The New York Times wrote about EU business leaders’ frustration that they alone participate in a cap-and-trade regime, which puts their companies at a disadvantage internationally:
Since 2005, the trade bloc has operated the world’s only continentwide system that puts a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and that requires major polluters to hold tradable allowances.
But the system has also been the most “costly climate policy program in the world,” according to Jürgen R. Thumann, the president of BusinessEurope, a powerful confederation of industry and employer groups.
Mr. Thumann said European business leaders are desperate to expand the system to the United States and eventually across the globe to reduce the “dangers to our ability to compete internationally.”
Left out of this story is the fact that the EU policy has largely failed at its goal of reducing emissions. As the Heartland Institute reports:
Contrary to claims by many global warming activists, the EU’s command-and-control scheme has resulted in faster-rising CO2 emissions than in the United States, which has largely encouraged free markets and innovation.
Greenhouse gas emissions per unit of gross domestic product fell by 7.5 percent in the United States from 2000 to 2004, the most recent period for which reliable data have been assembled. The European Union reduced its greenhouse gas intensity by only 4.5 percent in the same time period.
I feel bad for business leaders in the EU, but they should be pushing their government to give up this failed experiment, instead of pushing other countries to embrace the same, futile policy.
(hat tip: Chris Horner, author of Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed )