Here in the UK, the Green Party supports open borders, which means more housing, hospitals, schools, prisons, offices, factories, roads, airport runways, higher house prices, overwhelmed public services, and squeezed C2DE wages.
How is any of this green?
They are replacements for the existing population not an addition to it. The indigenous population will be used to make Gammon flavoured Soylent Green for the noble new arrivals.
I suppose that they will maintain a herd of bulls, who will be made to work out for several hours daily in the gym, as well as as being milked by comely transmaidens in simple dirndl skirts.
The point is to destroy “the West,” climate and refugees/ immigrants and social justice and everything else are just tools. That is where you will see consistency.
But why destroy the people who have pretty much built and maintained our luxurious first-world lifestyles?
Surely the “elite” doing this will rapidly find that their replacement manimals cannot sustain the first world that they are used to?
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
Thanks for stating the obvious, if anyone is not intelligent enough to know all this they should be reading ‘The Sun’..
But this scratches the coming poverty chaos. Covid Response, that monstrous NWO/IMF/WEF plot has it all happening in exponential speed… The covid Debt spending coupled with the lock downs did a couple things….
Made equities a bubble so money fled to commodities, raising energy producers price. Made massive inflation, which brings the developing world an inflation they can NOT afford. Foods + energy + raw materials %15 – %60 in a year…. Wile the lockdown closed small businesses – AND THUS giving their business up to the mega Corporations, and it is not going back, and so impoverishes them more..
The IMF FORCED the developing world to do lockdown and do the vax – because it destroyed their economies, they did this intentionally for a couple reasons. One being they had to suffer same as us to prove to the West it was the best Policy, AND so the IMF can make the developing world utterly dependent on them for hard currency loans to service their hard currency debt as their money devalues….I have heard, and believe, the IMF told the developing world to lock down for covid/vax or they would not bail them out in the coming global depression. Then locking down the West meant reduced money from production, people locked out of work, $ Trillions printed for them to not work wile still consuming = inflation… = so less money to the Third world for their economy.
I think the Devos, WEF/IMF/WHO is doing all this on purpose to push their one world New World Order. Best way to trap the world? Control the energy – and the entire WEF is about energy! About Global Warming, and how only they can save us. They call it ‘Sustainability’, but means something very sinister. Read the WEF site – they admit it. You will own nothing, and will be happy – this energy is their way to achieving this.
‘Stakeholder Capitalism’ (Corporations pay no dividends, but invest in the economy directly) is their By-word. That Corporatism and one world Government is the future, which is Fas*i sm. Check them out https://www.weforum.org/sustainability-world-economic-forum They are Bond Villains.
People are stupid, we know this, insulting them does not make them make them more intelligent, nor does it make them think. They have hegemonic power anyway, so why should they care. Serious, practical, people have been overwhelmed by this and marginalised. Writing shit on website may make people feel better. But it changes nothing! What to do about it is a more difficult proposition, but where and when has bitching ever changed a mindset. Humans have the ability and the technology to deal with this ‘crisis’ but they will not! They will squabble like children as our societies and civilisations disintegrate. Just deserts!
Yes, for me it was a sad wake-up call to just how powerful is the influence of Western policy doctrine on the elites in African countries. They take whatever nonsensical narrative is spun out of Davos, Brussels or New York, and they ram that square peg into the round holes of the countries they rule over.
Hopefully they will use the obvious failure of lockdown to recalibrate their planning on issues like energy security. There is no reason Africans should be forced to pay for our industrial sins.
The worst part is that I heard many of them were being pressured to dedicate more of their health budget towards anti-COVID measures at the expense of, in particular, anti-malaria measures. Except of course malaria is deadly to all ages and is a problem every year. It’s been a minute since I saw stats, but I seem to recall that 2021 became one of the worst years for it in quite a while, and the fact that money, time, and effort were being directed away from that towards a disease that wasn’t making much of an impact on that continent.
