EU Greenhouse Gas Emissions Down 24% Since 1990 (apnews.com) 164
Greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union have been reduced by 24% compared to 1990 levels, according to the bloc's annual climate report, but the EU said Monday it still needs to intensify efforts to keep to its target of making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by mid-century. The Associated Press reports: The EU's executive arm said Monday that emissions in the 27-nation bloc have decreased by 3.7% in 2019 compared to the previous year, while gross domestic product rose 1.5% over the same period. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the commission expects "an unprecedented fall in emissions" in 2020, along the lines of 8%. "However, as experienced in the past, a swift economic recovery may lead to a strong and rapid rebound in emissions, unless policy gears its stimulus measures toward the green transition," the commission wrote in the report.
In its report, the commission said emissions covered by the Emissions Trading System -- a cap-and-trade scheme for industries to buy carbon credits covering about 40% of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions -- saw the biggest drop in 2019, falling by 9.1%, or about 152 million tons carbon dioxide equivalent. [...] To accelerate the transition, the commission has also proposed that member states raise their climate ambitions above the existing target of a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030, proposing to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% compared to 1990 levels. Leaders discussed the offer last month but could not immediately agree on an updated goal as reducing emissions by another 30% within the next decade poses a big challenge to many EU countries. They will try to find a consensus during a December summit ahead of the adoption of the first-ever European climate law.
In its report, the commission said emissions covered by the Emissions Trading System -- a cap-and-trade scheme for industries to buy carbon credits covering about 40% of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions -- saw the biggest drop in 2019, falling by 9.1%, or about 152 million tons carbon dioxide equivalent. [...] To accelerate the transition, the commission has also proposed that member states raise their climate ambitions above the existing target of a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030, proposing to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% compared to 1990 levels. Leaders discussed the offer last month but could not immediately agree on an updated goal as reducing emissions by another 30% within the next decade poses a big challenge to many EU countries. They will try to find a consensus during a December summit ahead of the adoption of the first-ever European climate law.
Easy when building everything implying polution... (Score:3, Insightful)
...outside of Europe.
That's basically what happened with every polluting industry...
Would be nice to include importations impact in global calculation of the greenhouse gas emission.
Re:Easy when building everything implying polution (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah we just externalised everything. I mean it's not like the EU imposed the strictest emissions controls on cars, most of its member nations madly worked to reduce coal use and embrace renewables, reduced energy consumption per household through introduction of standby electricity laws and new + retrofit building codes, introducing incentives to work from home, requiring new commercial buildings to be eco friendly.
Nope. It's all "easy externalising" of costs.
Not just renewables, Natural Gas too (Score:3, Informative)
"This drop was driven mainly by the power sector, where emissions fell by almost 15%, primarily due to coal-fired electricity production being replaced by electricity production from renewables and gas"
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Its not just renewables but using natural gas too.
"This drop was driven mainly by the power sector, where emissions fell by almost 15%, primarily due to coal-fired electricity production being replaced by electricity production from renewables and gas"
The topic of the article is "EU emissions down 24% since 1990". The quote you chose to make your point refers only to the 40% of EU greenhouse gas emissions regulated under the carbon credit system for the single year 2019. The full quote:
In its report, the commission said emissions covered by the Emissions Trading System — a cap-and-trade scheme for industries to buy carbon credits covering about 40% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions — saw the biggest drop in 2019, falling by 9.1%, or about 152 million tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent.
“This drop was driven mainly by the power sector, where emissions fell by almost 15%, primarily due to coal-fired electricity production being replaced by electricity production from renewables and gas,” the commission said.
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The topic of the article is "EU emissions down 24% since 1990". The quote you chose to make your point refers only to the 40% of EU greenhouse gas emissions regulated under the carbon credit system for the single year 2019.
The fact remains that renewables and natural gas have seen increased use in parallel with each other since 1990. Every year's reduction is part renewable and part natural gas.
