With its woeful trade deal, Europe prostrated itself before the president. We need a leader who will tell him where to shove it, says Guardian Europe columnist Alexander Hurst
Isn’t part/most of this that Europe simply exported the carbon-intensive stuff abroad?
Partially true however it is also worth pointing out that industry in the EU produces significantly fewer emissions than the same industries outside the EU. The costs that come with that are largely why industry is outsourcing elsewhere, there is no coordinated effort by some shadow council to export the carbon-intensive industries abroad, just not fully thought out economic policy (producing in the EU causes costs for emissions, importing doesn’t/is easier to fudge, the incentive created by this imbalance is easy to see).
Even when you account for offshore emissions the EU’s carbon footprint has been going down since around 2010.
That doesn’t negate the existence of neocolonialism and it’s nowhere near enough to fix climate change, but the EU’s population is roughly constant, both it and China are reducing their manufacturing emissions, and economic growth in the EU has been slow and services-based. Like where would a supposed increase in emissions even come from? There’s nowhere to go but down.
I know good news feel unbelievable these days but this is one of them. Unfortunately this factually incorrect belief that emitting any less carbon is impossible without serious impact to QoL is why the european ecologist movements have lost a lot of steam in the past few years which is absolutely maddening because it’s empirically incorrect.
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Partially true however it is also worth pointing out that industry in the EU produces significantly fewer emissions than the same industries outside the EU. The costs that come with that are largely why industry is outsourcing elsewhere, there is no coordinated effort by some shadow council to export the carbon-intensive industries abroad, just not fully thought out economic policy (producing in the EU causes costs for emissions, importing doesn’t/is easier to fudge, the incentive created by this imbalance is easy to see).
Even when you account for offshore emissions the EU’s carbon footprint has been going down since around 2010.
That doesn’t negate the existence of neocolonialism and it’s nowhere near enough to fix climate change, but the EU’s population is roughly constant, both it and China are reducing their manufacturing emissions, and economic growth in the EU has been slow and services-based. Like where would a supposed increase in emissions even come from? There’s nowhere to go but down.
I know good news feel unbelievable these days but this is one of them. Unfortunately this factually incorrect belief that emitting any less carbon is impossible without serious impact to QoL is why the european ecologist movements have lost a lot of steam in the past few years which is absolutely maddening because it’s empirically incorrect.
nah, they say “What’s up, Dad?”