In this newsletter:
1) Donald Trump would gut Joe Biden’s landmark IRA climate law if electedFinancial Times, 24 November 2023
2) Trump likely to pull US out of Paris Climate Agreement if elected
Nation World News, 24 November 2023
3) Election victory of climate sceptical PVV party shocks Dutch greens
Euro News, 24 November 2023
4) Fraser Myers: Net Zero backlash and the humiliation of the Dutch establishment
Spiked, 23 November 2023
5) Steve Davies: Geert Wilders is just the beginning
The Daily Telegraph, 23 November 2023
6) Asset managers quietly add ‘ESG’ to weapons and defence stocks
Bloomberg, 24 November 2023
7) Electric car sales set to plummet with falling driver demand ahead of major announcement
GB News, 23 November 2023
8) Germany faces the green fiscal truth
The Wall Street Journal, 24 November 2023
9) And finally: CNBC reportedly dismantles ‘climate change desk’
Bizpac Review,22 November 2023
Financial Times, 24 November 2023
Senior campaign officials and advisers to the former president said he would seek to radically overhaul US climate and energy policy to “maximise fossil fuel production” during a second term.
They added that the Inflation Reduction Act — the centrepiece of Biden’s economic strategy, with $369bn in tax breaks and subsidies for clean energy — would be in Trump’s crosshairs.
Full story ($)
2) Trump likely to pull US out of Paris Climate Agreement if elected
Nation World News, 24 November 2023
Donald Trump is running again for the President of the United States and is currently the most popular Republican presidential candidate. The Financial Times wrote that Trump promised to change the country’s energy policy when he returns to power, during which he will reduce support for green business and increase oil production.
Trump’s allies said the former president wants to change the country’s current energy policy in his second term. He wants to increase the country’s fossil fuel production. Trump also wants to reduce funding for renewable energy projects, the Financial Times reported.
Some of Trump’s allies believe Trump wants to repeal Joe Biden’s climate law. We are talking about the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Under this law, the US will invest nearly $370 billion in climate and energy programs. As part of the law, the US is also trying to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles.
Trump has also publicly criticized Biden’s energy policies. He believes that the policies of the Biden administration threaten the country’s energy security, while at the same time increasing the price of automobile fuel.The Biden administration wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, Biden promised to create thousands of new jobs with the help of the IRA law.
Trump has a different understanding of energy policy. During his administration, the United States became the largest producer of oil and gas in the world.
“On the first day of Trump’s second administration, the president will roll back all of Joe Biden’s industry-killing regulations,” said Trump adviser Carla Sands.
Trump’s former adviser David Banks said that under Trump’s leadership, the US will likely leave the Paris climate agreement again. The agreement was signed under Barack Obama, Trump pulled the US out of the agreement. Under Biden’s leadership, the US rejoined the Paris climate agreement.
According to Banks, Trump is more of a climate skeptic who is more concerned about the economy and competitiveness.
Polls show that nearly two-thirds of Republicans want Trump as president. Environmentalists and Democrats are increasingly concerned that Trump could return to the White House.
Full story
3) Election victory of climate sceptical PVV party shocks Dutch greens
Euro News, 24 November 2023
Environmental groups have expressed shock and promised climate action in response to Dutch election results. Wednesday night saw the historic victory of the far right Party for Freedom (PVV).
The party led by Geert Wilders is projected to win 37 seats in the 150 seat Dutch parliament, putting it in the driver's seat to form a new government.
“We are shocked,” Extinction Rebellion Netherlands says. “This outcome will likely mean a rollback of climate measures, new fossil investments, exclusion of marginalised groups, and more.”
Friends of the Earth Netherlands spelled out what PVV’s rule could mean for Dutch society: “A Wilders government will mean four years of climate change denial, exclusion and a breakdown of the rule of law.”
What is the PVV’s position on climate change?
Their concerns are based on the PVV manifesto.
It declares: "We have been made to fear climate change for decades... We must stop being afraid."