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Utilities are going to fight killing off the new nat gas plants. That is why we need to push Small Nukes, combined with multiple forms of AE. Interestingly, multiple SMRs, like NuScale, combined with a thermal salt storage can replace the boiler part of the gas plant, which means utility does not have to lose billions. I even posted about this over 10 years on my dairy.
As it is, you will notice that ALL developed and even some undeveloped nations that have low emissions, all have 2-3 of
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yeah, and it sux. Utilities are going to fight killing off the new nat gas plants.
You know what six worse? Being cold and sitting in the dark.
That is why we need to push Small Nukes, combined with multiple forms of AE.
When we have nukes to backup the renewable shut down the nat gas. No problem. However until then ...
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That is why we need geothermal and nukes ASAP. Just look at California. That is a great example of what happens when you do not make sure of generation.
What I find interesting is how many ppl object when I point out that we will NEED Nukes/geothermal when super volcanoes go and block the sun.
So many ppl here seem like they either do not care, or want America to fail when that happens. Probably the later.
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Natural gas is just a marketing name for "fossil gas", it is only better than coal in that it produces less smog, it still produces the same amount of CO2 though.
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Natural gas is just a marketing name for "fossil gas", it is only better than coal in that it produces less smog, it still produces the same amount of CO2 though.
No it does not. It produces half the CO2 of coal. That is why it is credited, alongside renewables, for **reducing** CO2 emissions.
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Re: Easy when building everything implying polutio (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are you speading that bullshit? We didn't externalize everything. Our power plants and cars still are inside the union.
Where do you get this crap? QAnon?
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To be fair, it's getting harder and harder to tell. The things people believe nowadays are so stupid that sarcasm is becoming almost impossible.
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Though, it's not that difficult on Slashdot as you can check out the comment history of registered users to help you read between the lines.
Yes, I know, that takes a little bit of effort. So it's not likely that the average user of today's Slashdot does it. But it can be done.
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Well it's not entirely bullshit. It's just not the explanation for the CO2 emission drop (though a part of it may be).
Europe has not "net" lost manufacturing industry. However, it has also not kept pace with the economy. The Chinese manufacturing industry is overtaking Europe left and right. Each month, more of what we buy comes from China.
The same goes for heavy industries (most notably steel and cement, big polluters). Car plants were also in decline, but now that they rely less on automation, they're com
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Well, the US is doing the same thing but our emissions are not dropping nearly as fast. Good luck buying anything here today that's not made in China.
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Why are you speading that bullshit?
Because it lets them off the hook. Look we can't possibly do anything, even the Europeans are cheating!
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Is your sarcasm detector as broken as the parent's. Do I need to start talking to Slashdot like they are 5 years old or something?
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I'm not sure if as a German (I think you're German anyway) the subtleties of English sarcasm escape you, but you're not replying to what you think you are.
For future reference, watch out for the following when reading English:
- Excessive agreeing with a point.
- Phrases like "It's not like"
- A long list of counter points all of which are true while pretending they aren't.
- More excessive agreeing including putting the original point being mocked in quotation marks.
It'll help you communicate a bit better.
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Some countries do more than minimum (Score:2)
Just like credit card debts, you should never try to only pay minimum payment. You'll be stuck in debt forever. The same goes with green tech. If you only increase effectiveness by 2-3% per year, and inflation increases consumer use by the same amount, there will be stagnation.
But some countries do try to do more. Sweden has less than 10% of its electricity generated from CO2 neutral sources (counting nuclear as zero-emmision). Denmark does Private Public Partnerships with industry, to reuse heat from manuf
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Vehicles are something around 10-15% of total emissions, if even that iirc. Reduction of coal is the real thing, but not to embrace renewables. "Embracing of renewables" is what keeps coal going. Just ask Danes with their hilarious carbon intensity off supposedly "can run entire country off renewables at peak times" vs actual numbers of CO2 emitted per energy generated.
Danish renewable energy production is largely wind that peaks during the cold winter months, the lack of energy production is on hot summer days last time i checked.
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Denmark's "hot summer days" are normally about 21 degC, 70 degF. They don't need air conditioning when the temperature is that low.
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Denmark's "hot summer days" are normally about 21 degC, 70 degF. They don't need air conditioning when the temperature is that low.
I have no idea if air conditioning is significant in Denmark's power usage during those days, but solar power seems like a possibility.
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It sits in a medium solar intensity region. Putting solar power there is both a crime against economics and a crime against nature with current technology.
They do sit in a high wind intensity area, which is where the idea to just throw everything into wind power came from. It's just that Greens took it to the anti-scientific extreme as usual, which lead to their carbon intensity remain high even while greenwashing it as much as they could by tapping as much of Swedish and Norwegian hydro as they reasonably
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You may want to check again, as wind activity doesn't correlate anywhere near that clean, nor are there meaningful "hot days" in Denmark due to significant equalizer of two seas it sits between.
In fact one of the likely main reasons for why Denmark is a region of high wind activity is the balancing factor of those two seas, creating a pressure differential around the edge of the landmass the moment there's a significant warming or cooling on either side.
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...Would be nice to include importations impact in global calculation of the greenhouse gas emission.
Yeah, that would be nice, especially since "exporting" the problem of pollution is akin to asking the cigarette smoker to move to the back of the plane.
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Things like RoHS actually reduced pollution overseas and the carbon trading schemes in place count externalized manufacturing.
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Look, Europe imports things, HOWEVER, they are not on the ones that said that nations like CHina will build out 1.2 TW of coal, or continue adding another
Likewise, even in 'free' nations, it is governments all over the world that decide if businesses can pollute, etc. Businesses push that, but governments allow it. We s
Re: Easy when building everything implying polutio (Score:2)
Destruction?
Dude, the Chinese had an advantageous exchange rate, plenty of people and a system of goverment that demanded emloying everyone whether sensible or not.
Of course they undercut you! It's the market. Deal with it.
Countries like Germany could keep going only because they were able to focus on high tech and design (and automation).
But the easten bloc was right in the middle.
But frankly, as a former fake communist country, and also areas with very low incomes,, nothing stopped you from going the same
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Oh, it's not just that - see, 1990s seen the destruction of heavy industry in most of central and eastern, former Warsaw Pact europe.
They're of course adding us into the calculations, achieving a "reduction" off our backs.
It's the same principle as increasing the average wealth in your country by shooting all the poor people.
Capitalism killed those industries, once they had to sell on an open market turns out Soviet era wasn't a mark of quality or efficiency. If you look at something like https://www.electricitymap.org... [electricitymap.org] you can see in realtime who still burns coal and who has turned to renewables and being a former Soviet state correlates pretty well with high emissions.
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Quite the opposite - when political machinations killed our heavy arms industry output, USA and France stepped right into the marketplace void. And of course, those machinations were bought and paid for.
AFAIK (and admittedly that's not much) the advanced arms industry was moved by the Russians to the motherland for obvious reasons. I'd assume that for the eastern European countries that joined the EU and even NATO it's a plus for them both in terms of industry and defense, I have a hard time interpreting the post -89 political history and economic development otherwise. With the exception of (inefficient) natural resources extraction and cheap labor the eastern block countries hasn't really brought anythin
Re:BrauHD sucks creimer's nub (Score:5, Informative)
Dominion Fraud (link to YouTube video which shows unknown man trying to look at images - possibly to debug something - whilst having some innuendo about looking for a special pen when he's actually getting post-it notes)
A video shows a scanner technician looking at a scanned image and wondering what's going on. And this is meant to be evidence of fraud. I've turned off my Karma bonus replying to you 'cos this is mostly off topic and maybe we should both be modded down to oblivion, but it's a perfect example of things so stupid they are easier to explain as sarcasm than truth [slashdot.org]. I've even checked your posting history except you really don't have one - let me guess the karma keeps knocking out your accounts as people realise you are acting in bad faith. Escape your troll farm and start to provide value to humanity, don't just be a waster.
The problem with this is that there are people who don't understand that US voting machines use paper ballots and just scan them and that most of the counties can and have done random audits to check that ballot papers match with the way the voting machine counts them. To do useful and credible fraud you have to change the paper ballots which you can't do from the voting machines. The reason a a technician would be looking at something like this is because it would have been identified as an error during manual verification - typically a ballot that's been thrown out due to additional marks by the voter but actually can be counted because the "intention" is clear.
Just like the comments that the EU is "externalising" green house gas emissions, it's yet another detail where you have to have a bunch of knowledge of the details of the process and, if you are largely ignorant and "doing your own research" then you might believe it. When it's shown in a court situation with actual experts present and they say "well, but the EU is also trying to impose tariffs based on emissions" / "well but there are paper ballots which make that impossible" then the experts on your side will just deny any link to your stupidity, which has already done it's damage to the foolish. People like yourself, who probably do understand what you are doing need to connect to their duty to truth.
Re:Easy when building everything implying polution (Score:4, Interesting)
Biden's main problem isn't going to be reneging on promises or forgetting. His main problem is going to be his constant need to build a consensus. Unfortunately, consensus building is a thing of the past when it comes to our current government. The Democrats constantly needing validation through consensus is what they use to prevent themselves from making any true progress on their supposed issues. Granted, if you watch what they do accomplish, you'll see that the issues they talk about publicly are not, at all, their priority. They'll make that abundantly clear once in office, just as they did when Obama was in office.
Not that I think the Republicans constant obstruction of any and every thing is a better stance to take.
It'd be nice if we could have some adults in Washington to try and steer us in a better direction. Not sure how they'd make it through the elimination process to make it that far though. Non-psychopaths need not apply. Like money more than morals? Hop aboard the political train. Donors are standing by.
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Democratic party in US hasn't been built on concensus for as long as I was interested in world politics. Their entire election strategy is to have a wide base that is in conflict with one another. I.e. single mothers don't want to pay for student loans of rich city kids, blacks and gays have completely different ideas on what "civil rights" even mean and so on.
As opposed to republicans, who traditionally built their coalition on aligned interests, or at least lack of conflict of interests. Anti-abortion peo
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Totally with you, but my point was more about how the Democrats that get into the presidency seem to use the "build a consensus" excuse to prevent themselves from taking any real actions that aren't aligned with the big money movers of the country, usually in direct conflict with their publicly stated interests. Republicans don't bother with pretending to give a shit about any of it and essentially just tell the public to bend over and get ready.
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Excuse indeed. They don't build a consensus. If they try, they fail. Think Gore's or Kerry's presidential bid.
The way to get elected as a democrat is to be like Clinton or Obama. Be so charismatic that internal conflicts within the party can be temporarily swept under the rug.
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Coal is dead in America regardless, and none of the things Biden is backing are relevant to displacing it. In fact, the only major source of energy not on the list is the reason why coal is dying in US right now under Trump, in spite of his attemtps to revive it.
CCGTs and natgas from fracking.
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However, Biden is said to be adding lots of geothermal and is backing nukes. If he does this, by 2030, America can be rid of burning all coal for electricity, and likely have taken a HUGE chunk of burning nat gas out of play as well. As it is, we are now down to below 55% of our electricity coming from CO2 sources, but we need to continue dropping this.
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Problem being that Biden is not going to survive a decade as a leader unless there's a coup against US constitution. And that's how long it seems to take today to get a nuke from decision to build one to it starting production.
Geothermal is geographically limited even more so than wind and solar. US is not Iceland, and therefore geothermal is not going to solve things. This before the risk management being "eh, we're not sure what cooling the planetary core faster will do" at scale. Probably better than rap
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And that's how long it seems to take today to get a nuke from decision to build one to it starting production.
Nope. Multiple companies have things going fast, so that it is possible to start building within 5 years.
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>so that it is possible to start building within 5 years.
And start producing in another five. That's ten. Math. It's great. You should try it instead of empty rhetoric.
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>Show the part of the agreements that says that...
