Europe’s wildfire crisis has also exposed the failure of public spending rhetoric unsupported by effective land and forest management. EU governments spent 40.6 billion euros on fire protection services in 2023. In 2022, the total expenditure stood at EUR 37.4 billion. The European Court of Auditors discovered that spending oversight was incomplete, result monitoring was weak, and there was no assurance that the most impactful actions received financing. At the same time, the average annual burnt area in the EU rose to 527,000 hectares in 2021-2024, up sharply from 268,000 hectares in 2006-2010, showing that more money has not guaranteed better outcomes.
European Commission policy documents acknowledge that sustainable forest management, vegetation thinning, firebreaks, access roads, buffer zones, mixed grazing, and prescribed burning are essential to reduce wildfire risk.
Therefore, the worsening wildfire record is not only a climate story but also a policy failure in land management, prevention design, and execution.
This is just another example of how big government does not mean better services. The European Union spends more and gets worse results. What do governments say? Of course, they need more revenue.
Net zero is proving to be a failure wherever it is implemented. From 1996 to 2024, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Canada cut CO₂ and greenhouse gas emissions, but most of the reduction came from economic stagnation and deindustrialization, higher domestic energy costs, and a rising dependence on imported manufactured goods from more carbon-intensive economies such as Russia, China and India. EDGAR’s 2025 release provides country and sector time series from 1970 to 2024 and shows that global greenhouse gas emissions reached 53.2 Gt CO₂eq in 2024, up 1.3 percent from 2023, even as many advanced economies continued to report lower domestic emissions.
The central issue is not whether emissions in Europe, the UK and Canada fell. They did. The issue is whether almost two decades of tax-based climate policy, net-zero mandates, and CO₂ price mechanisms delivered durable decarbonization without hollowing out productive industry. The evidence shows that most of the apparent success came from weaker domestic industrial output and a larger share of energy-intensive production moving abroad.
Since the late 1990s and especially after the mid-2000s, European climate policy has relied on carbon pricing, emissions caps, renewable mandates, massive energy taxes, and direct subsidy programs, added to net-zero targets. The EU Emissions Trading System, the UK’s successive carbon budget framework under the Climate Change Act, and Canada’s federal and provincial carbon-price architecture all aimed to make emissions expensive and low-carbon investment more attractive.
These policies did reduce domestic emissions intensity in several sectors, but they also increased costs for energy-intensive industries that compete globally on thin margins. OECD analysis of the clean-energy transition and job displacement in energy-intensive industries finds significant adjustment costs and employment losses in exposed sectors across OECD economies, even where aggregate employment data obscure the local and regional damage.
EDGAR’s long-run database shows that for Europe and the UK, emissions trends since 1996 show substantial territorial declines, especially after 2005, while Canada’s progress is more limited and uneven.
In 1996, the advanced industrial economies of Europe, the UK, and Canada still retained a larger share of heavy industry and manufacturing capacity than they do today. By 2024, these economies had reduced domestic emissions significantly, but global emissions had risen, with China and India accounting for a far larger share of world industrial output and CO2 emissions. EDGAR’s 2025 report shows that global emissions continued to climb in 2024, despite the years of climate policy architecture in Europe and the expanding net-zero agenda in advanced economies.
If the policy model were decisively successful, one would expect falling emissions in high-tax, high-regulation economies to be matched by a broader flattening of global emissions, especially after years of carbon pricing and climate spending. Instead, emissions have often been redistributed geographically through trade and offshoring. Furthermore, if the green policy framework had worked, there would have been stronger job creation, economic growth and manufacturing output from these policies. It was the opposite.
The IEA notes a changing landscape of global emissions in which advanced economies account for a smaller share while emerging Asia’s role expands rapidly. EDGAR’s country data and reports indicate that China and India have posted large increases in absolute emissions over the same broad period in which Europe and the UK pursued ever tighter climate goals. Global supply chains absorbed a meaningful share of the industrial activity no longer produced domestically in the West.
This is why territorial accounting for emissions is misleading. A country can reduce emissions on its balance sheet while increasing consumption of imported goods whose production is more carbon-intensive abroad. In that case, domestic policy changes the location of emissions more than the level of global emissions.
The economic cost is visible in the structure of output, employment, and investment. Research on net zero in power and industry shows that job creation and value added depend heavily on keeping supply chains local. Therefore, as production is imported, the economic gains shrink while domestic adjustment costs remain. The Resolution Foundation’s work on net-zero jobs highlights that the shift to a greener economy affects jobs differently in various regions and industries, with industrial areas suffering even though overall green investment figures are not enough.
All this has meant slower industrial investment, higher electricity and fuel costs for consumers, and more reliance on fiscal transfers, subsidies, and industrial-policy packages to offset the damage caused by the initial policy shock. Thus, governments first make domestic production pricier through taxes, carbon prices, and mandates, then spend billions of public funds trying to compensate some firms and households for the resulting loss of competitiveness and purchasing power.
Canada is a clear example of this policy failure. Climate spending and carbon-pricing frameworks are justified as tools for long-run competitiveness. However, none of that has happened and it has been virtually impossible to preserve industrial activity when firms can relocate investment to lower-cost jurisdictions. The same logic applies in Europe and the UK, where subsidy races and compensation schemes have become a permanent feature of climate policy rather than a temporary bridge.