Terry Davis
2 years ago
There’s no such thing as Net Zero, nor Green Energy, but these things are very real to the illiberal left, who despise Africa
Since there is no publicly agreed way of calculating “Net Zero” , and no way of actually measuring it, it will be forever unreachable.
A perfect scenario for those seeking public money.
Graham Stull
2 years ago
I will make my customary plea for sensible population planning at this juncture.
The fact is 11 billion human beings is a strain to the resources of this planet, in every scenario except that in which most of them are condemned to dire poverty. This is true and will remain true until we come up with something much better than the current generation of energy production technologies.
Therefore, leaving cold fusion in la la land where it belongs, we are left with how to make an adjustment towards sustainability in a way that is truly fair. Everything the authors say is right, but they still don’t provide any real solutions on the demand side.
I think we need sensible population politics. This does NOT mean a CCP-style ‘One Child Policy’. It means creating a dialogue about the kinds of policies that can be adopted to encourage smaller family planning: Contraception, creating more mature pension systems in developing countries, using automation to address labour shortages in a strategic way, using the tax and benefit system to reward sustainable family planning better…
Because at under a billion homo sapiens, the fact is we can eat all the tenderloin we like, we can burn all the natural gas we want, and the planet will be just fine.
It is astonishing that the quantum of population is the core of the problem, that every green measure will fail if the population increases as projected, and yet this is never discussed
Didn’t the Rev Thomas Robert Malthus* almost get there years ago when he said:
“I think I may make fairly two postulata. First, that food is necessary to the existence of man. Secondly, that the passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state … Assuming then my postulata as granted, I say, that the power of population is infinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second. By the law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal. This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind….”
It is only in the very last sentence that I would take issue. Must it, after all, be severely felt by a large portion of mankind? Isn’t the entire purpose of prudential policymaking to equip our societies with tools to improve upon the outcomes nature’s red tooth and claw would otherwise enforce?
Isn’t it our very mission on this Earth to break the cycle in which the rough beast, its hour come at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
A plentiful supply of fossil fuel makes a country richer
Citizens of rich countries have smaller families
Smaller families mean a smaller world population
A smaller world population means less global warming
Less global warming means we can use our plentiful supply of fossil fuel without the catastrophic consequences forecast.
In other words, maybe we should do nothing about global warming – let poor countries burn fossil fuels and get rich – and the problem will sort itself out.
I’m going to respectfully disagree. At first glance, I’d submit your numbers are wrong; additionally, you’re suggesting divesting our world of 10 billion people.
Rather simplistic to suggest “creating a dialogue” will achieve that mass de-population you suggest. I think we’re likely going to have to turbo-charge our totalitarian impulses to achieve that.
Population projections have, and are proving to be wrong. It’s unwise to build such draconian de-population measures on numbers that are as questionable as the projected COVID death numbers.
In the meantime, perhaps we could allow each nation state to determine its energy policies instead of imposing our advanced, theoretical, imperial policies on them. Does not each one have that right, or does the fact that the west seems to have won the industrialization game mean that we can just quit and claim the title. Is there any accounting for the regimes that don’t play the game, the Chinas and Indias of the world?
Does that imply there might be outcomes we don’t care for? Probably.
But, it is a happy thought.
The 11 billion number could be wrong, but if anything it is likely to be wrong on the upside – that is, predicted declines in fertility resulting from increasing living standards may not materialise the same way in developing nations as they have done in the West, due to culture-specific factors. Additionally, recent patterns of fertility decline in the West could well reverse or stabilise. Anyway it is unlikely to be wrong by very much and it is clear that the scale of the overpopulation problem will not be addressed without policy action.
Again, nothing I would suggest would be that draconian. For the most part, we are talking about things that make sense to do, even if there were resources enough for 50 billion. Poor Africans have large families as a form of retirement insurance. If they had a better option, they would stop doing this. This would mean more resources invested in their (fewer) children, less population growth and happier older Africans.
Likewise tapering off child benefits and tax exemptions to households that choose to have multiple children is hardly draconian. It sets a powerful signal, but it also preserves scarce resources for those who need in most.