“The climate is always changing, for centuries,” the document goes on to say. "When conditions change we adapt. We do this through sensible water management, by raising dykes when necessary and by making room for the river. But we stop the hysterical reduction of CO2, with which, as a small country, we wrongly think we can "save" the climate.”
The manifesto also calls for more oil and gas extraction from the North Sea and keeping coal and gas power stations open.
Full story
Spiked, 23 November 2023
To say the victory of Geert Wilders in yesterday’s Dutch elections came as a shock might be the understatement of the century. Not even his aides in the PVV (Party for Freedom) were fully prepared for the earthquake to come. The tiny, cramped venue where it held its election party last night was booked just four days ago, after Wilders enjoyed a last-minute surge in the polls.
With almost all the votes now counted, Wilders’s PVV has won 37 of the 150 seats in the Dutch parliament, with 24 per cent of the vote, trouncing his nearest rivals, a coalition of the Labour and Green parties. Make no mistake: this is a humiliation for the Dutch establishment and another political earthquake in Europe.
Before yesterday’s elections, European elites would have told you that a ‘sensible’ country like the Netherlands was immune to populism. The 2017 elections were heralded across Europe as the death of Dutch populism, when the PVV lost to long-serving centrist prime minister Mark Rutte. Wilders’s party slumped further in 2021, scoring just 11 per cent of the vote. With the peroxide-haired right-winger seemingly sent packing, moderation and centrism had apparently prevailed. Anti-establishment anger had been quelled. Or so they thought.
Even in recent days, the prospect of a ballot-box rebellion had been written off by European media. On the day the Netherlands went to the polls, a BBC News feature on the elections mentioned Wilders only in passing. Its two tips for the next Dutch PM came in third and fourth place. And just last week the Financial Times declared that these ‘elections are tapping into a mood for dry moderation’. ‘The Dutch don’t do wild political leaps’, it insisted. Such complacency has now been shattered.
These elections are as much a win for Wilders as they are a loss for the centrist establishment. The centre-right VVD, which has held power under premier Mark Rutte for 13 years, was knocked back into third place. Perhaps more significant has been the failure of Frans Timmermans, former vice-president of the European Commision, who led a newly formed Labour-Green alliance to defeat.
The failure of Timmermans is a stinging blow to the EU (Wilders is a staunch Eurosceptic who has promised an in-out ‘Nexit’ referendum). It also shows that opposition to climate policy is now a significant driver of European populism. After all, as Commission vice-president, Timmermans was the face of Brussels’s stringent climate policies, including the so-called European Green Deal.
The EU’s green austerity played a major role in stoking the farmers’ protests that have erupted in the Netherlands over the past few years. The Dutch government, under pressure from Brussels, introduced tight limits on the nitrogen emissions caused by fertilisers and cattle excrement. According to the government’s own estimates, these limits could lead to the closure of as many as 3,000 farms. This has led to years of agitation from farmers.
And it’s not just agriculture that could be flattened by climate policy.
As a Politico profile of Timmermans this week notes, the much-vaunted European Green Deal could be about to set off a wave of deindustrialisation – on a scale not seen for 50 years. Politicians who think they can get away with impoverishing their citizens, while hiding behind waffle about Net Zero, are in for a very rude awakening.
Wilders has also benefited from the stumbling of his populist rivals. Contrary to what the media claim, Dutch voters have often voted for anti-establishment parties when given the opportunity in recent years. Earlier this year, in the regional elections, the upstart Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), buoyed by the farmers’ protests, won not only the popular vote, but also the most seats in every single Dutch province. In 2019, the right-populist Forum for Democracy (FvD) won the popular vote in provincial elections and, in 2020, it could claim to be the ‘biggest party in the Netherlands by membership’.