The strongest criticism of tax-heavy climate policy is empirical. Global emissions are still rising nearly two decades after the expansion of carbon markets, energy taxes, and net-zero commitments. EDGAR reports that global greenhouse gas emissions hit 53.2 Gt CO2eq in 2024. The IEA similarly describes a global emissions landscape in which reductions in advanced economies are offset by increases elsewhere, particularly in countries where coal remains central to power generation and manufacturing.
China and India became indispensable to global manufacturing during precisely the period in which Western governments tightened domestic climate policy. In essence, European, UK and Canadian climate policies have worked as a giant subsidy to Chinese and Indian growth paid by domestic consumers.
The result is a model that can be called net zero stagnation. Although domestic emissions fall, so does industrial capacity and real net wage growth, while the world remains on a rising emissions path. Europe, the UK, and Canada have proven that taxes, carbon pricing, and public spending suppress local emissions at the expense of displacing domestic industry. These policies tend to reduce global emissions only by displacing production, weakening competitiveness, making citizens poorer, and increasing the role of the state in the economy.
A stronger climate strategy would focus less on symbolic targets and punitive taxation and more on technological innovation, free markets, domestic energy supply, productivity growth, and open competition. Until then, much of the celebrated emissions progress in advanced economies will come from disappearing factories and weaker competitiveness.
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 03:30NATO’s European members and Canada increased defense spending by 20% in 2025, the group’s biggest military buildup in the last decade.
Created in partnership with Inigo, this graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Jenna Ross, shows which NATO countries increased spending the most and how much they now spend as a share of GDP.
Spending Heavyweights, Ranked by Annual IncreasesOur analysis covers NATO countries that spent over $10 billion on defense in 2025.
Belgium was the country with the biggest spending jump of 58%. Once among NATO’s lowest defense spenders, Belgium has boosted its budget to meet the alliance’s current 2% of GDP target. The country’s increased spending is focused on operations, maintenance, and research and development.
Source: NATO. Figures for 2025 are estimates.
The next largest jump among big spenders was Denmark, with a 49% increase. Threats from Russia and a bid from the U.S. administration to buy Greenland prompted the focus on defense. In the Arctic, Denmark is investing in two new ships, maritime patrol planes, drones, early-warning radar, and a new command headquarters.
Defense Spending of NATO Countries Relative to GDPAmong NATO countries, Poland spends the most on defense compared to its economic size. The country began significantly increasing its spending in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine. In 2025, its focus has been on equipment, which climbed to over half of the country’s total defense spending.
All NATO allies now meet or exceed the previous defense spending target of 2% of GDP. Most have also pledged to reach 5% by 2035, split between 3.5% on core defense and 1.5% on broader security-related investment such as infrastructure and cyber resilience. However, Spain secured an exemption from the 5% target, and pledges of that length carry their own uncertainty.
Why Increased Defense Spending MattersUnderlying the rise in spending is growing uncertainty around the stability of the rules-based international order. As alliances are strained and tensions build, geopolitical events can create interconnected losses.
Insurance risk managers and brokers can take time to understand indirect exposures and accumulation risks across energy markets, supply chains, political violence, trade credit, and business interruption portfolios.
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 02:45Rotterdam has introduced an unprecedented nighttime exclusion zone across large parts of the De Esch neighborhood following nearly three years of street racing, drug use, intimidation, prostitution, and persistent noise from migrant youth gangs.
The order, which took effect on Thursday evening, makes it a criminal offense to enter the designated area between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. without a valid reason. Police can fine anyone unable to explain why they are there.
Residents, workers, visitors to local homes, and people attending events, restaurants, or bars are exempt. The measure will remain in force for three months before being evaluated.
“Calm must return to De Esch, and residents must feel comfortable and safe. That is why I am using this power,” said Rotterdam Mayor Carola Schouten.
🇳🇱 Parts of Rotterdam are now a no-go zone because of migrant gangs and anti-social behavior.
The city has introduced an unprecedented night-time ban on entering De Esch neighborhood, with those falling foul of the rules liable for a fine and a criminal record.
The council had… pic.twitter.com/uQAYWZBs9U
Locals told NOS that large groups of outsiders have gathered in the neighborhood after dark since shortly after the Covid pandemic. At weekends, dozens and sometimes hundreds reportedly arrive to race cars, sound horns, consume drugs, party in the streets, and leave rubbish behind.
“Once it gets dark, they go completely wild,” one resident told the broadcaster.
Previous measures, including concrete barriers, increased police patrols, and talks with those responsible, failed to bring the disruption under control.
The first night of the ban was noticeably quieter.
“I slept wonderfully,” one resident told Rijnmond. She said she had previously endured screaming, honking cars, and noise almost every night, even while wearing earplugs. “Now, the street is completely clean,” she said.
Another woman said she had stopped walking her dog alone at night because of dangerous driving and aggressive behavior. Her parents were nearly struck by cars being driven side by side on the sidewalk, while attempts to confront those responsible sometimes resulted in insults, threats, and filming for social media.
“Until now, there was little that could be done about the nuisance,” another said. “Thanks to the restraining order, it is now legally possible.”
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/27/2026 - 02:00