It’s no wonder that the scales have been swayed to one side. Here are some illustrations. A month ago a draft report appeared by a group of scientists, rallied by the United Nations, focusing on the tendencies of global climate warming, the potential man-made influence on it and its likely consequences. Although the report is still a draft and its final version will be submitted only in half a year, although scientists intimidating the world with deleterious effects of climate change admit they have no determinate evidence to support their statements, and although the United Nations don’t even mask they have exerted influence on government-appointed scientists to make sure the report’s conclusions were not too mild – all these circumstances do not clog this document to turn into an irrefutable truth and a signpost for policy.

 

The President of France has declared that denying the fact of climate change and man-made influence on it, in his view, is tantamount to disclaiming holocaust. The German Chancellor, the British Prime Minister and a whole bunch of less influential state officials have announced that Europe needed to do a lot more in order to preserve its future. The media in the West have already started to demonise everyone who dares to question the causes of climate change or its gloomy future prospects.

 

Once you trust that the “heaven is falling,” the road from talk to action is unbelievably short. Leaders of the European Union have already made a commitment to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and to increase the share of the so-called “green energy.”

 

This is three times more compared to the present level, even though subsidising the production of renewable energy resources appears to be costly to consumers already today. If no technological change takes place, this burden will be growing at a geometric progression in the future because the most usable resources are already being consumed. However, this doesn’t seem enough for the leaders of the richest countries who have once said “no” to nuclear energy.

 

The prohibition to use traditional incandescent electric light-bulbs and a commitment to replace them with more economical (but also more expensive) luminescent ones came into being in Australia only a month ago but it’s already being pushed forward in the European Union at the highest level. I am afraid that increases in excise duties, speed limitation in the fine German highways and other regulations are not the last pearls of the new drive.

 

The action is on, but the questions that this policy’s propagators try to sidestep abound. Here are some – from physical to social ones. Can carbon dioxide be treated as poisonous gas if it is a vital substance for plant growth? Is it worth to make stepped-up efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions if it’s still uncertain that it is the primary cause of the current global climate warming? How can we explain historical facts that periods of cooling and warming have been replacing each other for thousands and millions of years, that melting glaciers today expose the roads paved back in the Roman times, while heat-loving dinosaurs used to live in the vast of Siberia? Doesn’t subsidised agriculture in Europe and North America serve as a roadblock to expanding forested territories on the earth (not to mention the tragic effects of such perversions on the poorest inhabitants of the planet)?

 

If measures intended to save energy, as experience from various nooks of the world and fields confirm, do not curtail energy consumption, but increase comfort, can they be reasonably introduced by coercion? How can we justify the fact that, say, the price of the replacement of electric bulbs and of the implementation of other saving-intended measures would have to be paid by the poorest consumers in inadequate proportion to their abilities (while they would benefit the least)? Why, if the intention is to cut energy consumption, is the maximal energy price being restricted?

 

Lithuania has been doing a role of an obedient hand raiser in the latest EU’s initiatives, notwithstanding the fact that the existing regulatory instruments are already now both hardly feasible and costly. How can we trust politicians who justify any move in Lithuania by pointing to EU requirements and who at the same time themselves contribute to these regulations without a single attempt at stopping them?

 

It’s understandable that the Russian issue is the most pressing one for Lithuania in the debates over energy policy. But how, in this case, can authorities justify the still widely applied tax subsidy and special support for heating services when all these tools increase both carbon dioxide emission and dependence on Russia? Today we can at least rejoice that the new nuclear power plant might salvage us from the most thumping negative impact of the new regulation.

 

But the issue is still much more acute: in the face of the allegedly falling heaven, all measures are becoming increasingly “justified.” If this political hysteria over climate is not stopped, it will turn into a major factor to have destroyed our welfare and freedom.