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March 21, 2012

India Joins China in EU Green Fight

European greens took a hit this month when China retaliated against the EU’s carbon trading scheme for airlines by freezing purchases from several European aerospace companies. Now India is piling on. New Delhi is set to force Indian airlines to withhold carbon emissions details with the EU and to forbid the purchase of any of the carbon offset credits demanded by the new regulations, Reuters reports. In case the point wasn’t clear, one Indian official claimed that New Delhi was willing to follow China’s lead in putting Airbus orders on hold if the EU doesn’t back down. European companies like Airbus, which currently holds a 73 percent share of India’s commercial plane market, would take a serious hit if India made good on these claims.

With each passing day, Europe seems to be moving closer and closer to an all-out trade war. The carbon policy was an ill-considered boondoggle to begin with, but if it leads to a major trade war, it could be truly disastrous. China and India are two of the largest and fastest-growing markets in the world, whose combined populations total more than a third of the world population. The last thing a faltering Europe needs right now is a trade war with rising Asian powers, yet that’s exactly where their commitment to unworkable green policies is taking them.

Posted in Asia, China, Energy & Environment, Europe, India, Quick Takes
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  • http://thepencilofnature.net Lorenz Gude

    Brad DeLong of UC Berkeley is the doyen of world GDP per capita and has estimates going back to the dawn of the human race. http://bit.ly/kA3ERY Scroll way down. Whereas GDP has been rising steadily throughout history GDP per capita only got off the bottom since 1750 – the Industrial Revolution. It has doubled every 50 years since then with one exception – it has quadruped between 1950 and 2000. One lesson is that it seems to be human nature to choose to spread whatever wealth they can generate among the maximum number of kids. So I see this little fracas as the Eurogreens standing in the middle of the tracks scolding the freight train of half the world’s population.

  • Kenny

    The Euro-trash can’t seem to win for losing.

  • Bart Hall (Kansas, USA)

    Europe has long been notorious for non-tariff trade barriers. You’d be amazed at the rules and procedures they put in place to prevent the entry of American (or Canadian) organic processed food products. They want the raw materials, but remain colonialists when it comes to processing and value-added.

    Every time you’d actually meet the standard they’d change it so you couldn’t do. The “green” thing is no different. It has always been about preventing the rise of real competition.

  • vanderleun

    Let’s see. One side wants the world to pay money for a gas or for limiting a gas. The other side declines to pay money for airliners. It’s easy to see how this will end. Tears at bedtime for the greens.

  • elisa

    Awfully colonialist of the Greens to try to control, dictate terms and extract monies from these rising economies.

    Almost seems like Euro Greens are trying to impede and obstruct the path to broad prosperity of countries like India and China.

    Can’t imagine why China or India might ever be sympathetic to this Utopian project with nothing to offer their countries or peoples.

  • http://inthisdimension.com alex scipio

    A) It is foolish to worry about the future of a continent whose subjects do not want a future and are having no offspring to populate one; if THEY don’t care about their future, why should we? It’s called “Natural Selection”.

    B) If this silliness of ‘adults’ still actually believing in AGW causes China and India to stop buying European products, the European economy will take a huge hit due to European decisions. And it will slow rather significantly. And the Americaqn economy will improve. This, too, is called “Natural Selection”. If the citizens and subjects of European nations want this, they should have at it. If they don’t, it is up to them to reset their governments back to the democracy they have abandoned at the behest of those paying attention, which seem somehow not to include the voters.

    C) Regardless of what Europeans choose, it seems more than likely bloodshed will, sooner rather than later, result. Going to war is what Europeans do, and if their economies crash, they more than likely will again. The ONLY 45-yr period of peace in Europe since 1648 (Westphalia) was when these nations were sandwiched between NATO and the Warsaw pact. Once the Pact disintegrated, they started – again – killing each other. It’s what they do. America needs to be smart enough NOT to get involved this time.

    D) The bloody history of the 20th Century is one of America getting in the way of natural selection at the State level. We need to learn to let it run its course.