Both parties have since hit major setbacks. The BBB failed to capitalise on its early popularity – not helped by its leader admitting back in July that she had no desire to be prime minister. Meanwhile, since the Covid pandemic, the FvD has tumbled down a conspiratorial rabbit hole. Its leader, Thierry Baudet, spent much of a recent parliamentary debate defending his scepticism of ‘the official narrative’ about 9/11 and the moon landings. As hard as it is to believe, this helped make the hard-right Wilders seem relatively sensible by contrast.
In any case, the BBB and FvD’s brief stints in the sun clearly demonstrated an appetite for a break from mainstream ‘liberal’ centrism. Voters have long shown themselves willing to shop around for different flavours of populism, for different ways and means to hit back at a complacent, indifferent elite. When it came to this election, it seems that Wilders was the beneficiary of his rivals’ failures.
None of this is to say that Wilders is a worthy beneficiary of populist anger. His infamous calls to shut down every mosque and to ban the Koran are prejudiced and deeply illiberal. And while it is true that many mainstream politicians are too cowardly to even talk about contentious issues like mass immigration and Islamic extremism, Wilders should not be hailed as some kind of noble truth-teller for his broadsides against Moroccans and other Muslim migrants. Indeed, some of his own supporters have freely admitted to journalists that his obsessive Islam-bashing can go too far.
Still, that voters were willing to plump for Wilders shows us how furious the Dutch are with the political establishment. For all the complacency about the Netherlands being immune to populism, voters are apparently desperate to hit back at the elites, using whatever weapon they have at their disposal. Populism in Europe is here to stay. And there is tremendous potential here for those of us who want to see this democratic revolt pushed in a more positive, progressive direction.
Another dam has burst. And it won’t be the last.
5) Steve Davies: Geert Wilders is just the beginning
The Daily Telegraph, 23 November 2023
The politics the PVV represents is not going away, and Germany could be next
The result of this week’s Netherlands general election was a win for the right-wing populist party of Geert Wilders, the PVV (Party for Freedom), which came first with 37 seats. The runners up were the right-liberal VVD (Party for Freedom and Democracy) with 24 seats and a three party left alliance with 25. There were major losses for centre-left parties such as D-66. In terms of votes, there were major gains for the PVV and smaller ones for the left alliance.
This result has caused shock and dismay among the political establishment throughout Europe. It should not do so. In fact, the surprise shows that too many people have not been paying attention to what is going on, in the Netherlands and elsewhere. The details of the results such as the PVV being the beneficiary of a swing towards populism rather than a different party (for instance, the recently formed Burgers and Farmers Party) might be unexpected but the broad pattern should not.
The Netherlands has been the scene for several large scale popular protests in recent years, aimed at policies and beliefs associated there and elsewhere with the managerial centre-left establishment. It saw some of the largest protests against Covid controls anywhere in Europe. More recently there have been massive protests against the environmental policies of the Dutch government, aimed at reducing excessive manure production by buying out farmers.
These specific issues are part of a wider political reaction in the Netherlands, against the consensus position of most of the parties there. This reaction has three main aspects. These are disaffection from the EU and from supranational institutions and regulations in general, rising alarm about increasing immigration, particularly from Morocco and other Muslim countries and about community relations in general, and increasing hostility to the environmental agenda and its associated policies such as net zero. This popular sentiment has now consolidated behind a single party, which happens to be the PVV.
The centre-right VVD has tacked towards the populist position on immigration but this has not headed off the movement of voters. The Left is now blaming the VVD for legitimising that shift, but that is both arrogant and wrong-headed. The movement in voter sentiment cannot be denied and attempts to ignore or suppress it will only enrage voters even more. Had the VVD not moved in that direction, it would likely have suffered major losses rather than more limited ones.
What is undoubtedly clear though is that in the wider right of Dutch politics it is the national populist strand that is now dominant rather than the right-wing liberal one. In this, the Dutch fit into a pattern that is emerging or even consolidated across Europe. It has happened for example in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, France, Italy, and Sweden and may even happen soon in Germany (if current polls are correct). Denmark is an exception but there it is the Left (the Social Democrats) who have moved in a more nationalist direction on the question of immigration and in so doing pushed the populist vote backwards.