And who but the most puritanical would seriously argue against making contraception more widely available?
This is discussed quite frequently on Unherd. There are many who still make the argument that many people in Western societies need to have more children and that there is enough for everyone.
These people do not see the huge damage these billions are wreaking on the soil and the waterways and the oceans. The flora and fauna.
They have never seen the devastating poverty in parts of the world. And these people bring more and more children into the world… Sadly they do not even have the logic to figure out that by and large they are consigning their children to more poverty…. The cycle and trend you can identify means that we are doomed to go downhill as a species.
I suspect that logic or the lack of it has less to do with begetting of many offspring than profligate men. The women may be grateful not to have a child a year, sti’s, abandonment with the consequences of multiple children, no work, no income etc. Available contraception would also work wonders.
I’m sure I remember a couple of articles recently on Unherd or perhaps Spiked that birth rate was too low. Elon Musk has said that I think. He hasn’t got enough people to populate Mars apparently.
Also wasn’t there a statement put out around the time of the recent COP that global warming was not caused by overpopulation.
These are not my views by the way.
Martin Johnson
2 years ago
In the end, climate policy is about finding ways for rich socially woke westerners to feel good about themselves without doing anything to jeopardize themselves or help anyone else. It is all a form of entertainment or performance art.
Just like most of the response to COVID, to terrorism before that, to economic inequality, to poor public education, to the vestiges of racism that still exist in western democracies, to foreign policy challenges like Putin and Xi, really to just about everything. It is all silly games played by unserious children, in some cases being manipulated by oligarchic moneyed people. They all claim science or virtue, but they are among the worst people in the world.
It was a thing a few years, ago but go reread Kipling’s “Gods of the Copybook Headings.” To mix metaphors, we are waiting for the return of the Four Horsemen.
Brendan O'Leary
2 years ago
Having been involved both directly and peripherally in drilling, including geothermal, for over 40 years, I’m a bit sceptical about the potential for geothermal projects. The driver for these projects is too often primarily about them being “green” rather than efficient sources of energy.
First and most obvious drawback with geothermal is that it’s not portable, like hydrocarbons or (potentially) nuclear, but fixed to a location, like wind and solar.
For relatively lukewarm non-volcanic geothermal (examples of large-scale very hot volcanic, i.e steam, would be e.g. Iceland, Japan and NZ. There aren’t many places that are suitable) I’ve seen it working well where the power or heat requirement is close to the source. The giant greenhouses of south holland are good examples, and some village hot water & electricity generating schemes in Bavarian towns. Even so, they need a good amount of government assistance.
The Canadian project referenced (actually, Geretsried in Bavaria is a better example of the same technology, ) is yet to be proven and even the Geretsried project hasn’t started drilling yet. Ironically, (for those who take a misty green eyed view of these things) the most likely use of the Canadian project , if it succeeds, will be providing power for oil sands extraction projects nearby.
I really don’t see geothermal providing the large-scale energy source that Africa needs. Although I’m aware that the World Bank is funding geothermal in Djibouti and Kenya, to name two that I know of.
Douglas McCallum
2 years ago
The article could equally be titled “Green Hypocrisy Hurts Everybody (except the ‘Green-Political Complex’). It is not just Africa which suffers from the unthinking fanaticism of the Green religion; the entire world suffers! Just look at the energy price catastrophe already hammering people and businesses globally, and certainly in Britain, Europe, and North America. This and many other types of economic damage which result from Green-driven policies will only get worse. None of this seems to concern the Green fanatics; in their fairy-tale world they can get away with a total lack of common sense and an utter disregard of economics or technology.
