Saturday
Feb092013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Your funding bonanza for greens
These details of the European Union's budget agreement are pretty damning. As if anyone needed to be reminded of the EU's depravity.
European heads of state and government have agreed to commit at least 20 percent of the entire European Union budget over the next seven years to climate-related spending. The seven-year budget was agreed at 960 billion euros.
All-night negotiations in Brussels produced agreement among EU leaders on budget proposals for the rest of the decade, from 2014-2020.
Reader Comments (36)
Tell you what lads, if that money is going to be spent then we all might as well get on the gravy train abd request funding for that vital conference in Hawaii that you just have to go to eh!!!! :)
Naturally because we all care about the environment the flight will have to be first class and the hotel will have to be five stars.
Mailman
Book me in, Mailman!
(Oh, and don't forget, we will have to take our families - all of them - to ensure that the message is complete.)
And they will use this 20% to claim that climate change is already costing you 20% of EU budget and therefore more needs to be done.
One more reason why we need to get out of the EU now. Not in x years time. Remind me: when were the EU's finances last audited?
Cripes, nearly 200 billion Euros, or 6.5billion p.a. - all those academics must be rubbing their hands with glee, not to mention all those bureaucrats in local authorities who will be funded via the EU back door to advance the EU climate change mantra. How much will go to finance subsidies for ""solutions" dreamt up by green entrepreneurs looking to join the gravy train?
Sometimes I think we must be mad trying to resist this when it seems unstoppable, certainly for the next seven years in Europe and especially when, as per Mailman's comment on the shale gas thread, our own Minister, Ed Davey, seems hell-bent on putting up as many obstacles as possible.
I suddenly feel very depressed this morning.
note how 960B is channeled by the aparachnik without ANY democratic say
It must be a very "progressive" bunch that they get a free ride by the public taxpaidfor media
Unless they intend to cut spending in other areas the tax will have to rise 25% to cover it.
Profits of doom
The European Commission has paid environmental campaigners directly to carry out its political agenda. In 1999, at a cost of about EUR500,000, it set up a new group, the European Environmental Bureau, while also paying both the Friends of the Earth and the WWF EUR250,000 each to set up offices in Brussels. On another occasion, the Climate Action Network was given EUR140,000 for "capacity building". In fact, the Commission funnels about EUR3 million (£2.48 million) a year to environmental groups that it favours.
But that's a drop of oil in the Gulf of Mexico compared with the amounts that private foundations in the US are estimated to provide each year to environmental causes. The sums involved run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. One green organisation - the Tides Foundation - had net assets of $142,007,356 in 2006. Local green groups may rely on "flapjack and organic-soap fundraising mornings" - but real campaigns are funded by a very different and largely invisible mix.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=412726&c=2
I'm not so sure this is entirely bad news. At least the figures are now out in the open where they are easier to shoot at.
Ah, the United States of Europe...
http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-eu-friends-of-democracy-nigel.html
There will more of this: With renewable energy for settlement autonomy
This is actually my wife's village. They had a equestrian show ground, and so applied for the funds to convert. You cannot blame them because of the GBP 1.8 million, over 2/3rds was "no need to ever pay back" subsidy.
The total cost of the implementation of the Újszilvás photovoltaic project is almost HUF 620 million, of which the Hungarian state and the European Union provided HUF 432 million as non-repayable subsidy. The annual electricity output of the 1 632 solar panels mounted on 68 rotating systems exceeds the quantity of 630 000 kWh. The investment cuts the emission of gases with greenhouse effect by 450 tonnes per year.
They also have some wonderful new bikes paths, on roads with barely any traffic. One of them is a few kms long and probably has 10-20 bikes a day (being generous), The other one the village the locals have had to be forced to use by signs, yet of course people park their cars on it.
You cannot blame the local Mayors of these places. Just a small window on Europe.
I expect little change in what the money does get spent on given how vague a topic climate-related spending sounds.
20% of 960bn is 192bn euros. That is £27bn euros per year. That could provide quite a lot of health care or disease eradication or.... Now you don't commit to spending that amount of money unless you have really good evidence that the benefit outweighs the harm by not spending it or any other benefits that the money could provide. I think I'll write to my MP and ask him to get me the evidence that the EU has that this is the most beneficial way of spending 192bn euros and to provide me with the cost/benefit analysis.
I think that is far larger than what Big Oil is said to spend on "denial". In fact I think that is more than Big Oil CAN spend. Now I see the draw to support the climate warming scheme. Hell, I might even lie about the science to get a piece of that and I doubt seriously I'd be alone.
Page 6 of the Conclusions says
But looking at annex 1 on page 46 there is no separate category for climate. Of the EUR 960bn budget for 2014-2020
1. Smart and Inclusive Growth = 451 (47%)
2. Sustainable Growth: Natural Resources = 373 (39%)
The rest (Categories 3-6) = 136 (14%)
The EU no longer identifies agriculture as by far the biggest component. That would mean some obvious questions about why they spend so much on an increasingly minor component of EU output. Instead the spin doctors hide it in "growth" categories. The climate commitment is then broadly defined, to include subsidizing bio-fuels and paying farmers to grow trees instead of farming their land. The vast majority of the money will do nothing to "save the planet". It is the environmentalists who should be crying foul here. Along with anybody who thinks claiming 86% of the budget is on "growth" is a highly misleading claim.
