What Carbon Blindness Hath Wrought

SPIEGEL: Wind Turbines in Europe Do Nothing for Emissions-Reduction Goals

To be uncharitable: SPIEGEL continues its anti-wind campaign and displays the stupidity of our current discourse on climate change policy, which is staring itself blind on the evil of carbon dioxide emissions instead of looking at the necessity and opportunity of transformation to a sustainable economy.

One has to read between the lines to get at the truth, at the end of the report:

There were discussions about such a system under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who governed in a coalition with the Green Party. At the time, Minister of the Environment Jürgen Tritten wanted to exclude the amounts of energy covered by the EEG from the calculations used in the carbon-trading scheme. Instead, the industry-friendly regulations currently in effect were pushed through. Major energy corporations, which had claimed as many CO2 certificates as they possibly could, lobbied heavily.

So why has nothing changed? According to experts, one reason has to do with technical problems. In the course of an ongoing trading period, they claim, adjusting the volume of CO2 certificates is no easy task.

Still, an SPD insider provides yet another explanation: "Politicians just have to resign themselves to certain things." As he sees it, if the state went back to the companies and took away the certificates they had been allotted, the result would be an uproar. "What do you think the companies would say to us?" he asks. "As a politician, there are certain storms that you simply can't weather."

In other words, this is not about the inefficacy of wind power as a tool against climate change, but about the inability of the German government to make its utilities pay for their share of greenhouse gas reductions. This situation will be exacerbated in the next phase of emissions trading, which is going to be one big present to the energy sector, paid out of your pocket.