Anyone baffled by Donald Trump's success might find enlightening a message from Europe delivered at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, on May 3.
That was the day Trump clinched the Republican nomination for the US presidency by winning a pivotal election in Indiana.
At Brookings, European Commission Vice-Pres. Maros Sefcovic spoke of the Energy Union, an effort he leads to integrate energy systems of all 28 countries of the European Union.
Central to that project is the European approach to climate change, lately embraced by the Obama administration and enshrined in the Paris agreement signed on Apr. 21.
That approach makes lavish use of superlatives, renewable-energy subsidies, and diplomacy.
"There is no other policy field where global cooperation is as important, as natural, as in climate action," he said, asserting priority responsibility for the EU and US. "On our side of the Atlantic, we are definitely ready to set an example for other countries to follow. We have set ourselves with the most ambitious climate and energy plan of cutting at least 40% of our greenhouse gas emissions (from 1990 levels) by 2030.
Example? According to Terry Jarrett, a US energy attorney and consultant and a former member of the Missouri Public Service Commission, between 2005, when the European Union adopted its emissions-trading scheme, and 2014, residential electricity rates in EU countries increased by an average 63%. The US increase over that period: 32%.
Also on May 3, the EU reported that carbon dioxide emissions from energy among members increased last year by 0.7%.
Costs up painfully. Emissions up anyway. Some example.
The European public understandably has lost is affection for world-leading climate action.
Yet official Europe still treats the subject as an unassailable belief system to be evangelized.
Increasingly, climate policy is the priority of an elite establishment, which has become aloof to public consequences and intolerant of dissent.
Trump's rambunctious campaign topples establishments and exploits the discontent of a public that feels excluded. And he's winning.
