Green tantrums

Europe takes "How dare you" to a new level

In one of my favourite episodes of family favourite “Courage the Cowardly Dog” we see Courage’s owner, Muriel, magically transformed from a 60-something housewife to a toddler. Hilarity ensues, centred on toddlers’ well documented and highly infuriating self-centredness.

It’s all about brain development — at the tender age of two or three, the child’s brain is simply not well developed enough to allow for the possibility that the toddler himself or herself is not the most important thing in the universe and his or her needs and desires are not therefore also the most important thing in the universe.

Normally, as children grow up and their brain grows and becomes capable of increasingly complex connections, the self-centredness is replaced by more mature behaviour. Unless, it seems, you’re involved in the energy transition.

“Our most important trading partner decides things in their own interest. They keep doing this. But they want us to support them on China.”

The above words were recently spoken by Luisa Santos, deputy director-general of BusinessEurope, a body representing various companies across the EU, and reported by the FT. The “most important trading partner” is, of course, the United States.

This is not the first time someone from Europe has complained about the IRA. It’s not the first time I’ve picked on Europe for its complaints (and it won’t be the last). It’s not even the most prominent complaint — that honour, I believe, rightly belongs to Emmanuel Macron’s statement during a visit to Washington, in which he warned the IRA risks fragmenting the West.

“The choices of the past few months, in particular the IRA, are choices that will fragment the west,” the French president said last December. “We need to co-ordinate and re-synchronise our policy agendas.” I know I’ve quoted him before but I like this quote too much.

The Commission appears to be hearing the complaints, so it is proposing more subsidies for the transition in what the FT and Euractiv have called a subsidy race. Both outlets, by the way, have painted that subsidy race in rather bright colours, as something the EU should welcome and enjoy taking part in because it would ultimately advance the climate change agenda that the EU has so wholeheartedly embraced.

Yet the complaints cited above, as well as Commission statements that “We must look for synergies and work to avoid trade barriers in the transatlantic relationship” and that “We will continue to raise concerns about discrimination or local content requirements with our US counterparts,” suggest the enjoyment is not really happening. What a shocking discovery.