Transterrestrial Musings

It took an economic disaster for them to reduce their carbon output:

But the data shows that even though EU economic weakness and US natural gas are responsible for significant drops in emissions in the developed world, developing countries, led by China, continue to drive the global total higher.

This underscores the disconnect between green policies and green results. The US hasn’t checked off many items on the green wish list for domestic legislation; Europe has. But it turns out that the introduction of the euro and the subsequent economic disaster had more to do with European emissions drops than Kyoto or the shambolic carbon-trading program.

The usual suspects are headed to Bonn next week for another forlorn attempt to carve out a meaningful global climate treaty. Meanwhile in the real world, the challenge is to find a way for developing countries to continue rapid growth without driving greenhouse gasses and other pollutants to potentially dangerous levels.

That’s assuming that the high levels of the “other” “pollutants” is more dangerous than slow economic growth, of course. And meanwhile, it turns out that the US has twice as much oil, and three times as much gas as we thought. And “peak oil” continues to recede into the future, to the tears of the Malthusians. Which are delicious.

[Update a while later]

Gazprom (and the Russian economy) are in trouble, too:

The US has begun exporting gas to Europe, and has also ramped up coal exports by more than 250 percent since 2005. The net result has been to knock Gazprom back on its heels. The WSJ reports that the negotiations with Bulgaria were heated, with Gazprom’s negotiators shouting in frustration on several occasions.

In public statements, however, the Russian company remains defiant (and perhaps in a state of denial) about the implications of the shale gas boom…

Well, that’s one tactic, I guess. Not one I’d recommend, though.

The White House knew that Fisker was headed for a fall, and gave them our money anyway.

Hey, got to keep those campaign donations coming in.

The good news:

German taxpayers have poured $130 billion into subsidizing solar panels, but ultimately by the end of the century, this will postpone global warming by a trivial 37 hours. The electric car is even less efficient. Its production consumes a vast amount of fossil fuels, and mostly it utilizes fossil fuel electricity to be recharged. Even if the U.S. did reach the lofty goal of 1 million electric cars by 2015 — costing taxpayers more than $7.5 billion — global warming would be postponed by only 60 minutes.

These beguiling policies cost a fortune but make little difference to the environment because the technologies are still not ready. That’s why we need to invest more in long-term research and development for green innovation. This would be much cheaper than current environmental policies and would end up doing more good for the climate.

But it wouldn’t pay off political cronies.

As he notes, it’s time to start having sensible, not economically stupid environmental policies.

[Update late morning]

The EU carbon market continues to collapse.

Good.