Part two: Intended nationally determined contributions. You will also need the read references included in agreement, such as UN General Assembly resolution A/RES/70/1 and several others. They are referenced in the preamble.
Before you continue telling us how you don't have a fucking clue what I'm talking about, you should know that you're talking to someone who's anal about reading his sources. I have read the full text of the agreement. I have also read
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I literally did. With references. You are just too stupid to search for the relevant document in your favourite search engine and look at the relevant chapter in the document I provided above.
Hilarious. You don't even know how citations work.
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I'm still laughing at the fact that you asked for citation, got provided one, and then didn't recognise the citation... because you didn't know what it would look like.
This discussion is awesome.
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You make me look like Einstein with your "give me citation, I don't know what that is but I know I should ask for one". Never change. It's a really nice ego boost.
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Please do us all a favor and just let the troll be. Sadly, I suspect he is paid to do this, but still.
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But I like slaying trolls. Have you never played RPGs before? Sure, they regenerate fast, but it just means more fun slaying them again.
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And now, you sound like a parrot. At least have the decency to talk like a pirate if you're going to go down that line.
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>Is this the bit where you try to distract with Tienanmen?
That's not really relevant to the topic. But if I wanted to distract with China, I'd distract with Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward. Then I'd follow to non-stop small scale rebellion in Inner Mongolia, the whole Taiwan nonsense, the millenia old feud with Tibet ending up with current ethnic cleansing, forced labour/"re-education" camps in Xinjiang, the way North Korean defectors are dealt with, the slave trade in women from various South
Re:Easy when building everything implying polution (Score:5, Insightful)
Why bother with the lies about his mental health? What do you gain from it?
The next election is 4 years away and it won't be him you are fighting. Does it make you feel better about your loss perhaps?
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The Democrats are nervous because the other side is loudly making unfounded claims about election fraud and undermining everyone's faith in the system. Stunts like comparing primary ballot requests with ballots returned for the actual (not primary) election. Not understanding placeholder birthdates. Exaggerating the prevalence of actual fraud (people have been charged but not enough to throw the election), making it sound like the Democrats are the only ones engaged in fraud even though some Republicans
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I get some grins and giggles from it. It's supposed to be a joke, laugh about it.
Oh yes that's how jokes work, you declare it's funny and instruct people to laugh. Works every time.
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Can we get some links to these "polls" or are they something you read on the internet?
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The fact you link to an opinion piece that doesn't link to the data findings tells me all I need to know on this subject. Thanks.
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However, it really does not matter. The fact is, that Biden has won in a big way. Trump SHOULD concede, but his real goal is to continue fleecing idiots that will send him their money. That fund that is being built for this will go to Trump on Jan 20th, and I am guessing that it will be 100+ million, while his campaign owes 100+ Millions but will default on it.
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Are you sure you want more fringe elements in your politics in today's climate?
Because that's how you get Maoists and gulags from the streets, and into your executive to actually persecute the people using the force of the state without needing to go the route that Lenin took where loss of elections forced an armed revolution. Route Hitler took with losing elections but gaining just enough support to grab power anyway with a Night of the Long Knives is going to be sufficient.
As bad as your system is, I susp
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With RCV, it requires 50+% of a candidate for a winner. That means that Majority
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>RCV will actually force it back to moderation.
That is exactly opposite of how RCV functions. It enables more extreme opinions that are futher away from voter median to become viable via populism.
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You're not thinking through your own argument. What is the reason you have loaded people on the edge? Is it because they really want to vote for the centre, the literal opposite of "being on the edge"? Or is it because they want to vote for something that is current off the edge and far more extreme?
The more politically viable parties you have, the wider the political limits of "edge" become, because it becomes a viable election strategy to abandon centre and go straight for those sitting on the political e
Good luck with asking Russia to do that. (Score:2)
You said continent. The border to Asia is somewhere behind Moscow. and right through Istanbul too. Just in case the Sirs and Madams Imperialists forgot.
