How Green is the EU

From airliners.net

"Lufthansa slams EU carbon trading proposal, threatens to move hub

The European Union Commission has proposed legislation to include commercial aviation in its carbon trading scheme. Under such regulations airlines flying out of the EU would have to "buy" emissions rights from those who have been granted what amounts to licenses to pollute by governments enforcing caps on carbon emissions, staring in 2012.

Lufthansa chief executive Wolfgang Mayrhuber has reacted strongly to this imposition of extra costs, even threatening to move some hub operations to Zurich, Switzerland, which is not an EU member, and which is geographically close to Lufthansa's second largest hub at Munich's Franz Josef Strauss International Airport. Flight International quotes him as saying,

"Should the European Union go ahead with its plan we would have to think about relocating." [....]

Lufthansa points out that carbon trading may well be an inefficient mechanism for limiting emissions.

It adds: "This scheme is not a global solution and would put European carriers at an extreme commercial disadvantage. We want to match ecological and economic sense with common sense."


I brought this up because european automakers are also up in arms due to the EU's obsession with global warming and carbon credits and its strong desire to create a new bureaucracy . BMW, MB, etc could face significant economic pressures with increased costs of producing their larger most profitable sedans that are also the biggest producers of CO2.

Could it be real life forces its way into never never EU land?