Germany: the new dirty man of Europe:

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/12/greenpolitics-poznan

Germany: the new dirty man of Europe

The new emissions agreement is a disaster. Angela Merkel is prepared to go green only when it doesn't hurt big business

George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 December 2008 13.50 GMT

So much for the Europeans leading the way on climate change. Even as our governments claim they want to drag the world into an effective climate agreement in Poznan, they have just pulled Europe out of one in Brussels.

The agreement they have just reached is a disaster. The 20% carbon cut they promise by 2020 falls miles short of what's needed, and they'll be able to buy most of it from abroad anyway. All this means, in a world which has to eliminate most of its carbon pollution, is that other countries, which have sold their easiest reductions to us, will then find it harder to make emissions cuts of their own. It's carbon colonialism, in which Europe picks the low-hanging fruit in developing countries, leaving them with much tougher choices later on.

European governments have also junked their commitment to turn the Emissions Trading Scheme into a fair and effective way of cutting pollution. At the moment over 90% of the licences to produce CO2 are given away to the biggest polluters. Some of these companies have made billions by passing on the nominal costs of the licences to their customers, even though they didn't have to pay anything themselves. It's a perfect inversion of environmental justice: under the ETS, the polluter gets paid. Those who have produced the most pollution get the biggest rewards.

The EU promised that by 2020 all emissions permits would be sold at auction to the polluting industries. Now the heads of government have broken that promise: in 2020, big industrial polluters will have to pay for only 70% of the harm they do. Worse, companies will receive all their allowances for nothing if they can show that they're threatened by competition from firms outside the EU. As it's hard to think of any European sector which doesn't have competitors abroad, this concession appears to sink the sale of permits to industrial polluters altogether.

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[OneBlueSky]

1. "prepared to go green only when it doesn't hurt big business" . . .

rather oxymoronic, given that there's no way to "go green" without hurting big business . . .

what's it called when profits are put ahead of the survival of the planet? . . . oh, yeah -- stupidity . . .

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. no way to "go green" without hurting big business

This does not necessarily follow.

One example: One of the most basic ways for "big business" to be more profitable is to cut waste/increase efficiency. By coincidence this is also one of the most basic ways to "go green."