Beautiful Thoughts
Globally, Europe is currently leaving the smallest carbon footprint, about 12 percent, although it creates about a quarter of global GDP. Nevertheless, it is establishing the most ambitious targets in reducing it. The biggest polluters, namely America, Asia and Africa in the future, have long ignored these environmental requirements.
It is thus obvious that if the world wants to tackle the impact of human existence, then Europe may well be a pioneer of ideas, an indicator of technological solutions for others, but its impact on the global burden reduction will be getting smaller and ridiculous. It will be less ridiculous for ordinary Europeans, entrepreneurs and countries if we mindlessly return to determining unearthly and self-destructive objectives, like the EU plans regarding the climate package (40-percent reduction in emissions compared to 1990, a 27-percent share of renewable sources in energy production, a 25-percent increase in energy efficiency). Its adoption in this form will drive away steel, cement, and rubber producers, refineries, iron producers, and many other entrepreneurs from Europe, to where business conditions and emission requirements will not exist or only be mild. In this case, we will lose jobs, and also independence, as we will not be able to produce iron, cement, tires, naphtha and plastics here at home, but only import them.
Sure I can be challenged that my thinking is old-fashioned and I don’t want this type of industry to finish in the EU and Slovakia. Equally, however, it’s possible to answer that Europeans will not stop buying cars, building houses and roads made of concrete and iron, or buying mobile phones, because otherwise we will just move the production of those goods abroad, and the global problem will not be solved. In addition, I see the establishment of the official limiting targets as unnecessary, because we entrepreneurs see for ourselves that we must reduce our energy intensity of production and so on, since we are trading on the global field. Of course, if substantially larger polluters in the world also adopt the same objectives, it is good not to break up the team, because they will be subject to the same rules of the game. At the same time I understand that a natural contradiction in the form of remorse on the part of China and Indonesia may arise: you Europeans and Americans have become rich in the past by using the energy and resources of the Earth – so why should we not be entitled to it? But this is suitable for a different, longer debate about whether today, and under the condition of the environment and the population's health, it is still wise to think like in the past.
