Brussels under pressure to create 50 shades of green finance

https://amp.ft.com/content/5f38382a-8b60-4745-98d0-8027baf6acf7

h/t @aheadahead1

“Sticking with science-based criteria is the only way to show the inconvenient truth that many activities and policies still need to adjust,” said Paul Tang, a socialist MEP. “Bargaining over those criteria jeopardises our future.”

The @r3dot0 Sustainable Finance Blueprint does a deep dive on the shortcomings of the EU "Sustainable Finance” Taxonomy:

https://www.r3-0.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/r3-0-Sustainable-Finance-Blueprint-Final.pdf

See esp p41

Note how the EU taxonomy defines “thresholds". "Setting too low or too high thresholds, which do not reflect best market practices, would undermine the Taxonomy’s ultimate goal of redirecting financial flows towards sustainable investments."

“Consequently, the selection of the Taxonomy’s thresholds has been carefully considered, based on existing standards and consultation processes with experts in the relevant sectors."

We say: This explanation makes it clear that the EU TEG is approaching thresholds not as biophysical realities that must be abided in order to achieve sustainability in the real world but rather as political variables open to negotiation amongst those w/diverse positions of power

It’s vital to understand that the term “thresholds” used throughout the 400+ page document is not sustainability thresholds, but rather thresholds as defined to “reflect best market practices” w/the “ultimate goal of redirecting financial flows towards sustainable investments”

We conclude: Of course, this raises the question of just how those investments can possibly be “sustainable” if the thresholds used to measure them are divorced from biophysical reality?