I must look forward to a grim near-future, as my pensions are eaten up not by consumption but by inflation brought on by Greenery. The ‘Green-Political Complex’ remains unconcerned, of course, as they generally have cushy jobs in the public sector or publicly-supported charities and universities or are wealthy enough not to care.
jonathan carter-meggs
2 years ago
The green rhetoric is extreme and unreasonable. There is a path to sustainability but it requires cool heads and a 50-100 year plan to convert us all. The panic created in the minds of the population (most of whom cannot do A level maths let alone understand scientific output) hamstrings politicians who are only interested in the next election result. The result is a lot of virtue signalling and little progress. Gas is better than coal, nuclear is CO2 free, domestically supplied gas together with nuclear would cover us until truly sustainable energy in the necessary amount is available, and reduce our carbon footprint in the process. However, the idiot voices of doom stop even this reasonable approach and demand changes that will kill many in fuel poverty in favour of imagined babies in the future. Oh and fusion is only 50 years away………ha ha ha ha.
Julian Pellatt
2 years ago
The ‘green’ lobby has been highly effective at brainwashing the world into fear of and compliance with ‘climate change’ edicts via environmental catastrophising; and obscuring the real problem – overpopulation! It is not politically correct to talk about let alone acknowledge that human population expansion is what causes environmental pressures and major crises. Everyone knows where the population is expanding out of control, but nobody dares to discuss this one, key issue.
Lucrative careers have been built on the edifice of the ‘green’ agenda.
John Lee
2 years ago
This is the start of the descent into the dark ages for GB>
Jordan Flower
2 years ago
History will examine this era as a lesson in how to capture the good nature and high levels of temperamental compassion measured in left-ish types, and use it to further enrich the elite ruling class while further impoverishing the lower class and beating down the working class.
Case study #1 – “Green” global homogeneity
Case study #2 – Covid governmental “health” restrictions
To name a few
Here in the UK, the Green Party supports open borders, which means more housing, hospitals, schools, prisons, offices, factories, roads, airport runways, higher house prices, overwhelmed public services, and squeezed C2DE wages.
How is any of this green?
They are replacements for the existing population not an addition to it. The indigenous population will be used to make Gammon flavoured Soylent Green for the noble new arrivals.
I suppose that they will maintain a herd of bulls, who will be made to work out for several hours daily in the gym, as well as as being milked by comely transmaidens in simple dirndl skirts.
The point is to destroy “the West,” climate and refugees/ immigrants and social justice and everything else are just tools. That is where you will see consistency.
But why destroy the people who have pretty much built and maintained our luxurious first-world lifestyles?
Surely the “elite” doing this will rapidly find that their replacement manimals cannot sustain the first world that they are used to?
Thanks for stating the obvious, if anyone is not intelligent enough to know all this they should be reading ‘The Sun’..
But this scratches the coming poverty chaos. Covid Response, that monstrous NWO/IMF/WEF plot has it all happening in exponential speed… The covid Debt spending coupled with the lock downs did a couple things….
Made equities a bubble so money fled to commodities, raising energy producers price. Made massive inflation, which brings the developing world an inflation they can NOT afford. Foods + energy + raw materials %15 – %60 in a year…. Wile the lockdown closed small businesses – AND THUS giving their business up to the mega Corporations, and it is not going back, and so impoverishes them more..
The IMF FORCED the developing world to do lockdown and do the vax – because it destroyed their economies, they did this intentionally for a couple reasons. One being they had to suffer same as us to prove to the West it was the best Policy, AND so the IMF can make the developing world utterly dependent on them for hard currency loans to service their hard currency debt as their money devalues….I have heard, and believe, the IMF told the developing world to lock down for covid/vax or they would not bail them out in the coming global depression. Then locking down the West meant reduced money from production, people locked out of work, $ Trillions printed for them to not work wile still consuming = inflation… = so less money to the Third world for their economy.
I think the Devos, WEF/IMF/WHO is doing all this on purpose to push their one world New World Order. Best way to trap the world? Control the energy – and the entire WEF is about energy! About Global Warming, and how only they can save us. They call it ‘Sustainability’, but means something very sinister. Read the WEF site – they admit it. You will own nothing, and will be happy – this energy is their way to achieving this.
