Europe’s climate-change policies are at risk of failure because its governments have ignored the costs they impose on voting blocs that urban elites don’t understand or have contempt for.
The perceptive newsletter EuroIntelligence, edited by former Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Münchau, says, “One of the mistakes policy analysts keep on repeating with growing enthusiasm is to view the world” from an urban perspective that ignores the interests of farmers, rural homeowners, and commuters.
Germany’s left-leaning government promotes cheaper public transit, green cities, and bicycle lanes for its voters while curbing pesticide use, fossil-fuel-powered cars, and gas stoves. Its popularity has plummeted in the polls. The Dutch government just fell after a new party of farmers and small-business owners opposed to onerous climate-change regulations placed first in local elections.
Münchau says that since Brexit, the revolt of non-urban voters has become “the single most important issue to be tackled in the entire climate-change agenda, for otherwise we would expect every single one of (its) environmental targets, like the EU’s 2035 phase out of fuel-driven cars, and the 2050 net zero target, to succumb to political resistance.”
As you see Europe slowly retreat from the preposterously ambitious green agenda in coming years, remember that much of it will stem from a middle-class revolt against that way of life.