These are strange days when even Europe is starting to doubt the wisdom of its green agenda.

Witness a speech last week by French President Emmanuel Macron in which he suggested that Europe may already have enough environmental regulation and doesn’t need more. Sacré bleu!

Mr. Macron called for a “regulatory break” on environmental matters in Europe. [emphasis, links added]

“We’re ahead of the Americans, the Chinese, or any other global power in regulatory terms,” he said. “Now we need to execute” rather than add more pages by the hundreds to the green rulebook.

Note he was speaking to a room full of industrial executives on how to reverse deindustrialization and revive French manufacturing.

More remarkable still, Mr. Macron isn’t alone.

European Union proposals to ban certain pesticides and to require governments to restore forests, wetlands, and other habitats are running into opposition in Brussels.

The European People’s Party, the main EU-level center-right group that includes parties such as Germany’s Christian Democrats, has come out against these two components of the EU’s Green Deal boondoggle on grounds that the plans would hurt farmers.

Europe isn’t abandoning its net-zero follies entirely.

But politicians finally are noticing that so-called green tape is pushing more and more manufacturing elsewhere.

Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S., replete with subsidies only Washington could pretend to afford, has highlighted the near-impossibility of Europe marshaling subsidies to match.

The EU will attempt to impose a carbon border tax on imported goods to ease the competitive pressure on European manufacturers, but perhaps leaders are starting to worry that not even that will be enough to save European jobs.

Mr. Macron should know what’s at stake.

His presidency was nearly derailed in late 2018 by the yellow-vest protest movement against his green-motivated increase in taxes on diesel.

His main opponent in two presidential elections has been Marine Le Pen, a tribune of blue-collar workers whose jobs are most at risk from the green policies he now wants to pause.

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration presses relentlessly ahead with onerous rules in the name of climate change that will raise costs for Americans on everything from electric power to cars to home appliances.

What a world when France is more sensible than the U.S.

Read more at WSJ

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