Is Nut Zero on the Way Out?

Trump is magic. 

If you believe that acknowledging and adapting to reality is magical, that is. Not only is he reshaping American foreign policy, but he is also reshaping trade policy, cajoling our European allies into paying their fair share of the common defense, and, scaring the bejeezus out of our adversaries. 

He is also forcing other countries to quit pretending that they can change the weather by reducing cow farts and impoverishing their citizens. 

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— Net Zero Watch (@NetZeroWatch) June 27, 2025

Europe’s rush to reach Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions has always been predicated on an unsustainable pact among Western powers. Each country would agree to artificially constrain economic growth, move in a socialist direction, and pretend that slowing economic growth would be good for everybody. 

It might work, but only assuming that there was no freer economy in the West to defect to. Biden’s Net Zero policies were a key pillar of the policy framework. If the United States went its own way, other countries couldn’t maintain the fiction that decarbonizing and slowing growth were inevitable. 

With Trump in office, Europe is rethinking Net Zero. One country at a time. 

BRUSSELS — France wants to delay agreement on the European Union’s next climate target, President Emmanuel Macron said after Thursday’s EU leaders’ summit. 

The European Commission will unveil a contentious proposal to reduce the bloc’s greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent by 2040 next week. 

The EU executive has long planned to derive the bloc’s 2035 climate goal from this legislative target. That goal is non-binding but is required from all countries under the Paris Agreement before this year’s United Nations summit in Belém, Brazil.

As the U.N. has set a September deadline for the 2035 objective, the Commission expects governments to reach swift agreement on the 2040 target. But now some governments are rebelling. 

POLITICO reported on Wednesday that France is siding with the EU’s traditional climate laggards Poland and Hungary in demanding the EU decouple the two targets. 

The reporting was met at the time with fierce denials from French government officials. But after Thursday’s European Council concluded in Brussels, Macron confirmed that he wants to deal with the 2035 target separately, and take more time to discuss 2040. 

Unanimity among the big economies is vital for the plan to work. If the French break with the consensus, others will feel the pressure to do so as well. Net Zero is such a drag on the economy that Europe has already fallen way behind America in economic growth, and if France joins the US in pulling back, the citizens of neighboring countries will wonder why the energy transformation is costing them so much. 

Dominoes will fall. One by one. 

Macron also said that the 2040 target has to be “compatible with our competitiveness,” and insisted that renewables and nuclear power should be treated the same under the bloc’s future climate plans. Countries need additional leeway to meet the goal, too, while more investment is also needed, he argued.

Only with these aspects included in the Commission’s 2040 “package” could he support the target, he suggested.

Many governments have sent long lists of demands for agreeing to a 2040 target, and the Commission is already expected to grant countries significant flexibility to meet the goal, in order to win over a majority of countries. 

This shift in goals should come as no surprise. Net Zero is so devastating to economies that the problems can’t be hidden forever. The policies were as much about distributing subsidies and socializing economies as reducing emissions, and a new grift will have to be found. 

Unfortunately, as is so common in politics, the people who stole and wasted money, costing citizens so much, will pay no price. Their parasitical policies are met with a shrug.