government official.


Poland's coal basins 

Poland plans to prioritise curbing its reliance on Russian energy — and so continuing its dependence on coal — over signing up to the EU’s net zero emissions target, in a move that is set to put Warsaw on a collision course with Brussels over climate policy.

Piotr Naimski, Poland’s chief strategic energy adviser, told the Financial Times that it was “not possible and not feasible” for Poland to meet the EU goal of cutting net carbon emissions to zero by 2050. Instead, he said, coal would still generate up to half the country’s electricity in two decades’ time.

“Responsibilities for the planned EU target should be shared among EU states, taking into consideration every country’s situation and possibilities,” he said.

“The cost of this idea rises to hundreds of billions of dollars. Politicians trying to proceed with such a process, they are not living on the ground.”

Mr Naimski’s comments come as the EU is pushing its members to adopt an ambitious goal for carbon neutrality by 2050 and cast doubt on hopes that all EU states will sign up to the target by December’s COP25 climate summit in Chile.

Full story
 
4) The Apocalyptic Death Cult We Should Ridicule Out Of Existence
Brendan O'Neill, Spiked, 7 October 2019

Extinction Rebellion is a reactionary, regressive and elitist movement whose aim is to impose the most disturbing form of austerity imaginable on people across the world.



Yesterday, in London, I witnessed an eerie, chilling sight: I saw a death cult holding a ceremony in public.
The men and women gathered outside King’s Cross station and formed a circle. They swayed and chanted. They preached about End Times. ‘What will you do when the world gets hot, what, what?’, they intoned, conjuring up images of the hellfire they believe will shortly consume mankind. They sang hymns to their god – science. ‘We’ve got all the science / All that we need / To change the world / Hallelujah’, they sang, rocking side to side as they did so.

They demanded repentance. ‘Buy less, fly less, fry less’, said one placard. Catholics only demand the non-consumption of meat on Fridays, as an act of penance to mark the day of Christ’s death. This new religion demands an end to meat-consumption entirely, as penance for mankind’s sins of growth and progress.

And like all death cultists, they handed out leaflets that contained within them ‘THE TRUTH’. The leaflets foretell floods and fire: ‘We are in trouble. Sea levels are rising… Africa and the Amazon are on fire.’ The only word that was missing was locusts. They can’t be far behind these other ghastly visitations to sinful mankind.

And if you question their TRUTH? Then, like those heretics who were hauled before The Inquisition 500 years ago, you will be denounced as a denier. A denier of their revelations, a denier of their visions. ‘Denial is not a policy’, their placards decreed. Spotting me filming their spooky, apocalyptic ceremony, one of the attendees waved that placard in my face. A warning from the cult to a corrupted outsider.

This was, of course, Extinction Rebellion. Let us no longer beat around the bush about these people. This is an upper-middle-class death cult.

This is a millenarian movement that might speak of science, but which is driven by sheer irrationalism. By fear, moral exhaustion and misanthropy. This is the deflated, self-loathing bourgeoisie coming together to project their own psycho-social hang-ups on to society at large. They must be criticised and ridiculed out of existence.

Yesterday’s gathering, like so many other Extinction Rebellion gatherings, was middle-aged and middle-class. The commuters heading in and out of King’s Cross looked upon them with bemusement. ‘Oh, it’s those Extinction freaks’, I heard one young man say. It had the feel of Hampstead and the Home Counties descending on a busy London spot to proselytise the cult of eco-alarmism to the brainwashed, commuting plebs.

It was a gathering to mark Extinction Rebellion’s week of disruption. The group is asking people in London and other cities around the world to ‘take two weeks off work’ and join the revolt against the ‘climate and ecological crisis’. You can tell who they’re trying to appeal to. Working-class people and the poor of New Delhi, Mumbai and Cape Town – some of the cities in which Extinction Rebellion will be causing disruption – of course cannot afford to take two weeks off work. But then, these protests aren’t for those people. In fact, they’re against those people.

Extinction Rebellion is a reactionary, regressive and elitist movement whose aim is to impose the most disturbing form of austerity imaginable on people across the world. One of the great ironies of ‘progressive’ politics today is that people of a leftist persuasion will say it is borderline fascism if the Tory government closes down a library in Wolverhampton, but then they will cheer this eco-death cult when it demands a virtual halt to economic growth with not a single thought for the devastating, immiserating and outright lethal impact such a course of action would have on the working and struggling peoples of the world.

Extinction Rebellion says mankind is doomed if we do not cut carbon emissions to Net Zero by 2025. That’s six years’ time. Think about it: they want us to halt a vast array of human activity that produces carbon. All that Australian digging for coal; all those Chinese factories employing millions of people and producing billions of things used by people around the world; all those jobs in the UK in the fossil-fuel industries; all those coal-fired power stations; all that flying; all that driving… cut it all back, rein it in, stop it. And the people who rely on these things for their work and their food and their warmth? Screw them. They’re only humans. Horrible, destructive, stupid humans.

