by Mish Shedlock, Mish Talk:
The German constitutional court is forcing Green reality in Germany. In the US Biden hasn’t and won’t give up what has proven to be Green nonsense.
Green Fiscal Truth
Germany’s government is on the verge of collapse because it tried to hide the cost of its Green policy. The Wall Street Journal discusses the situation in Germany Faces the Green Fiscal Truth
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
The country’s highest constitutional court ruled this month that one of the coalition government’s main gimmicks for funding green projects violates Germany’s version of a balanced-budged amendment.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s administration had planned to devote €60 billion in emergency borrowing approved (but not spent) during the pandemic to subsidize green projects such as battery production and decarbonized steel. The point was to conceal the true cost of these plans by averting new legislative votes. The judges saw through this when they ruled that emergency authorization to borrow in the past can’t be re-purposed for entirely different projects in the future.
This fiscal moment of truth has exploded into a political crisis in Berlin. It’s becoming clearer that the unwieldy coalition of Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), the eco-leftist Greens and the free-market Free Democrats (FDP) of Finance Minister Christian Lindner can’t agree on any other method of funding green priorities.
Traffic Light Negotiations Collapse
The term “Traffic Light Coalition” is based on the colors of the party flags, red SPD, yellow FDP, and green Greens.
Negotiations have collapsed because the Greens will not give up untenable climate goals, and neither SPD nor FDP wants to increase taxes or cut other priorities.
Biden’s Expensive Fantasy
In the best takedown ever of Biden’s Green delusion, please consider The Biden Administration’s EV Goals Are an Expensive Fantasy
While EV proponents try to claim that EVs will soon be cheaper than gasoline vehicles, our new research demonstrates that EVs benefitted from hidden subsidies that total nearly $50,000 per EV.
Who is footing that bill? Gasoline vehicle owners, taxpayers, and utility ratepayers are.
For gasoline vehicles, the price you see at the gas pump covers the cost of extracting, refining, and transporting the gasoline, but the same cannot be said for the cost of charging an EV. EVs require new charging infrastructure, and their large power draw increases the strain on electricity infrastructure. As our research highlights, a typical EV charging overnight at home consumes as much power as several homes, and an EV charging at a fast-charging station in 30 minutes consumes as much power as a small to medium-sized grocery store. A few extra EVs in the neighborhoods are manageable, but widespread EV adoption will require significant and expensive grid upgrades.
President Biden’s expensive green pipe dream is not without irony.
While Biden administration claims that these draconian EV mandates are necessary to combat climate change, the widespread adoption of EVs in the developed world would have negligible effects on global emissions and climate. For starters, if EVs are able to displace all the carbon emissions from U.S. passenger cars, that would only cut out 20% of U.S. carbon emissions. Our calculations show that even if the U.S. eliminated all of its carbon emissions by 2050, the effect on global temperatures in 2100 would only be 0.08 degrees Celsius.
But EVs will not even get us that far because they don’t cut carbon emissions much—if at all—compared to gasoline vehicles. As pointed out by Mark Mills in a recent op-ed in Real Clear Energy, it is nearly impossible to measure an individual EV’s emissions. While driving an EV itself does not directly produce emissions, the emissions to generate the electricity used to charge EVs vary widely depending on location.
EV batteries also require fossil fuels to produce, and many components of EV batteries are made in emissions-heavy China. The emissions resulting from mining and processing the materials used in the battery are largely unreported, and the emissions during EV production could potentially be enough to wipe out the emissions saved by not combusting gasoline.
I have discussed many of these points before but the above article discusses them in details with links to studies.
Things are coming to a head in Germany, the EU in general, because they have debt brakes. The US has no spending constraints whatsoever.
To spend, the Eurozone governments have to raise taxes or prioritize where to spend money.
In the US, the inevitable result is Congress agrees to spend more on this in return for agreement to spend more on that. Typically its more money for military spending in return for more social spending.
