European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet issued the dramatic warning as chairman of the European Systemic Risk Board, created to avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis, amid growing fears that Greece will default on its massive debt.
The stern warning from the ECB president comes as no surprise. The same has been said by a great number of economists lately. Without doubt, ordinary citizens in Germany and the other EU net payer countries share Trichet´s worries (although they may not necessarily agree with all his suggestions for "decisive action").
The worsening financial crisis has also - quite sensibly - made governments in the major EU countries (e.g. Germany, France, Spain ,Italy and Holland) to rethink the huge subsidies - particularly for solar and wind energy - which have beeen part of their "green agenda". The latest announcement comes from the David Cameron´s 'greenest government ever':
David Cameron and George Osborne want to scale back the green agenda on the grounds that low carbon technology, such as carbon capture storage (CCS) and offshore wind power, cost too much in a time of austerity.
The dramatic cuts in the "climate change" subsidies are happening at a time when opinion polls in most parts of the world show that ordinary citizens are less worried about climate change/global warming.
This development is, of course, extremely worrying for the EU climate change/global warming hight priests.
That is why EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard and her colleagues are now clinging to a fresh Eurobarometer poll, which appears to be showing that Europeans have become more worried about climate change. With the help of a number of "climate change friendly" journalists, the EU warmists have been able to create this kind of publicity:
Europeans believe that dangers of climate change represent a more serious problem than the current financial turmoil, according to a new poll
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She (Connie Hedegaard) said it was striking that the public were even more concerned about climate change than in the runup to the landmark Copenhagen summit on climate change in late 2009.
The number of people rating climate change as a very serious problem has risen slightly, from 64% when the poll was last conducted in 2009, to 68% this year.
Read the entire article here
Those who doubt the earth's climate is changing are a diminishing breed in Europe, according to a new survey released Friday. It shows large majorities in the European Union see climate change as a very serious problem — and fighting it as an opportunity to create jobs and boost the economy.
Overall, EU residents see climate change as the second most serious problem facing the world, after poverty, hunger and lack of drinking water, which were taken together as a single issue.
The EU's climate change commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, called the survey encouraging.
Read the entire article here
What Hedegaard and her journalist helpers do not want to say, is that the attitudes of people in major EU countries have NOT changed in favour of climate change/global warming, according to the same Eurobarometer poll:
In some of the bigger Western and Scandinavian Member States – UK, Germany, Belgium,
Ireland, France, Sweden, Denmark, Finland – the level of concern has remained constant or
decreased since 2009.(The increasing "concern" is, according to the survey, seen in such countries as Latvia, Slovakia and Poland.)
It should also be pointed out that, although the survey as such was done by professionals, it was commissioned by the Hedegaard´s Climate Action service, which also was able to formulate the questions. So, this is just another case of the old trick using statistics to hype a weak case, when everything else fails.
Just one example: When asked about the most serious problems in the world, "the economic situation" was one alternative in the poll. It is quite obvious that, had they asked people to choose e.g. the alternative "financial crisis", "euro crisis" or "recession", the answers would probably have been quite different.
Not really a lot to "celebrate" for Hedegaard.
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