All environmental damage of the European Union

by Davide Gionco

The environmental hypocrisies of the European Union

In Europe we are all ecologists, from Ursula Von der Leyen and Greta Thunberg on down.
TV and newspapers tell us: we are all ecologists, environmental policies in front of everything.
That's right: we only have one planet to live on and we can't afford to ruin it, out of respect for future generations.
But the “European” politicians, supported by the single chorus of the media, however, tell us something else.
Environment only means making policies and information to combat climate change caused by CO2 emissions. Every natural disaster serves to justify this axiom, whether it is drought, excessive rainfall, too high temperatures.
TV and newspapers hammer us to this effect every day.

Other reasons for damage to the environment, such as the management of nuclear waste, the release of carcinogenic chemicals into the environment (such as the notorious PFAS, perfluoroalkyl substances), the excessive use of artificial additives in the food industry, the dispersion of microplastics in the waters, to the point that they have become part of the food chain, up to human beings … All these real environmental problems are as if they did not exist in the narrative of political and media power.
For them, being environmentalists only means reducing CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.

I do not intend to enter into the debate on the validity or otherwise of the theories according to which the increase in temperature of the planet Earth is caused by CO2 emissions and that the increase in temperature will certainly cause very serious changes for mankind.
Let us ask ourselves instead if it is scientific reasons that lead politicians not to deal with all the other environmental problems, but only with greenhouse gas emissions.
What are the most serious environmental problems that afflict humanity, measured in terms of risks to people's health and life itself?
Are we really sure that the most important issue is climate change?

Everyone is informed and both of the answers on a scientific basis, without queuing up to the one-way narrative of the media.

The European economic model is incompatible with the environment

But let's assume that climate change is the priority issue.
Does Europe really carry out policies in favor of the environment, beyond official proclamations?

The basic problem of the European Union is the absolute incompatibility between the economic model adopted and environmental policies.
The European Union is founded first of all on 3 neoliberal principles:
1) Free trade without barriers
2) Competitiveness
3) The public sector that does not intervene in the economy

Free trade without borders puts producers in competition on the basis of the prices of the products marketed. Since producing goods while reducing the environmental impact costs more than producing goods without worrying about the environmental consequences, the elimination of customs barriers favors companies that produce in countries where there are fewer environmental controls and companies that less care than others. the environment.
This occurs at the domestic level, where it is no coincidence that many production sites have been relocated from countries where cleaner energy is used and there are greater environmental controls to Eastern European countries, where energy with higher CO2 emissions is used ( coal) and where environmental controls are milder.
Obviously, the phenomenon is even more marked worldwide, with the adhesion of all the countries of the European Union to free trade treaties such as the WTO, through which the doors have been opened to products from countries almost all over the world. , in which environmental controls are substantially non-existent.
Think not only of the environmental impact of East Asian countries such as China or India, but also of the conditions in which European companies procure raw materials in Third World countries, without the slightest respect for the environment. human health, exploitation of child labor, etc.

In the world of free trade and global competition, those who are more “economically more efficient” always prevail, ie those who are more able than others to avoid taking on the environmental impact of economic activities.
Europe could have created a large continental internal market with the same rules of respect for the environment equal for all, in which anyone who wanted to produce had first of all to respect these rules and in which anyone who wanted to import goods from outside would have to require its suppliers to comply with these rules.
A rich market of 500 million consumers, with a gross domestic product equal to 20% of the world one, would have had the strength to impose these standards worldwide or at least to preserve the environment at least in Europe.

Instead, it was preferred to give space. to the only dogma that matters, that of the free market without rules, that of competition between companies at any cost, regardless of the environmental consequences.
Behind all the rhetoric on climate change, the reality is that Europe is one of the main devastators of the environment worldwide, as it only deals, in words, with the reduction of CO2 emissions, while at the same time pursuing economic policies. which generate pollution in Europe itself, but above all in other areas of the planet.

The principles of the free market and competitiveness are by no means compatible with respect for the environment, if we look beyond the pounding propaganda of the media.

The European hypocrisy on greenhouse gas emissions

Assuming, on the basis of the media narrative and not of science, that the main problem to be faced is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, let's try to evaluate the effectiveness of European policies for reducing CO2 emissions.