(And if you now imply I'm pro Putin, fuck you and your partisan mind cancer. I'm pro you! Unlike you, all too often.)
de-industrialisation in Eastern Europe (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:de-industrialisation in Eastern Europe (Score:5, Interesting)
The reduction observed is attributable to a significant extent to the rapid de-industrialisation that happened in ex-USSR and satellite states, some of which are EU states now. Portraying economic collapse as achievement is an interesting tactic. But the general idea is one needs to clean one's economy, not destroy it.
There's nothing in the data that supports that or do you have a quote? As we're only talking EU member states, painting the former eastern block countries development from 1990 to now as "economic collapse" you have a lot of explaining to do given the rise in GDP and average income.
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All here: https://rt.unfccc.int/ [unfccc.int]
What you are looking for is a variable called [Sectors/Totals][Total (without LULUCF)][Emissions][Aggregate GHGs][kt CO2 equivalent]. For all former Soviet bloc countries you will observe a severe (sometimes 2x and more) free fall in the 1990s, even before they have joined the EU, after which some of them have maintained their level of emissions and some grew/fell somewhat. So I am not saying that eastern EU countries are in economic collapse _now_, but they had been in the early 1990s which is documented through their emissions. 1990 is not a meaningful baseline to to look at for EU in 2020.
Emissions 1990 until now is what's being discussed. No one is denying that Trabants and other eastern European products weren't attractive on an open market. I don't get what point you're trying to make if it relates to the article discussed?
Re:de-industrialisation in Eastern Europe (Score:4, Insightful)
The Paris Agreement was negotiated in 2015, which is when the EU decided on 1990 as a baseline. Why look back 25 years for the baseline for any reason except blatant cherry-picking?
It's like saying the US is doing better than Europe because the US reduced emissions by 14% since 2005, which is a faster annual rate than Europe. That observation obscures the fact that 2005 was the peak year for US GHG emissions, so it's another form of cherry picking -- but arguably more defensible, because there were no major exogenous changes like the collapse of the Eastern Bloc to skew the numbers.
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The Paris Agreement was negotiated in 2015, which is when the EU decided on 1990 as a baseline. Why look back 25 years for the baseline for any reason except blatant cherry-picking?
The Paris agreement offers no baseline and has precisely zero to do with 1990, not as a target nor as a baseline. You're probably thinking of the Kyoto protocol of which "Europe" didn't set any baseline, individual nations did. Many chose 1990, but precisely those nations you are accusing of skewing numbers didn't choose that year.
I'd ask you to take down your strawman, but don't bother. It's already fallen down, caught fire, and just contributed more waste to our greenhouse gas emissions.
Entirely Wrong Perspective (Score:2, Interesting)
"The most significant decline was in sectors covered by the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), in particular power plants."
In other words, as part of a global deal to reduce emissions, every region of the world has accepted emissions targets. Some nations - like African countries - are already well below their target level and thus have a "credit". So what they EU is really saying is that they are "off-l
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First, you need to read the small print. For example, from the EU's own summary [europa.eu] of their report:
"The most significant decline was in sectors covered by the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), in particular power plants."
In other words, as part of a global deal to reduce emissions, every region of the world has accepted emissions targets. Some nations - like African countries - are already well below their target level and thus have a "credit". So what they EU is really saying is that they are "off-loading" their excess pollution by buying "emissions credits" from developing nations...
No, only the EU is included in the EU Emissions Trading System.
Re: Entirely Wrong Perspective (Score:2)
Wrong. The EU ETS can trade through the UN as well as existing bilateral cooperation with (per the EU ETS website)
China.
India.
South Africa.
Latin America and Caribbean.
In 2019 China purchased something like 40% of the EU emissions since per the accords set they have no cap on emissions and everyone knows they wouldnâ(TM)t report them anyway. So basically, the Paris accords are just funding China at the expense of EU business and industry capital.
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From the linked page: "They can also buy limited amounts of international credits from emission-saving projects around the world."
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Sorry to challenge you on this, but the EU themselves [europa.eu] say otherwise.