‘Stakeholder Capitalism’ (Corporations pay no dividends, but invest in the economy directly) is their By-word. That Corporatism and one world Government is the future, which is Fas*i sm. Check them out https://www.weforum.org/sustainability-world-economic-forum They are Bond Villains.
People are stupid, we know this, insulting them does not make them make them more intelligent, nor does it make them think. They have hegemonic power anyway, so why should they care. Serious, practical, people have been overwhelmed by this and marginalised. Writing shit on website may make people feel better. But it changes nothing! What to do about it is a more difficult proposition, but where and when has bitching ever changed a mindset. Humans have the ability and the technology to deal with this ‘crisis’ but they will not! They will squabble like children as our societies and civilisations disintegrate. Just deserts!
Wannabe bond villains. Bond villains are more entertaining and likeable.
Great post.
WEF = Spectre
greta thunberg = Ernst Stavro Blofeld
She already has a bond villain name.
You have that wrong
Haven’t you noticed the similarity between Greta and Chucky
I saw her depicted as a dead ringer for Alfred E. Neuman.
Thinners as mastermind? No, she is Blofeld’s cat.
I’m still staggered that African nations had lockdowns when the average age is 25.
Yes, for me it was a sad wake-up call to just how powerful is the influence of Western policy doctrine on the elites in African countries. They take whatever nonsensical narrative is spun out of Davos, Brussels or New York, and they ram that square peg into the round holes of the countries they rule over.
Hopefully they will use the obvious failure of lockdown to recalibrate their planning on issues like energy security. There is no reason Africans should be forced to pay for our industrial sins.
Makes one wonder, doesn’t it?
The worst part is that I heard many of them were being pressured to dedicate more of their health budget towards anti-COVID measures at the expense of, in particular, anti-malaria measures. Except of course malaria is deadly to all ages and is a problem every year. It’s been a minute since I saw stats, but I seem to recall that 2021 became one of the worst years for it in quite a while, and the fact that money, time, and effort were being directed away from that towards a disease that wasn’t making much of an impact on that continent.
There’s no such thing as Net Zero, nor Green Energy, but these things are very real to the illiberal left, who despise Africa
Since there is no publicly agreed way of calculating “Net Zero” , and no way of actually measuring it, it will be forever unreachable.
A perfect scenario for those seeking public money.
I will make my customary plea for sensible population planning at this juncture.
The fact is 11 billion human beings is a strain to the resources of this planet, in every scenario except that in which most of them are condemned to dire poverty. This is true and will remain true until we come up with something much better than the current generation of energy production technologies.
Therefore, leaving cold fusion in la la land where it belongs, we are left with how to make an adjustment towards sustainability in a way that is truly fair. Everything the authors say is right, but they still don’t provide any real solutions on the demand side.
I think we need sensible population politics. This does NOT mean a CCP-style ‘One Child Policy’. It means creating a dialogue about the kinds of policies that can be adopted to encourage smaller family planning: Contraception, creating more mature pension systems in developing countries, using automation to address labour shortages in a strategic way, using the tax and benefit system to reward sustainable family planning better…
Because at under a billion homo sapiens, the fact is we can eat all the tenderloin we like, we can burn all the natural gas we want, and the planet will be just fine.
It is astonishing that the quantum of population is the core of the problem, that every green measure will fail if the population increases as projected, and yet this is never discussed
Didn’t the Rev Thomas Robert Malthus* almost get there years ago when he said:
“I think I may make fairly two postulata. First, that food is necessary to the existence of man. Secondly, that the passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state … Assuming then my postulata as granted, I say, that the power of population is infinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second. By the law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal. This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind….”
(* 1766- 1834.)
It is only in the very last sentence that I would take issue. Must it, after all, be severely felt by a large portion of mankind? Isn’t the entire purpose of prudential policymaking to equip our societies with tools to improve upon the outcomes nature’s red tooth and claw would otherwise enforce?
Isn’t it our very mission on this Earth to break the cycle in which the rough beast, its hour come at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
I completely agree.
