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Economic turmoil on its latest grandest scale is already threatening Europe’s climate protection policies. Automakers today urged EU authorities today to reconsider proposed limits on CO2 emissions. Their argument: the current financial crisis makes it too hard to meet them, reports New Scientist.
Cynical-mini-me says why not make the car-makers adhere to tighter CO2 emissions and then give them a bail-out? You know, the tried and true method.
The European Commission is also proposing to auction CO2 emissions permits by 2013. But now Poland, Greece, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria are assembling a blocking minority to stall that climate package. They argue their power plants don’t have enough cash to compete with giants like Germany on the free-market auctions.
Well, no one’s got cash now. Maybe not even by 2013. Too bad we didn’t seriously tackle this environmental regime change when the global economy was fat and happy. The ranks of the whiners just got bigger and louder and harder to budge. All while the environmental meltdown that no one’s paying attention to until it gobbles us up is coming our way too.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones’ environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
