Following the COVID-19 quarantines, cutting CO2 emissions has re-emerged as the EU’s central legitimising objective.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has rebranded itself as a climate bank, such that its yearly €60-70 billion investments in infrastructure will need to be justified in terms of ecological impact, and alignment with the “EU Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities” has been set up as the principle future criterion for receiving liquidity. This in an economy subject to inflation, where Commission funds are likely to gain importance for public and private entities (relative to the latter’s contributors or customers).
This is significant. Social inclusion, wariness of the Kremlin, digitalization, fear of the American Trumpian Right, and any number of causes routinely invoked by the political class do not have the staying power or widespread applicability of pursuing carbon neutrality.
The EU Taxonomy is roughly the EU’s version of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the investment world’s ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) mandates. These were always very broad and up to wide divergence in terms of formulation of measurable indices, however, and with BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink stating that the term ‘ESG’ should be phased out, it makes sense for the EU to hone in on a more narrow criterion.
Unfortunately, the EU Taxonomy represents a further turn of the screw in environmentalism’s recent history of functioning as a palliative for an ongoing legitimacy crisis, cover for policy failures, and (possible) investment racket.
How carbon neutrality policies function
We may address these in order:
1) Perpetual crisis, legitimising the political order and its actions as well as, theoretically, justifying extraordinary measures, should these be required.
This is highlighted by future-dated bans, like the EU’s ban on internal combustion engines by 2035. Fitting half of all streets and every highway with recharging stations and securing renewable-generated electricity for a continent’s worth of electric cars obviously comes first, but the ban provides some symbolic élan and a basis on which to act.
2) Justification for the fall of living standards and rising costs (including on account of inflation) with arguments to the effect that more expensive energy, for example, is morally better than cheap energy.
Even if perverse dynamics and mistaken policies unrelated to the ecological crisis are causing a rise in energy prices, a moralistic account is ready to be deployed against struggling working and middle classes watching their purchasing power contract.
The natural counter-force to seeking legitimacy in this way is that, as the political establishment makes environmental considerations primary, it risks allowing other factors to degrade, even to the point of endangering the EU’s ability to pursue its ‘green’ goals. De-emphasizing the impact of ‘green’ policies on living standards, for example, could lead to political backlash and a reversal of environmental policies.
The way in which the EU Taxonomy subsumes the ‘S’ (for ‘Social’) in ‘ESG’ to the ‘E’ (‘Environmental’) highlights this.
Its limitations aside, Tesla’s Master Plan Part 3 provides a good counter to the idea that developed countries should sacrifice living standards (and developing countries should sacrifice their hope of achieving higher ones) by making the case for the cost-saving benefits of transitioning to renewable energy. (In fact, Master Plan Part 3 may be one of the few reports that provides a plausible synergy between ‘E’ and ‘S,’ ‘Environmental’ and ‘Social’ benefits).
We may also suggest that the EU tends to fund businesses and governments applying CO2-reducing solutions to the detriment of the far more impactful, upstream area of technological innovation (for example, in the all-important area of battery storage efficiency).
3) Rationale for funnelling public money into selected ‘green’ companies and artificially pumping their stock, so to speak. As I’ve written elsewhere:
We are used to thinking of prevailing power structures as ideologically committed … but this risks obfuscating the degree to which global initiatives like the 2030 Agenda represent an economic opportunity to create, promote, and establish a priori dominance over new industries.
The danger is also one of concentrating money in the hands of those entities best able to conform to (and articulate their conformity to) a specific criterion and bureaucratic process. To some degree, however, when a leap forward in the development or adoption of some technology is being sought, it’s unavoidable that some large player(s) will emerge to dominate the sector initially.
But even in terms of allocating financial resources to those entities that would essentially serve these larger players as clients, the application process for EU funds has been and is being made complicated beyond the capacities of non-specialized actors. This risks inflating the consultancy sector. In addition, it risks making the European economy vulnerable to sizeable shocks to the labour market, with consultancy jobs being replaced by AI (which is able to conform a project idea to a given funding criterion).
In any case, focusing environmental considerations almost exclusively on CO2 emissions risks allowing other elements of ecological degradation (reduction of biodiversity, soil degradation, and production of microplastics) to be left aside. It also risks unpreparedness: however much aggravated by human actions (within some margin), there is evidence for past drastic shifts in the earth’s climate, and if such is going to happen again, it would require specialised infrastructure and would not ultimately be avoided by reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
What we are calling the current EU trajectory’s central legitimising narrative can be interrupted by an alternative environmentalism. In fact, there is a sense in which either a quasi-primitivist de-growth paradigm or Tesla-like futurism would make more sense than the EU’s approach, even according to its own premises, namely that climactic collapse is impending and that state investment in technological implementation can fix things.
To wrap up, carbon neutrality is currently the centre of the EU’s self-legitimation, and political critics of the Union should approach it as such. The above has provided a few vectors for criticism, which an alternative environmentalism could build on.
