The lights are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. Energy costs are de-industrializing one former economic power after another. This Telegraph article is mostly about the U.K.:
Sir Jim Ratcliffe has warned that Britain’s multibillion-pound chemicals industry is facing “extinction” because of soaring energy costs and the shift to net zero.
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Sir Jim, the co-owner of Manchester United and one of Britain’s richest men, said: “De-industrialising Britain achieves nothing for the environment. It merely shifts production and emissions elsewhere.
Largely to China, which I believe now emits more CO2 than the U.S., the E.U. and India, combined.
“The UK, and particularly the North, needs high quality manufacturing and the associated manufacturing jobs. We are witnessing the extinction of one of our major industries as chemical manufacture has the life squeezed out of it.”
Ten large chemical plants have closed in Britain in the last five years. But most of the rest of Europe, strangling in the death grip of the Greens, isn’t doing much better. This chart shows industrial energy costs in a number of countries, beginning in 2004. Note that the U.S. is by far the most affordable:
The only country where energy costs are declining is Italy, but of course they are far too high. There is no way any country can manufacture products competitively if it has uncompetitive energy costs. This is blindingly obvious, and yet liberals in most countries either haven’t gotten the message, or are deliberately impoverishing their own citizens. I think the latter is more plausible.
Finally, as badly as environmentalists have hurt the U.S. economy, our situation looks good from across the pond:
In December, Brian Gilvary, Ineos Energy’s chairman, warned the UK was too “negative” for future energy investments.
Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Gilvary said the country’s “current tax regime, its over-regulation and the negative political attitude towards oil and gas are barriers that would deter any investor now.
“The US, by contrast, has long been an attractive market for energy investment – with a stable fiscal regime, supported by governments that understand the importance of affordable energy security.”
That gives the Biden administration way too much credit, but it certainly is true of the incoming Trump administration. De-industrialization may come to the U.S., but not yet.
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