Perhaps Malthus’s Christian hunger for martyrdom and punishment got in the way? I prefer Yeats’s cynicism.
But cynicism doesn’t resolve problems.
Really? Try a bit of Diogenes of Sinope, was there ever such a man?
It is innocence in the extreme to believe that it isn’t born, burped and breathing fire as we speak.
Truly astonishing Peter. It was astonishing me six years ago, in fact:
Overpopulation and Climate Catastrophe: An economist view – Graham Stull
In other words, maybe we should do nothing about global warming – let poor countries burn fossil fuels and get rich – and the problem will sort itself out.
Also the surplus created by using energy-dense hydrocarbons allows richer countries to indulge in publicly funded “green” initiatives.
I’m going to respectfully disagree. At first glance, I’d submit your numbers are wrong; additionally, you’re suggesting divesting our world of 10 billion people.
Rather simplistic to suggest “creating a dialogue” will achieve that mass de-population you suggest. I think we’re likely going to have to turbo-charge our totalitarian impulses to achieve that.
Population projections have, and are proving to be wrong. It’s unwise to build such draconian de-population measures on numbers that are as questionable as the projected COVID death numbers.
In the meantime, perhaps we could allow each nation state to determine its energy policies instead of imposing our advanced, theoretical, imperial policies on them. Does not each one have that right, or does the fact that the west seems to have won the industrialization game mean that we can just quit and claim the title. Is there any accounting for the regimes that don’t play the game, the Chinas and Indias of the world?
Does that imply there might be outcomes we don’t care for? Probably.
But, it is a happy thought.
The 11 billion number could be wrong, but if anything it is likely to be wrong on the upside – that is, predicted declines in fertility resulting from increasing living standards may not materialise the same way in developing nations as they have done in the West, due to culture-specific factors. Additionally, recent patterns of fertility decline in the West could well reverse or stabilise. Anyway it is unlikely to be wrong by very much and it is clear that the scale of the overpopulation problem will not be addressed without policy action.
Again, nothing I would suggest would be that draconian. For the most part, we are talking about things that make sense to do, even if there were resources enough for 50 billion. Poor Africans have large families as a form of retirement insurance. If they had a better option, they would stop doing this. This would mean more resources invested in their (fewer) children, less population growth and happier older Africans.
Likewise tapering off child benefits and tax exemptions to households that choose to have multiple children is hardly draconian. It sets a powerful signal, but it also preserves scarce resources for those who need in most.
And who but the most puritanical would seriously argue against making contraception more widely available?
Contraception is not the issue. It can hardly be any more available than it already is. People only use it if they want to.
Is that true globally? I’m not sure.
You cannot get down to 1 billion, or anywhere near it, without mass-extermination programmes.
Especially as Islam is determined to win the Battle of the Womb.
This is discussed quite frequently on Unherd. There are many who still make the argument that many people in Western societies need to have more children and that there is enough for everyone.
These people do not see the huge damage these billions are wreaking on the soil and the waterways and the oceans. The flora and fauna.
They have never seen the devastating poverty in parts of the world. And these people bring more and more children into the world… Sadly they do not even have the logic to figure out that by and large they are consigning their children to more poverty…. The cycle and trend you can identify means that we are doomed to go downhill as a species.
I suspect that logic or the lack of it has less to do with begetting of many offspring than profligate men. The women may be grateful not to have a child a year, sti’s, abandonment with the consequences of multiple children, no work, no income etc. Available contraception would also work wonders.
I’m sure I remember a couple of articles recently on Unherd or perhaps Spiked that birth rate was too low. Elon Musk has said that I think. He hasn’t got enough people to populate Mars apparently.
Also wasn’t there a statement put out around the time of the recent COP that global warming was not caused by overpopulation.
These are not my views by the way.
In the end, climate policy is about finding ways for rich socially woke westerners to feel good about themselves without doing anything to jeopardize themselves or help anyone else. It is all a form of entertainment or performance art.
