From the Wall Street Journal:

America isn’t the only place where anticarbon politics is taking a welcome beating. Last week Polish Environment Minister Marcin Korolec vetoed the next step in the EU’s plan to reduce its CO2 by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. If the generation of Europeans now being born means to live in a modern society, it’ll have Mr. Korolec to thank.
Among other goals, the European Commission would all-but ban electricity from fossil fuels, which currently make up about 50% of total EU electrical generation. Poland, which generates more than 90% of its electricity from coal, would be hit especially hard. “We need to look for solutions we’ll actually be able to implement,” Mr. Korolec noted dryly.
The Commission is now working to cobble together a new draft of the cuts, though Warsaw has indicated it won’t sign onto any new carbon restrictions until the rest of the world does. Meantime, Warsaw is getting leaned on. “The outcome shows how we must redouble our efforts in explaining to Poland that shifting to a low-carbon economy is part of long-term growth in Europe,” tut-tutted U.K. Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey [one of the governing coalition’s Liberal Democrats]..
That could take a lot of explaining. The EU has already committed to cut 20% from the 1990 baseline by 2020. Last year Mr. Davey’s government poured £1.4 billion into wind and other “renewable” energy sources and mandated utilities to use them, the most noticeable result of which is soaring electricity bills for British households…

And for what?

For a break from the patronizing nuttiness of David Cameron’s coalition, here’s Nigel Farage of Britain’s euroskeptic UKIP talking about wind energy in a way that betrays a cautious, skeptical environmentalism far saner (and more conservative) than anything that Britain’s command-and-control government has on offer.

Somehow I cannot see Farage “explaining” to the Poles that switching off the lights is the way to long-term growth.