The New Federalist, webzine of the Young European Federalist

When being asked about lack of democracy, freedom of speech and violation of human rights in the Eastern European League, Mr. Kaczyński Jr., president of Poland, declared “You can live with less freedom and democracy but you can’t live without energy. Thanks to this agreement and the preferential energy prices obtained, Polish economy will be a lot more competitive and will help us to get away of the current crisis.”

These news come up 2 days after the new increase of earth temperature has been confirmed, setting it to 3 degrees above the average of beginning of the century.

Increase of sea level, floods in some countries and constant drought in some others have pushed many countries, among others also France, UK and Germany, to issue a new demand to biggest world CO2 emitters, China, Russia, US and India to cut their emissions and break the energy price agreement that is keeping the rest of the world out of the game and aggravates the economic crisis western Europe has found herself in during the last 20 years. It’s very likely that the demands of European and African countries will remain once again unanswered by current world superpowers.

50 years ago, the today extinct Commission of the European Union pretentiously announced the goal of having 20% of energy coming from renewable sources by 2020. Since the disintegration of the political EU in 2044 these figures have appeared to be further and further away and European states now find themselves at the same levels of renewables as in 2018. European countries’ competition among themselves to get best prices from fossil fuel suppliers has only increased the price of gas and oil and decreased competitiveness whilst increasing CO2 emissions. Share of renewables in former EU reached a peak of 14% in 2014 but went down ever since due to high costs caused by lack of economies of scale and increasing costs of keeping 27 research schemes.

Joan Marc Simon (90) was the head of the EU Energy, Environment and Waste Agency until 2044. In the years following the dissolution of the EU he moved to Brazil after seeking political asylum in Cuba. He was one of the creators of "Ground Zero”, an experiment to live in an isolated, CO2-neutral artificially created ecosystem community.

This article was initially published in the European decline version of the Daily European. See the entire newspaper in pdf format here.