Currently the annual emissions of greenhouse gases (CO2 equivalent) worldwide are of the order of 35 billion tons, while all the countries of the European Union emit about 1 billion tons a year. 2.8% of global annual emissions.
When Ursula Von der Leyen announces in 2021 the European plan "Fit for 55" which provides for the 55% reduction of European CO2 emissions by 2030, she does not tell us that this effort would reduce global emissions by 1.6%. 9 years, as long as all other countries in the world keep their greenhouse gas emissions unchanged at the same time.
Clearly, the worldwide reduction of 1.6% will be substantially irrelevant on the possible global greenhouse effect, while the 55% reduction of European emissions in just 7 years will certainly cause a very serious economic crisis in Europe.
This is because, while creating plants for the production of energy from renewable sources and implementing energy saving measures, it is completely unrealistic to be able to reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 7.9% per year, without having had the time to quadruple (at least) the number of workers in the sector (engineers, skilled workers, etc.). Consequently, such a reduction in emissions can only be achieved by significantly reducing production activities and keeping buildings cold in winter.
And this will mean unemployment and impoverishment.
All this to achieve a measly worldwide reduction of only 1.6% of CO2 emissions, with no significant effect on climate change.

Obviously, in a free trade regime, the non-European competitors of our companies will continue to produce by emitting CO2. Indeed, they will do it more, because European citizens will be forced to import from outside Europe what in Europe, due to environmental restrictions, can no longer be produced.
The European Union could have achieved much more by demanding the most appropriate environmental standards from the international suppliers of the European market. But it did not, so as not to go against the founding principles of the free market and competitiveness at any cost.

European hypocrisy in the current energy crisis

In accordance with the usual neoliberal principles, the EU privatized and liberalized the European energy market, establishing the natural gas exchange TTF in Amsterdam and the electricity exchange EER in Leipzig.
The price quotation rules have been written in a way that favors maximum gains for speculators. We are referring to the rule of marginal prices and the possibility of exchanging virtual shares of energy on the stock exchange or energy not really owned by those who sell it, which have increased the quantity of energy listed by 10 times, with quantities equal to 10-15 times the real quantities of energy available from producers.

These typical rules of financial speculation have exacerbated the consequences of "negative" situations for the energy market.
The first negative situation was precisely the European “Fit for 55” plan, which, in order to limit CO2 emissions, envisaged the auctioning of allowable CO2 emissions quotas (the remaining 45%).
Since it is practically impossible to reduce CO2 emissions by that much in just 6 years, investors have anticipated the effects of rationing CO2 emissions, which will lead to an increase in fossil fuels.
This was the main reason for the energy increases that were already recorded last fall 2021.
The second negative situation was the sanctions imposed on Russia, resulting from the conflict in Ukraine.
The unrealistic goal of freeing oneself in a few months from the Russian natural gas requirement, which up to a year ago represented about 40% of the European requirement, being known, to those who know the real data, that all the other producing countries of natural gas in the world are able, with the infrastructures currently available and in the next 3-4 years, to replace the supply of Russian gas. So this means a priori the decision to reduce the availability of gas in Europe, leading to certain rationing (cuts in production activities, families in the cold) and making gas prices skyrocket, as it is a primary asset to which businesses and households cannot give up so easily.

One consequence of these decisions is that now many cars that ran on less polluting methane gas now pollute more by running on petrol, which costs less than gas.

A second consequence derives from the link between the price of electricity and the price of gas.
The European Union has decided that there should be a single market not only for gas (the Amsterdam TTF exchange), but also for electricity (Leipzig EER exchange), with the rules for which the price of electricity is determined by the most expensive production source in circulation, which currently is the production of electricity by burning natural gas. On the electricity market, a distinction is no longer made between energy from renewable sources and energy from fossil sources. All energy is sold at the same price.
In a logic of environmental policies, however, the sale of energy from renewable sources should be favored over that produced from fossil sources.
The consequence of these dynamics is that currently many countries are moving towards producing electricity by burning oil or coal, emitting much more carbon dioxide than would be emitted using natural gas and due to gas shortages and price issues. without encouraging the development of renewable sources.

A third consequence deriving from the sanctions on Russia is that the Russians are obliged to burn the methane gas coming from their fields, since it can no longer be sold in Europe and given that, for technical reasons, it is very complex to "turn off the taps" of the gas extracted from the fields.
For this reason, in the past, the contracts between ENI and Gazprom provided for the supply of a constant flow of gas for 20-30 years and mandatory storage procedures in Italy, which at the same time allowed to minimize costs for both parties and ensure reliable energy supplies for Italian companies and families.
Today, unfortunately, the needs of European finance and American geopolitics have prevailed over technical needs, leading Gazprom to burn natural gas that is not sold in Europe.
The result of all this is that CO2 emissions in Europe are increased from the combustion of oil and coal to replace gas, while the CO2 emissions caused by the combustion of Russian gas that cannot be sold after being extracted remain.
If at the Italian level we are governed by incompetents, at the European level we are governed by geniuses of inefficiency.
And we thank the Russians that they burn unsold natural gas, because if they emitted it directly into the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect of methane gas would be 25 times greater than that of CO2 itself. By burning the gas, the potential greenhouse effect is fortunately reduced by 24 times.

