Hey nonny nonny carbonny

About a year ago, the European Parliament voted on an expansion of the EU’s emission trading system to cover buildings, cars and trucks. At the time, legislators claimed that the price hike in fuels that this expansion would result in would be no more than 45 euro per tonne of CO2.

In an unusual turn of events, climate activists with research titles called them out on it, saying the price hike may be more substantial. It only took those legislators a year to admit the activists were right.

“Basically, everything is possible in terms of prices,” a Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research “expert on carbon markets” told Euractiv in April 2023. The accurate if not very helpful observation was elaborated on with the statement that “It cannot be said that the additional price stability mechanism can actually guarantee that the price will not go beyond this level.”

It’s worth paying attention to the use of negation as a tool for confirming a statement. The tool tends to be used by people who really don’t want to confirm something unpleasant but are compelled to do so by either rudimentary conscience or the urge to hedge against future accusations of lying.

A year later, those carbon market legislators are also admitting things — because it is impossible to keep hiding the ugly fact that the ETS expansion will hurt people financially. Yet again.

One might naively think that ugly facts could prompt a reassessment of the EU’s so-called climate goals but, as usual, this would be very wrong. Rather than a reassessment, the brave climate soldiers of Brussels are planning a central emissions bank. And we all thought central bank digital currencies were bad.