What do the endlessly repeating cycle of futile Eurozone rescue talks and the endlessly repeating cycle of futile annual UN climate summits have in common? Put more plainly, what accounts for the unreality of both efforts, such that “breakthrough” agreements are soon recognized to be ineffective, if not fraudulent?

It is probably not a coincidence that the Euro currency was launched at about the same moment as the Kyoto Protocol in the late 1990s, and that both are hitting the rocks at about the same time, and for the same reason: both flew in the face of economic reality. But as the inexorable economics of a common currency used across uncommon economies, and fossil fuel suppression in an energy-hungry world, have become more evident, the European and UN diplomatic corps (often the same people) have simply doubled down, holding bigger meetings, giving longer speeches, and crafting more paper agreements to find a process to develop a framework to come up with commitments to adopt meaningful measures and policies that will . . . do something. In the future. The proverbial can has been dented so hard and kicked so far down the road that it’s no longer fit for the recycling bin…

It has been a source of outrage that in the Eurozone negotiations, and in climate negotiations, it is the English-speaking democracies that have been the main dissenters from “Europeanism.” It calls to mind another of Thatcher’s great observations: “During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or other, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it.”

She didn’t need to say the solutions came from the English-speaking world.

(Dr. Benny Peiser)