Just like most of the response to COVID, to terrorism before that, to economic inequality, to poor public education, to the vestiges of racism that still exist in western democracies, to foreign policy challenges like Putin and Xi, really to just about everything. It is all silly games played by unserious children, in some cases being manipulated by oligarchic moneyed people. They all claim science or virtue, but they are among the worst people in the world.
It was a thing a few years, ago but go reread Kipling’s “Gods of the Copybook Headings.” To mix metaphors, we are waiting for the return of the Four Horsemen.
Having been involved both directly and peripherally in drilling, including geothermal, for over 40 years, I’m a bit sceptical about the potential for geothermal projects. The driver for these projects is too often primarily about them being “green” rather than efficient sources of energy.
First and most obvious drawback with geothermal is that it’s not portable, like hydrocarbons or (potentially) nuclear, but fixed to a location, like wind and solar.
For relatively lukewarm non-volcanic geothermal (examples of large-scale very hot volcanic, i.e steam, would be e.g. Iceland, Japan and NZ. There aren’t many places that are suitable) I’ve seen it working well where the power or heat requirement is close to the source. The giant greenhouses of south holland are good examples, and some village hot water & electricity generating schemes in Bavarian towns. Even so, they need a good amount of government assistance.
The Canadian project referenced (actually, Geretsried in Bavaria is a better example of the same technology, ) is yet to be proven and even the Geretsried project hasn’t started drilling yet. Ironically, (for those who take a misty green eyed view of these things) the most likely use of the Canadian project , if it succeeds, will be providing power for oil sands extraction projects nearby.
I really don’t see geothermal providing the large-scale energy source that Africa needs. Although I’m aware that the World Bank is funding geothermal in Djibouti and Kenya, to name two that I know of.
The article could equally be titled “Green Hypocrisy Hurts Everybody (except the ‘Green-Political Complex’). It is not just Africa which suffers from the unthinking fanaticism of the Green religion; the entire world suffers! Just look at the energy price catastrophe already hammering people and businesses globally, and certainly in Britain, Europe, and North America. This and many other types of economic damage which result from Green-driven policies will only get worse. None of this seems to concern the Green fanatics; in their fairy-tale world they can get away with a total lack of common sense and an utter disregard of economics or technology.
I must look forward to a grim near-future, as my pensions are eaten up not by consumption but by inflation brought on by Greenery. The ‘Green-Political Complex’ remains unconcerned, of course, as they generally have cushy jobs in the public sector or publicly-supported charities and universities or are wealthy enough not to care.
The green rhetoric is extreme and unreasonable. There is a path to sustainability but it requires cool heads and a 50-100 year plan to convert us all. The panic created in the minds of the population (most of whom cannot do A level maths let alone understand scientific output) hamstrings politicians who are only interested in the next election result. The result is a lot of virtue signalling and little progress. Gas is better than coal, nuclear is CO2 free, domestically supplied gas together with nuclear would cover us until truly sustainable energy in the necessary amount is available, and reduce our carbon footprint in the process. However, the idiot voices of doom stop even this reasonable approach and demand changes that will kill many in fuel poverty in favour of imagined babies in the future. Oh and fusion is only 50 years away………ha ha ha ha.
The ‘green’ lobby has been highly effective at brainwashing the world into fear of and compliance with ‘climate change’ edicts via environmental catastrophising; and obscuring the real problem – overpopulation! It is not politically correct to talk about let alone acknowledge that human population expansion is what causes environmental pressures and major crises. Everyone knows where the population is expanding out of control, but nobody dares to discuss this one, key issue.
Lucrative careers have been built on the edifice of the ‘green’ agenda.
This is the start of the descent into the dark ages for GB>
History will examine this era as a lesson in how to capture the good nature and high levels of temperamental compassion measured in left-ish types, and use it to further enrich the elite ruling class while further impoverishing the lower class and beating down the working class.
Case study #1 – “Green” global homogeneity
Case study #2 – Covid governmental “health” restrictions
To name a few