Some policies to fight climate change have done more harm than good

From Matt Ridley. Excerpts:

"Far from ushering in a brave new world of cleaner air, the technologies adopted by European car makers, driven by policy makers in Brussels, have been killing thousands of people a year through an obsession with lowering emissions of harmless carbon dioxide, at the expense of creating higher emissions of harmful nitrogen oxides."

"The great European switch to diesel engines was a top-down decision as a direct result of exaggerated fears about climate change. Convinced that the climate was about to warm rapidly, and extreme weather was about to get much worse, European governments signed the Kyoto protocol in 1997 and committed to reducing emissions of carbon dioxide in the hope that this would help. In the event, the global temperature stopped rising for 18 years, while droughts, floods and storms also showed no increase.

But in 1998, urged on by EU transport commissioner Neil Kinnock, welcomed by environment secretary John Prescott and acted on by chancellor Gordon Brown, Britain happily signed up to an EU agreement with car makers that they would cut carbon dioxide emissions by 25% over ten years. This suited German car makers, specialists in Rudolf Diesel’s engine design, because diesel engines have 15% lower CO2 emissions than petrol engines."

"Britain obediently lowered tax on diesel cars, despite knowing that they produce four times as much nitrogen oxides as petrol, and 20 times as many particulates, both bad for human lungs."

"Diverting agricultural crops into making ethanol or diesel to feed motor cars rather than people forces up the price of food, kills approximate 200,000 extra people a year and increases pressure on the rain forest.


Burning wood instead of coal in power stations has devastated forests and actually increased CO2 emissions: wood emits more CO2 per unit of energy generated even than coal"

"Subsidising windmills has raised the price of energy, rewarded the rich, killed eagles and gannets, polluted Chinese waterways with effluent from rare-earth refining"

" giving tax breaks to diesel cars has made urban air quality worse than it would otherwise have been, killing possibly 5,000 people a year in this country alone"

"As so often, Adam Smith got there first, saying in The Wealth of Nations, in 1776: ‘The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society.’"