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5) Electric Vehicles Are Being Outpaced By The Growth Of SUVs
Nick Butler, Financial Times, 7 October 2019

Anyone who believes that behavioural change is going to produce a solution to the challenge of global warming should take a good look at the latest figures on consumer choices in the auto sector. 

Electric vehicles are growing in number and quality but they are being outstripped by the popularity of SUVs — sports utility vehicles with four-wheel drive and a raised clearance which make them suitable for off-road driving.

A casual reader of the media during the past few months could easily get the idea that electric vehicles were in the process of taking over the market. One headline tells us that the electric vehicle boom is coming. Another says that the boom offers a bleak future for gasoline.

EV numbers are certainly growing. Worldwide, some 5.1m electric vehicles were on the world’s roads by the end of 2018, an increase of 2m over the previous year. That growth will certainly continue. Dozens of new models are being brought on to the market this year and there has been a surge of investment in associated infrastructure such as charging points, of which there are now more than 5m worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency.

Despite some decline in the very rapid growth seen in China in recent years, global sales of EVs are expected to rise by between 2.4m and 2.9m this year.

The oil majors, led by BP and Shell, have bought into charging technology in anticipation of the growth to come. The IEA anticipates in its new policies scenario that, by 2030, EV sales could reach some 23m a year, creating a stock of about 130m vehicles. Taken in isolation, that could make a dent in the demand for gasoline of some 2.5m barrels per day.

But EVs cannot be considered in isolation. The 7m to 8m EVs that should be on the road by the end of 2019 represent less than a tenth of 1 per cent of the 1.1bn cars and other light vehicles that use internal combustion engines. Some 85m ICE vehicles were sold worldwide in 2018.

The even more telling fact is that the growth of EVs is being exceeded by the much more rapid growth in the number of SUVs. After growth of over 20 per cent a year earlier in the decade, the global demand for SUVs is now stabilising but at a high level of market share. In the US, SUVs account for 45 per cent of new car sales. But the trend is not limited to the US. In Europe SUVs take 34 per cent of new sales, in China 42 per cent and in India 23 per cent.

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6) Chinese Electric Cars 'Worthless' When It Comes To Resale
Asia Times, 29 September 2019

Nobody in China wants a used electric car — unless it’s a Tesla. And according to one of China’s top auto industry bodies, this was “inevitable.”

In its weekly update on China’s ailing auto market, the China Passenger Car Association listed several reasons why value retention is “too low” for new-energy vehicles, including fully electric, fuel-cell and hybrid cars, Caixin reported.

The list includes a shortage of purchase statistics that could be analyzed to help manage risks. The discrepancy of technologies used in Chinese electric cars is also large, meaning certain models are not reliable and are “simply worthless,” the association said.

“As startups release more products, standards will rise incrementally,” the association said, adding the lifespan of electric car components and batteries are still inferior to that of similar components for traditional vehicles.

“It’s not very feasible to simply wait for electric vehicles to raise their value retention,” it said.
CPCA’s remarks come as Chinese electric vehicle sales start to contract alongside traditional vehicle sales that have been falling for more than a year.

The nation is the world’s largest NEV market, after building up huge capacity on the back of generous government incentives.

But the huge buildup, often using older technologies, has led to observations that much of the nation’s output is far from cutting-edge.

Sale of NEVs fell 16% in August, which followed a 4.7% drop in July, after the government scaled back subsidies, according to figures from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

Full story
 
7) Dominic Lawson: The Sheer Folly Of Today’s Eco-Protests
Daily Mail, 7 October 2019

And now for some good news. One of Britain’s and Northern Europe’s rarest and most elusive mammals has been discovered living in the East of England for the first time in 115 years.

Revealing this happy development, the Guardian said: ‘The return to Kent of the greater horseshoe bat has delighted and astounded conservationists.’

But what is the reason for the unexpected return of this creature with its ‘distinctive, alien-like ultrasonic warbling signals’? According to a spokesman for the Bat Conversation Trust, it seems possible that ‘the species is now able to expand its range into Kent due to climate changes’.

But isn’t climate change meant to be an ecological disaster for every living thing on the planet? That’s the Guardian’s usual line, and it is definitely the view of the eco-protest group known as Extinction Rebellion, which from today is launching ‘mass-disruption’ in our capital city as part of its attempt to bully politicians to make the UK ‘net carbon zero by 2025’.