This unprecedented waste of resources will make everyone waste unprecedented time and resources to figure out how to get a slice of it - green industry, non-green industry, financial business, NGOs, consultants, non EU countries, farmers, media, universities, politicians, criminals.
Thats their holidays booked and sorted then.
Bish
this is OT but relates to financing madness
I dont watch the telly very often but I have just seen the most nauseating ad ever by Coca Cola. Some schmaltzy crap about saving polar bears. Unf*&kingbelievable! Never having another Coke product in my life!
Another waste of vast sums of other peoples money. The EU is spending its way into irrelevance at a rate never before seen in human history. You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.
"Along with anybody who thinks claiming 86% of the budget is on "growth" is a highly misleading claim." --ManicBeancounter
They mean growth of their political power.
Feb 9, at 10:26 AM | Phillip Bratby
Remind me: when were the EU's finances last audited?
Plenty of auditing Phillip, no doubt handsomely rewarded. They have just never been acceptable enough to be signed off (but you knew that!) So a lot more money being spent to no purpose.
Yeah, ah, but, it could have been so much worse. I'd just like to thank Mr Cam moron for saving so much of our countries taxes. No doubt diverting it in the future through another channel to end up in Brussels anyway, with probably a little less fanfare.
"All-night negotiations in Brussels produced agreement among EU leaders on budget proposals"
How comforting: people dealing with a trillion-euro budget are doing it in the middle of the night.
Feb 9, at 10:26 AM | Phillip Bratby
Remind me: when were the EU's finances last audited?
Plenty of auditing Phillip, no doubt handsomely rewarded. They have just never been acceptable enough to be signed off (but you knew that!) So a lot more money being spent to no purpose.
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I think the accounts were last signed off by the auditors about 17 years ago. Roughly when global-warming entered it's current "pause".
Let's not be too harsh on the EU though; They don't lose ~50% of their budget like IPCC carbon-cycle models do every year.
I also expect the EU "double-counts" some of that 20% as being spent on other things like, say, agriculture.
Insert joke here [...] about the IPCC models double-counting Infrared fluxes in the atmosphere.
I am french and I am affraid seeing ECO-FASCISTS GRENNIES for démocraty and liberty. The greenies éco-fascists have power and in Germany layers against citoyens is abnormal. I hope that environmental groups no cannent trouble quietude of France or others peoples'européan. See the "écocide loi "new for 2013 ! Money is more for Greenpeace, WWF and écolo-politique. The deal trade-end-cap Carbone taxs idéas of Al Gore and bancksters, Georges Soros, Clinton, Rockffeller, UE and ONU, with USAID, isent responsables. Market CO2 = $$$$$ billiards ! Paul Ehrlich and John Holden friends guilty of "stérilizations" in Peru : Natives woomen "Quéchuah 400 000 ! Is a crim against Humanity ! Ecocide is exagerating and World gouvrnance is possibility Sorry. (my english is bad sorry !)
http://www.eradicatingecocide.com/
Gamecock
You didn't imagine Eurocrats abide by their own directives, did you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive
Untold tens of billions (perhaps hundreds of billions) have already been squandered on climate hysteria in countries trapped in the EUSSR, probably most of all by Germany, over a period since 1998 during which satellites have failed to detect even the merest hint of climate change. If anything the undoctored raw data show temperatures starting to decline. Worse still for eco-fascists, that has been in spite of an increase in the demonised plant food trace gas CO2 in the atmosphere over that same period. So instead of seeking to find an accommodation of some kind with the real world, the uncalled for hysterics must be ramped up a few notches higher. Quelle surprise. Funny thing, I always used to think that signs of a profound disconnect from reality were an indication of mental illness.
To think we are going to spend 200 billion in the coming 6 years on "climate action" while since 2011 China alone is using HALF the world's coal, makes me cry.
I live in Brussels and work as a consultant in the environmental sector - so that sounds good to me!
Ahh, good work Cameron on holding them to account on the budget. Next on the agenda - the termination of Cameron's employment and the election of UKIP
JoNova has an interesting 'take' on this story.
http://tinyurl.com/bemdrf5
I am an American mechanical engineer. At what point does European engineering and manufacturing become uncompetitive with America and Asia due to your obsession with "green"?
The EU désinstrualise and the greens are in power in all countries, therefore green marketing, is a new form of " new capitalism " but restricted has those who have some silver and the others manage as they can. If they reduce normal energies, the poor people will pay.
Feb 10, 2013 at 6:18 AM | gregole
Gregole,
It already has. Industry leaders have been warning European governments of the consequences of high energy costs for some time. Some heavy users such as Tata have already closed/mothballed sites. Our elected representatives are a bunch of cowards who don't have the balls to stand up to the environment lobby. They will eventually reap the whirlwind and realise that the rabid greens are actually just a minority who happen to be shouting the loudest at the moment. The question is, how much damage will have been done before they see sense?
I read that some in the EU are sniffily referring to the recent outbreak (almost) of common sense on the EU budget as 'populist'...
Heaven forbid that the citizens of the EU should have any input whatsoever to the running of it..!
Maybe already. See http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/global-outlook-rosy-europe%27s-outlook-grim.aspx
But I think the USA's self-inflicted problems are at least as serious as the EU's. The USA (thanks to Mr Nixon) decided life was easier borrowing (or printing) money and buying things from overseas than making them.
Some US companies made their own contribution to the death of US manufacturing - take a look at "A Savage Factory: An Eyewitness Account of the Auto Industry's Self-Destruction" by Robert J. Dewar.