By: Jože Biščak
The ice in the Arctic Ocean is truly unruly, disobedient, defying authority. It stubbornly refuses to vanish, even though in the past 50 years it has been declared doomed at least ten times.
It is not just the Arctic Ocean. The cataclysmic predictions of climate alarmists have proven false elsewhere too: from claims that people in cities would need oxygen masks, to the extinction of marine life, to rising seas that would flood coastal regions. The culprit is always said to be humanity, still using fossil fuels. It would be laughable if these forecasts were not made by scientists, based on models, who have turned out to be worse prophets of the future than fortune-tellers and astrologers. And it is not funny because politicians believed them; they have caused, and continue to cause, great harm that ordinary people feel in declining prosperity. And if something is bad, that does not mean it cannot get worse.
Last week EU environment ministers confirmed the goal of a 90% reduction in emissions by 2040. Of course, this will be very costly, since projects to cut carbon dioxide emissions must be financed. At the same time, starting January 1, 2027, a new emissions accounting system will take effect in the EU. Households will feel this most directly, as heating and driving will become much more expensive (projections suggest a litre of gasoline could rise by 60 cents). This will lower living standards, increase unemployment, bankrupt companies, and push industry out of the EU to more hospitable countries.
But the European Commission under President Ursula von der Leyen has a ‘solution’ – the so‑called Social Climate Fund, set to launch next January with €65 billions of taxpayers’ money. This is truly perverse. Brussels, through its climate hysteria, drives deindustrialisation and impoverishes member states, and now seeks to cushion the very decline in prosperity it itself caused. Eurocrats thus appear as deranged arsonists who first set the fire, then help put it out. Their actions are neither accidental nor the result of ignorance or shortsightedness, but deliberate and intentional, following a leftist agenda to destroy European civilisation. The consequences of this environmental madness are well known to the Commission, as shown by documents revealed last week by the portal Nius.
The documents make clear that certain sectors will lose many jobs, the labour market will be overcrowded, new vulnerable groups will be pushed into poverty, and some will struggle to find new employment. Yet von der Leyen dared to say that all this represents “opportunities as well as challenges for employment and households,” and that they will ensure the green transition is fair. Of course, Brussels’ overpaid officials will not feel the impact, since taxpayers will foot the bill for the catastrophe, they themselves created. As Nius wrote of the leaked documents: they demonstrate the “criminal recklessness of these unelected and illegitimate bureaucrats, who with outrageous arrogance dare to destroy entire industries and the livelihoods of millions in the name of a non‑existent climate crisis.”
The madness of the new EU environmental regulations was well explained by Christian Kullman, CEO of chemical company Evonik: “We have top‑tier technology that is internationally fully competitive. Then Brussels adds a CO2 tax, and it is no longer competitive. The proceeds are then used to finance a social fund to compensate people for losing their jobs. This is simply bizarre.” It is not only bizarre, it is criminal behaviour, for which those who devised it should end up behind bars (first among them von der Leyen). For this is the deliberate destruction of wealth that Europe has accumulated over generations.