Furnace

Actually, I wonder why they bother, since the co-founder and leader of Extinction Rebellion, Roger Hallam, told the Sunday Times: ‘We’re all going to be dead soon, so there’s nothing else to do.’
But isn’t climate change meant to be an ecological disaster for every living thing on the planet? That’s the Guardian’s usual line, and it is definitely the view of the eco-protest group known as Extinction Rebellion, which from today is launching ‘mass-disruption’ in our capital city as part of its attempt to bully politicians to make the UK ‘net carbon zero by 2025’

In like spirit, the 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg declares that unless we immediately switch to a form of existence not seen since before the Industrial Revolution, she and others of her age will not grow up to have children of their own because Earth will very soon be an uninhabitable furnace.

The same approach is championed in America by the no less charismatic 29-year-old Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who declaims: ‘The world is going to end in 12 years’ — not 11 or 13 years, she’s most precise — ‘if we don’t address climate change.’

Actually, I wonder why they bother, since the co-founder and leader of Extinction Rebellion, Roger Hallam, told the Sunday Times: ‘We’re all going to be dead soon, so there’s nothing else to do’

The only problem with this is that it isn’t true. Not remotely so. What is true is that if, in line with Hallam’s demands, we revert to what he enthusiastically describes as ‘a peasant orientation which obviously has been completely lost in Western society’, we will indeed witness a shortening of life expectancy and even the prospect of mass starvation (we might have to beg for food aid from rapidly industrialising China).

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8) Nuclear Fusion Research In The United Kingdom
Dr John Constable: GWPF Energy Editor, 6 October 2019

The ludicrous disparity between overly generous renewables subsidy and the barely adequate support for long term nuclear research shows that at some not very distant point we will have to stop pretending that seven billion people can live on sunbeams and the breath of heaven

Starting with a grant of £20 million, the UK government has announced a substantial funding package totalling £220 million for the support of the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) nuclear fusion research project at the Atomic Energy Authority’s Science Centre at Culham in Oxfordshire.
 
The aim is to construct a viable generator by 2040, and the present grant will support the delivery of a “conceptual design” towards that end, the design being deliverable in 2024.

Whether this design will eventually lead to a viable generator is beyond prediction – 2040 is so distant as to be a mystery – but that aim is at least an entirely reasonable intention. The physics of nuclear generation is intrinsically promising, the prize being extremely large volumes of dense, high grade energy, in essence permitting us to reach into the extensive remains of the very low entropy states of the early universe. This could actually work, and it would represent a spontaneously attractive step beyond the fossil age. No one would have to coerce the markets to accept energy from these deep nuclear sources; it has the potential of being extremely productive and thus consuming only a small part of the energy it liberated, leaving the vast majority of its substantial output over for the delivery of other human ends. In other words, it would be cheap energy.

The Spherical Tokamak concept is not new, and dates back to the 1980s. Culham already possess a Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) facility for research on the concept, and this is currently being upgraded (under the project name of MAST-U) from a 5 MW system to a 12.5 MW system, though it should be emphasised that this system is a net energy consumer not a generator, and its purpose is to permit the better understanding of a fusion system. The principle aims are to deliver predictable net electricity greater than 100 MW, and to explore the exploitation of fusion energy beyond electricity production (one imagines they are thinking here of using high temperatures to produce hydrogen, principally for transport).

Alongside these, there are a number of subsidiary technical aims: ensuring self-sufficiency in tritium, developing materials and components capable of surviving in the very demanding conditions of a fusion reactor, and finding what the Culham team describe somewhat ominously as a “viable path to affordable lifecycle costs”, presumably a reference to decommissioning. This is reassuringly low key, and free from exaggeration. It reads like science and engineering, not the latest passionate ten-point crash-course plan for low carbon happiness.

It is useful to compare the cautious projections and timescale of the STEP project with the wild and implausible propaganda around the renewables industry (for example “Rejoice: Britain’s huge gamble on offshore wind has hit the jackpot”). Unfortunately, ignorance of underlying physical principles makes journalists (and not only journalists) vulnerable to hype, so quite unable to distinguish between the difficulties inherent in any genuinely promising energy project, and the magically easy triumphs claimed by the parts of the renewables industry, triumphs that are obviously too good to be true precisely because they have been so rapid. In energy, as in much else, difficulties can be an index of inherent promise; the fact that the Culham researchers are expecting the control of fusion energy to take decades is a good sign that the reward for a successful solution is vast.

Whether government is the best agent for the funding of such speculative research is certainly questionable, but such grants are at least no more absurd and wasteful than the vast consumer subsidy directed towards the intrinsically poor prospects of renewable energy. In fact, the total support package of £220 million just announced for the Spherical Tokamak is only 2% of the annual £9 billion a year currently spent in the UK alone on income support to renewables.

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The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.