Current European policies are therefore loading on European citizens and businesses all the costs deriving from the ideology of reducing CO2 emissions at any cost and all the costs of geopolitical choices, albeit officially dependent on the war in Ukraine, very poorly weighted in their consequences.

Personally I wonder how it would have ended if the 1200 billion euros of extra energy costs that the European Union has already had to suffer in the last 12 months had been put, as a plan of trade agreements, on the table of peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. . They would probably have been a sufficiently convincing argument to silence the guns, find a peaceful solution and avoid tens of thousands of deaths.

The unsustainability of the "less state more market"

The third founding neoliberal principle of the European Union, mentioned above, provides for the reduction of state intervention in the economy, if not as a tool to tax more and more citizens and businesses, and to favor the excessive power of multinationals with rigged rules.
For this objective, the European Union has continued, since its establishment in 1992, to compress the budgets of the states, imposing budgetary rigor and cuts on public investments.
In this way, many countries, especially the less rich and more indebted ones, do not have the possibility to make public and strategic investments to reduce the environmental impact.
The first investment to be made would be controls on polluting production activities.
But the checks cost money. Less public spending = more polluting activities.

In addition to this, for the same reasons, the state does not have the money to implement, for example, solar systems or energy saving measures in public buildings.

The state does not even have the possibility to intervene on the energy market, rationalizing and making it more functional to environmental sustainability, avoiding the phenomena illustrated in the previous paragraphs.
It is quite clear that in order to make energy from renewable sources available for a large country like Italy, a person is needed who is able to make investments beyond the dynamics of the markets, able to carry out strategic interventions to benefit of everyone and the environment and that it has every interest in reducing overall energy consumption, not having to gain on the sale, something that does not happen for private operators who make a profit on the sale of energy.
For example, interventions such as the adaptation of the electricity network, today structured with "big cables" (excuse my colleagues electrical engineers, but it is to make the electrotechnical concept easily understandable) near the few production centers and with "small cables" in proximity of users. In order to feed into the grid and redistribute the energy produced on buildings by photovoltaic systems, it is necessary to install new “bigger” cables near the users-producers, so that the energy is not lost due to the Joule effect.
And we need to create "smart grids", intelligent systems that allow us to mainly coordinate the consumption of electricity in the hours when the sun allows us to produce more, given that electricity is difficult to store in large quantities.
All this has not yet been done in Italy, precisely because the State does not have the financial freedom to do it (in addition to the lack of political will, due to the incompetence of those who govern us).

All this, which would be logical from the point of view of environmental policies, is irreliable by remaining in the rules of the European Union and remaining in market policy.

The non-reformability of the European Union
At this point, my ecological friends, supporters of the European Union, because they are convinced that environmental problems are global and cannot be solved on a national scale, will tell me that they agree with the above considerations, so the only thing it does to do is to pursue a true environmental reform of the European Union, freeing it from the logic of the market.

To these friends I answer with another question:
How could we today bring about a total rewriting of the European treaties by agreeing 27 countries, without anyone vetoing, including those that profit from the current situation of wild financial speculation on the energy market, including those that profit from the coal burning and including those who profit from imports of goods from the world's most polluting countries?
And if we were to succeed, how many years would it take to convince 450 million European citizens?
But above all to convince their rulers, who are always attentive to the interests of economic lobbies and very little to those of citizens.

And I ask again:
How could we concretely discourage the Ursula Von der Leyen of the moment in the event that she pursues policies that prove to be opposed to environmental interests?
Do we have the concrete possibility of voting for the fall of the European Commission to replace it with another one of another political line?

Or is it more realistic to think about reforming this political-economic system by starting, from the bottom, to systematically boycott polluting economic activities and to favor non-polluting economic activities?

The current European Union, beyond the façade proclamations, is in fact a real calamity for environmental issues, as the only real objectives pursued are the financial interests of the markets, offloading the costs and damage caused by the environmental consequences of their activities.
And all those who support this supranational institution are a calamity.
It is not possible to combine environmentalism and ecology.
If they tell us they want to do it, they are just deceiving us, to give themselves a more credible facade while pursuing quite different goals.

We have the possibility of building a different society, on a human and environmental scale, but only on condition that we reject outright mechanisms of the free market, competitiveness and the non-interference of the state in the economy. And, therefore, the European Union.

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The article All environmental damage of the European Union comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/tutti-i-danni-ambientali-dellunione-europea/ on Sun, 25 Sep 2022 05:46:49 +0000.