Europe’s New Anti-Green Majority Scores Huge Victory

The European Union’s climate change policy is on the brink of collapse today after MEPs torpedoed Europe’s flagship CO2 emissions trading scheme by voting against a measure to support the price of carbon permits. The price of carbon crashed up to 45 per cent to a record-low €2.63 a metric ton, after the European Parliament rejected a proposal to change the EU emissions-trading laws to delay the sale of 900m CO2 permits on the world’s biggest carbon markets. --Bruno Waterfields, The Daily Telegraph, 16 April 2013

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Given the manifest reluctance of the world’s big emitters to accept any legally binding carbon targets and in face of our deepening economic crisis, Europe should undertake a comprehensive review of its economically damaging carbon targets and — in the absence of an international agreement — should consider the suspension of all unilateral climate policies that threaten Europe’s economic recovery. –Benny Peiser, National Post, 25 November 2011 "The decision means the end of a European approach to climate policy." --Felix Matthes, Spiegel Online, 17 April 2013

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A vote against backloading will in effect be interpreted as a vote in favour of delay and inaction and be leapt on as supporting evidence by the climate sceptics who oppose any action on climate change on ideological grounds. –-Bryony Worthington, The Guardian, 16 April 2013 The European Union’s flagship program to fight global warming suffered a major blow Tuesday when lawmakers rejected a proposal aimed at shoring up the region’s carbon-emissions trading system, putting its survival in doubt. Germany’s Minister of Economic and Technology Philipp Rösler welcomed the rejection of the backloading plans as an “excellent signal” for an continuing economic recovery. --Sean Carney, The Wall Street Journal, 16 April 2013 The EU has been the global laboratory testing the green agenda to see how it works. Yesterday’s story means that the guinea pig died; the most important piece of green intervention in world history has become an expensive and embarrassing flop. It’s hard to exaggerate the importance of this for environmentalists everywhere; if the EU can’t make the green agenda work, it’s unlikely that anybody else will give it a try. --Walter Russell Mead, Via Meadia, 16 April 2013 EUROPE’S flagship environmental policy has just been holed below the water line. On April 16th the European Parliament voted by 334 to 315 to reject proposals which (its supporters claimed) were needed to save the emissions-trading system (ETS) from collapse. Carbon prices promptly fell 40%. Some environmentalists fear that the whole edifice of European climate policy could start to crumble. The real question now is whether the scuppering of the ETS will lead to the dismantling of the EU’s climate policies more generally. --The Economist, 16 April 2013

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