Pave: Brown Europa Redux

Le jour 310 de Sarko

Environmental summits come in two varieties of striking dissimilarity. The first sort is bursting with reckless patronizing me-too idealism, dazzling promises, and bright self-congratulating headlines.

Then like night following day, the other sputters, extenuates, recants, and shamelessly undoes the practical agenda announced in the former summit. There is a gloomy astonishment that something more than green bombast will be required of the participants. Newspapers thoughtfully report all this on the tail pages of the business section to shield the public from the ignominy.

Both types of summit are sumptuously catered, so if you skip the working sessions there is very little difference at all.

THE HOT AIR OF HYPOCRISY
The European Union Summit Reveals Plenty
Of Hypocrisy Over Climate-Change Targets

March 19, 2008 (Economist) - A year ago [EU leaders] were brimming with selfless idealism. They agreed to make deep cuts in carbon emissions (by a fifth from 1990 levels by 2020), even if other rich countries did not follow. The signal was clear: Europe will start saving the planet now, even if the selfish Americans (not to mention the Chinese and Indians) are not ready. Bigger cuts were promised if other countries joined in, prompting much self-congratulatory talk about the EU's “leading role”.

That was then. A year on, with the world economy looking wobblier, the March summit was a less uplifting affair. Leaders from countries with powerful heavy-industry lobbies called for explicit measures to “protect” European firms in case talks on a global climate-change deal failed (and left the Europeans pushing ahead with tough curbs on their own). ...Germany, France, Austria, Italy and the Czech Republic all asked the EU to plan for failure, insisting that defensive measures must be agreed before climate-change talks in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.

Demanding “certainty” today for businesses that have to make long-term investment decisions, the heads of governments also asked for a list of energy-intensive industries “particularly exposed to international competition”. ... EU leaders then asked for a range of protective policies to be spelled out.

... The worst idea came from France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who renewed calls for a carbon tax on imports from countries that “don't play the game” on climate change. The European Commission should find a way to “penalise” companies from such countries, he added—blithely ignoring the existence of firms that come from more than one country, source components from a dozen more and manufacture on every continent. Otherwise, he said, Europe would “get all the downsides [of fighting climate change], and none of the benefits”. Other than the benefit of saving the planet, one might retort: the project in which Europe claims a “leading” role.

... Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, insisted that the summit was “not calling into question” last year's headline targets [!]. One might wonder. As one senior official notes, if Europe lets favoured industries fight Chinese or Indian rivals with a “race to the bottom” on emissions, that means other bits of the economy must slash emissions even more, if Europe means what it says on overall caps. There was much talk in Brussels of ensuring a “level playing-field” for EU industries. But here is the rub: if you do the right thing, you will not be on a level playing-field with those doing the wrong thing.

So which is worse, China pursuing a brown industrial policy without a nod to green pieties, or an EU trumpeting green pieties while pursuing a brown industrial policy?

PFFT (What is this?): Plan to fail first 4 | Europa leadership ¼ | Rayonnement français ⅛