From the linked page: "They can also buy limited amounts of international credits from emission-saving projects around the world."
Thanks! You're right. 2013-2020 (phase 3) international credits can be generated https://ec.europa.eu/clima/pol... [europa.eu] after 2020 it's supposed to be replaced, by what I can't exactly find but for "The Paris Agreement established a new market mechanism to replace the CDM and JI after 2020".
BS (Score:5, Interesting)
"The most significant decline was in sectors covered by the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), in particular power plants."
In other words, as part of a global deal to reduce emissions, every region of the world has accepted emissions targets. Some nations - like African countries - are already well below their target level and thus have a "credit". So what they EU is really saying is that they are "off-loading" their excess pollution by buying "emissions credits" from developing nations...
Wrong. There is no non-European country in the EU ETS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They are just balancing the carbon emissions among European countries. If you can remove one ton for $30 in France, but only $20 in Spain, isn't it more effective to do it in Spain? That's the whole point of the trading scheme.
This is not a cause for celebration.
Yes it is. Except Europe, nobody is doing anything to reduce carbon emissions. Europe is the only success story we have. USA, Canada, Australia are all polluting much more per capita. Developing nations are not polluting as much as these dirty countries, but many are rising quite fast.
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Not only they are up from 1990, but they were polluting more to begin with.
Except China, which probably started lower than Europe (per capita) but must have surpassed it by now.
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That potentially leaves the China numbers looking even more serious. Especially as we've seen evidence recently of, for example, a hole in the ozone layer forming above China (See here [bbc.com] for details) for just one e
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Are you suggesting the EU is lying about its emissions?
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I don't have any reason to believe they are not doing it right.
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The people who live in the EU still have to breathe in the noxious gases every day.
Cool rant, but the numbers you're quoting and the things being traded aren't even remotely noxious at the levels that are being breathed in even in inner city peak hour traffic in Poland.
NOx, PM2.5, PM10, and Ozone however are noxious gasses which Europe concerns itself with, and surprise surprise there's no mechanism to trade any of that away.
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I mean I can make up tons of "IF" conditions as well. And 'if' I also employ some slippery slope, mix it with a bit of strawman, and sprinkle it with a generous amount of false dichotomy any kind of nonsense can sound like the better alternative.
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Look about you. Last century had hundreds of century-long economic experiments involving billions of test subjects showing correlatiom between economic freedom and progress.
And it is true need for change drives progress ("War is the health of the state") this must be set against the downsides of the additional burdens. During the 1980s, there was much squealing that something like 50% of physicists and engineers were involved in military technology for SDI "Star Wars", and how awful that was given these p
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Please re-read my post and the original article. As I explain, the EU admitted that they "achieved" this using carbon offsets.
I'm fairly certain that you both misunderstand the EU's Cap-and-Trade scheme and, hence, are misrepresenting this news.
"The most significant decline was in sectors covered by the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), in particular power plants."
Let's start with how the ETS [europa.eu] works: "A cap is set on the total amount of certain greenhouse gases that can be emitted by installations covered by the system. The cap is reduced over time so that total emissions fall. Within the cap, companies receive or buy emission allowances, which they can trade with one another as needed... After each year a company must surrender enough allowances to c
Way to go (Score:2, Funny)
COVID effects on emissions? (Score:2)
EU #1 (Score:2)
Let's just say it: EU #1.
While not a country, it's definitely the greatest, the most democratic and land of the truly free.
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They want to be in the market so they have to follow the rules, how is that odd?
You can't go to a supermarket and then complain about them arresting you for shoplifting just because you are not a member.
Is it actually down? Or... (Score:2)
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LOL at the uninformed. France has almost all of its power generation done by nuclear and creates so much it exports it to other European nations. The UK is planning on building a dozen or so small plants. Also we have the worlds largest offshore windfarm currently to be replaced by another four times the size. And whilst nuclear might be better with CO2 it comes with it's own slightly inconvenient issues unless you think that burying thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste in the ground in barrels for a th