Isn’t Kyoto supposed to reduce emissions?

posted at 5:40 pm on April 2, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Germany has often led the chorus of scolds against the US for its disengagement on Kyoto, but it’s singing a different tune today. Germany has one of the largest nuclear-energy programs in the world, but it wants to move away from this carbon-friendly energy production. It wants the EU to allow it to emit more greenhouses gases in exchange for shutting down its reactors:

German Finance Minister Michael Glos wants the European Union to allow Germany to emit more greenhouse gases in exchange for decommissioning its nuclear power plants.

Glos, a member of the conservative Christian Social Union, outlined his argument in a letter to Germany Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who belongs to the center-left Social Democratic Party. In the letter, which was obtained by the German business daily Handelsblatt, Glos urges Gabriel to press the issue before the European Commission. ….

Germany’s nuclear energy program is the world’s largest, and four of the world’s five top-producing nuclear plants are located in the country. The 17 active plants in Germany are slated to be offline by 2020, but some energy industry leaders are lobbying to change that timetable. They argue that renewable energy technology won’t be advanced enough in 12 years’ time to compensate for the loss in nuclear production.

The Handelsblatt reports that replacing energy generated by nuclear plants with power from dirtier sources, like the coal-fired plants that produce 80 percent of power in Germany, could raise emissions by 150 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.

Let me get this straight. Germany wants the US locked into the strict Kyoto controls as a means to depress our energy production move us to alternative energy sources. Now they admit that even twelve years from now, there won’t be any mass-production energy source that can replace even 20% of the current production they have now. Instead of recognizing the futility of Kyoto, Germany wants to pump out more pollutants instead.

So …. global warming can wait? The sky is not falling? Or does Germany propose that others in the EU cut back their own energy production for the sake of the German economy? Indeed, the Germans want a bigger cut of the overall allowed emissions, due to be negotiated this year.

I thought the idea was to move away from hydrocarbon-based energy production, not increasing it. Why should Germany get rewarded for shutting down its nuclear facilities in favor of coal-based generation? Germany should be expanding their nuclear-power capacity, as should we, as a means to eliminate dependence on petroleum. If the Germans want us to take their sky-is-falling alarmism seriously, they can start like acting as though they believe in it themselves.

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