Yes, brought to you by the European Union, it\’s Blog Action Day. When we all blog on the one subject, the environment and how the EU can affect it. Most exciting, don\’t you think? TEBAF is with it, the Environment Commissioner will be having an internet chat this afternoon. So, what can we say about the environment and the EU?
Well, let\’s look at what they actually do. There\’s the insistence upon recycling rather than landfill. This leads to greater emissions of greenhouse gases, not fewer. For example, using a wormery to recycle garden waste creates NO2, while landfill creates methane. The overall effect of the two gases, in CO2 e terms, is the same. But we collect the methane and convert it to CO2, creating energy in the process. The NO2 just goes into the atmosphere. Thus a truly environmental program would landfill such waste, creating one 23 rd of the greenhouse gases than wormeries. And, yes, the EU does insist that we don\’t landfill such waste.
Then there\’s the biofuels program. One report says that such crops use more fossil fuels than they replace. Another that simply letting trees grow and burning fossil fuels would reduce emissions from the biofuels plan by 50% to 90%. Err, the EU insists upon 10% biofuels.
And what about EUTS? This is a cap and trade system, one in which the transerable rights are given away, not auctioned. The nett effect of this is that it works just like a carbon tax, but with a huge amount of corporate welfare thrown in.
And then there\’s the puerile idiocy of the Common Fisheries Policy and….well, make your own list.
So, with this track record, what can we say about the European Union and the environment? It\’s clear and obvious that the UK would be better off out of the system (that much is clear to suckling babes) but what is the best thing the European Union could do about the environment? Clearly, stop existing.
So there we have it, the simple and clear message to the European Union on this auspicious day of blogging for the environment.
Bugger off and die would you?
Common Ficheries Policy? Je m’en fiche….
Glad to see you’re getting into the spirit of things. My post was on why waste incineration is a good, cheap source of electricity and cuts down on land fill.
[…] Worstall has a good summary of the idiocy of EU environmental policy. He is of course a euro-nihilist, not a position I hold, but the environmental damage which the […]
You are an idiot