The other aspect of the Dutch result is the consolidation of that country’s notoriously fractured politics (due to a highly proportional electoral system) into three clear camps: populist right, liberal right, and left. This again is a pattern we can see in several other countries, such as France.
It is not clear that Geert Wilders will be able to form a government, despite his party’s success. The established parties may well form a cordon sanitaire and shut him out. The evidence from other countries such as Sweden and Germany is that this will not hold in the medium to longer term. The sentiment he represents and articulates is real and on all the evidence is growing in strength and intensity. Trying to suppress it or ignore it will only backfire. A better strategy for his opponents is to address the issues and engage with his arguments directly rather than dismissing them.
What we can be sure of is that the politics the PVV represents is not going away, in the Netherlands or elsewhere. Results like the one yesterday in the Netherlands are going to keep on happening so this is a taste of things to come. Here in the UK, many believe that this kind of politics is defunct and has been clearly defeated and seen off. This is a foolish view, as we will see in the years to come, particularly once the next election is past here.
6) Asset managers quietly add ‘ESG’ to weapons and defence stocks
Bloomberg, 24 November 2023
In the world’s biggest ESG fund class, portfolio managers are getting more comfortable with holding military assets against a backdrop of mounting political pressure and industry profits.
At the end of the third quarter, 1,238 funds claiming to “promote” environmental, social and good governance goals held stocks in the industry classification code Aerospace & Defense, according to Morningstar Inc. data. That’s roughly 25% more than in March last year, right after Russia invaded Ukraine. A large portion of those funds converted to “ESG” during the period, Morningstar said.
The development is playing out amid a campaign to get ESG investors to support Europe’s military capability, as geopolitics in the wider region become increasingly fraught. Alexander Stafford, chair of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on ESG, told Bloomberg that “the violence” that’s followed the “invasion of Ukraine has cemented to me the ESG case for defense-related investment.”
And within military circles, investing in weapons is being held up as the ethical thing to do. Last month, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called for more money to be allocated to weapons, arguing that there’s “nothing unethical about defending our freedom.”
Yet the issue continues to divide ESG investors. And the war between Israel and Hamas has underlined what’s at stake, as the world looks on in horror at the growing list of civilian fatalities.
Identifying whether investments are being deployed for defense or aggression is “a very difficult due diligence to undertake,” said Sonali Siriwardena, global head of ESG at law firm Simmons & Simmons.
Ultimately, “it’s a question of how do you ensure that these investments are being used for a defensive purpose as opposed to indirectly contributing to offensive action.”
Full story
7) Electric car sales set to plummet with falling driver demand ahead of major announcement
GB News, 23 November 2023
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has lowered its forecast for electric car sales following the Autumn Statement as major manufacturers plan to invest heavily in EVs.
The OBR announced that it was reducing its forecast for electric vehicles’ share of new car sales in 2027 to just 38 per cent, a huge drop compared to the 67 per cent it projected in March.
It stated that the growth of electric car sales had slowed with drivers avoiding new EVs, as many delay buying a new car because of cost pressures.
In September, the Prime Minister announced that the deadline to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars would be delayed from 2030 to 2035.
The OBR suggested that this could be a reason for people delaying their decision to buy a new car, as well as expensive upfront costs.
Electric vehicles accounted for 16.5 per cent of new car sales in 2022/23, although this was more than one percentage point below the OBR’s March 2023 forecast of 17.7 per cent.
Full story
8) Germany faces the green fiscal truth
The Wall Street Journal, 24 November 2023
Things have gone from bad to worse in Germany this week after a court ruling that’s forcing the government to do something truly shocking: level with voters about how much the net-zero energy transition will cost. Please pass the smelling salts.
The country’s highest constitutional court ruled this month that one of the coalition government’s main gimmicks for funding green projects violates Germany’s version of a balanced-budged amendment. That amendment, known as the debt brake, caps the government’s fiscal deficit at 0.35% of gross domestic product per year except in emergencies (as defined by special legislation passed with a majority in the Bundestag).
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s administration had planned to devote €60 billion in emergency borrowing approved (but not spent) during the pandemic to subsidize green projects such as battery production and decarbonized steel. The point was to conceal the true cost of these plans by averting new legislative votes. The judges saw through this when they ruled that emergency authorization to borrow in the past can’t be re-purposed for entirely different projects in the future.
This fiscal moment of truth has exploded into a political crisis in Berlin. It’s becoming clearer that the unwieldy coalition of Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), the eco-leftist Greens and the free-market Free Democrats (FDP) of Finance Minister Christian Lindner can’t agree on any other method of funding green priorities.
Meanwhile, Mr. Lindner’s ministry says it believes a separate fund worth up to €200 billion may also be unconstitutional under the same principle. Berlin planned to use this pot of money for energy subsidies as German households and businesses struggle to cope with skyrocketing prices created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Berlin’s enthusiasm for costly and unreliable renewable energy.
At least the €100 billion special budget Berlin is devoting to defense is safe, since Mr. Scholz secured a constitutional amendment allowing that spending. But that might be the only new money Berlin can spend. Negotiations over the 2024 budget collapsed this week as politicians grapple with the fallout from the court ruling. The Bundestag is unlikely to approve either a new or retroactive “emergency” declaration to allow this spending.
That leaves tax increases that Mr. Lindner would oppose, social-welfare cuts Mr. Scholz would hate, or an end to ambitious green spending in an embarrassment to Robert Habeck, the Green Party minister for economic affairs and climate action. In other words, the government might have to make hard fiscal choices.
The political shell game around net zero is to claim that someone other than taxpayers will foot the bill. Germans are discovering otherwise, and the political uproar is a warning to other governments. If only the U.S. had such a mechanism to stop green boondoggles like the Inflation Reduction Act.
9) And finally: CNBC reportedly dismantles ‘climate change desk’
Bizpac Review,22 November 2023
In another sign that the mass hysteria over the alleged planetary doomsday from the weather may be subsiding, CNBC has reportedly dismantled the network’s “climate change desk.”
Sharing a development that could signal a big blow to the Democratic party’s furious push for a radical overhaul of American society to impose the Green New Deal agenda, a Bloomberg News reporter broke the news on X that the cable business network appears to be shifting away from the fearmongering propaganda that has dominated the mainstream media.
“CNBC has dismantled its climate desk and will no longer have staff dedicated to covering climate change,” wrote Akshat Rathi, including a post from CNBC climate innovation and tech reporter Catherine Clifford informing her followers that she’s been given the boot.
“It is a sad day when a major news publication decides to cut jobs that provide essential coverage of a planetary crisis. The science is clear, the impacts are here, and many world leaders are taking it seriously. So why does a media publication not see a business case?” Rathi asked.
“In 7-8 years covering climate change and solutions, I’ve only seen the audience grow. Disruption creates demand for good information for business, policymakers, and general public. But if CNBC’s decision reflects wider industry, then per user revenue must be low or falling,” the Bloomberg reporter added in another post.
An X post from another CNBC climate reporter appeared to confirm the sad news.
“CNBC went through layoffs, and I’m no longer with the company. I’ll miss working with the digital video team, and am sad our climate desk didn’t grow as we’d hoped. But I’m looking forward to exploring new journalism opportunities, esp. in the energy and climate space. Reach out!” Katie Brigham wrote.
Cutbacks in the global warming doomsaying department will sadly deprive viewers of such content as this segment from last Thanksgiving blaming climate change – and not Bidenomics – for more expensive holiday pies.
Full post
The London-based Net Zero Watch is a campaign group set up to highlight and discuss the serious implications of expensive and poorly considered climate change policies. The Net Zero Watch newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.netzerowatch.com.
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