Whose crisis is it anyway? (Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
“Net Zero” was supposed to be a straightforward idea — one that could be achieved with a healthy dose of spreadsheet politics, shifting a few numbers from one Excel column to another. It made sense, then, when the UN delegated the job of devising it to Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England. And it seemed perfectly reasonable when some of the world’s biggest polluters — China, the United States, the European Union — announced a strict timeline for when they aim to be carbon neutral.
In reality, however, these announcements have turned out to be little more than PR stunts. Take the case of Brookfield, a Canadian asset manager that employs Carney as its vice chair. Last year, it announced that it was “net zero across its $575 billion asset portfolio”, only for it to be revealed that the company had in fact invested billions of dollars in fossil fuel projects, including a coal port and an oil sands pipeline. Following public outcry, Carney issued a statement in which he admitted that he was talking of “avoided emissions” — not overall emissions. And this from the man who is in charge of leading the world to Net Zero…
Carney’s back-pedalling is revealing of how companies are using “creative” interpretations of Net Zero to greenwash their image while continuing to make billions from fossil fuels. The truth is that governments haven’t fared much better. In recent years, several emission-reducing policies have been rolled out — mainly market-based emissions-trading systems, carbon taxes and subsidies for renewables. Meanwhile, huge sums of money have been poured into experimental technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), with hitherto very poor results. Yet fossil fuels still account for around 80% of the world’s energy. Newly industrialised economies, first and foremost China and India, today account for 35% of global emissions. On the other hand, developed countries have seen their emissions decline.
That said, one thing is clear — while the West is clearly responsible for the overwhelming majority of past emissions, future emissions are going to be driven primarily by newly emerging economies. Regardless of what we do in the West, the billions of people who still live in poverty in countries such as India, not to mention those in Africa, and who legitimately aspire to the comforts of industrialisation, will drive a colossal surge in energy demand in the coming years. Projected worldwide consumption of all types of energy 30 years from now is about 50% higher than today, most of it in poorer countries.
This usually invites two types of response: the Malthusian-pessimist kind, which claims that this is intrinsically unsustainable, and that the world can’t afford the massive increase in fossil fuels that the widespread development of the Global South would inevitably entail; and the naïve-environmentalist kind, which contends that developing countries can rely on solar panels and wind turbines to sustainably grow their way out of poverty. Both of these responses share one thing: they’re wrong.
What’s interesting, however, is how these two approaches overlap when it comes to Net-Zero polices in the West. Climate ideology has become a dangerous mix of end-of-days apocalypticism, with thousands of young Westerners now suffering from “climate anxiety”; of individual scapegoating, where ordinary citizens who bear little responsibility for systemic problems are guilt-tripped into thinking that they bear the burden for potential ecological collapse; and of eco-authoritarian hubris, based on the notion that the West needs to drastically accelerate its process of decarbonisation.
A perfect example of the latter is Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte’s recent proposal to drastically cut back nitrogen emissions (70-80%) in the country’s farming sector. The consequence of such a reduction would be to close down around 30-50% of the Dutch livestock and agricultural industry; according to the government, 11,200 farms will have to close and another 17,600 farmers will have to significantly reduce their livestock.
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SubscribeA fine article. My only minor point of disagreement is with this statement:
“and in more and more countries, are starting to let it be known that they have had enough.”
Apart from Sri Lanka, how many countries are actively rejecting the Net Zero agenda? Perhaps the Netherlands, as the author notes in his article, but it’s not clear to me that the country is rejecting Net Zero overall.
Elsewhere in the West there seems to be some grumbling but people are still engaged in magical thinking–they want Net Zero, they want renewable energy, they want to stop importing Russian energy, but they don’t want nuclear and they want their energy, from whatever source, to be cheap. Maybe the coming winter will encourage a sense of reality in the Net Zero crowd.
”Apart from Sri Lanka, how many countries are actively rejecting the Net Zero agenda?”
USA!! MAGA and Ultra MAGA, about half USA Voters reject totally Net Zero Agenda. because one it is Impossible, and so committing to the impossible is just a huge LIE, and second it is a tool of our destruction.
Net Zero is 100% the tool the WEF is using to bring about the Great Reset, which is Neo-Feudalism. An Oligarch Corporatocracy worse than any Fascist (the combination of Corporations, Finance, and Government) because it will be based on AI, Tech, Social Credit, Digital Currencies, and Transhumanism. Worse than 1984.
As far as WEF and reducing food – it is happening every where by stealth! Take UK, the move is on for tree planting on a scale never done. The lands used for grazing are to become forest. Boundaries of waterways and their streams, the best bottom lands, are to be kept out of food production to stop silt, Building on Farmland, more and more plans are taking UK Food production out at a furious rate.
Gates is the largest ag land owner in USA – because he is WEF. The Great Reset plan – and all the world, by stealth, less food is to be grown – the WEF Want the 4 horsemen! Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death
Well they gave us covid – not the cold, but the destruction of the economies by lockdown, debt creation, and the Pharma lobbying and political corruption. They gave us War – which no sane person would have turned into this global disaster – they are engineering the Famine, and then they will get what they want – Death, and their ultimate goal, Global population under their control, and then ultimately under one billion. Go read their web site, they say it openly. Go watch some Yuval Noah Harari, see evil coming.
Actually don’t you think under one billion is quite an attractive idea? I can certainly think of plenty of benefits as I’m sure you can?
You first then.
By all means, and you second I presume?
You should learn to recognize when someone is in Agreement with you (shares your view) and when someone is Opposing you (thinks you are a self-centered, narcissistic nutball).
Oops ! dont upset the communists!
better than being a Nazi n’est pas? Comme toi
a Nazi is a National Socialist… note the word ” socialist”, and, excuse my French, comme t**t?
Your’e a fool Stanhope, wish you would die (not long is it)
Well done Charles, drawing frustrated, bovine and inarticulate insults from the masses is akin to the satisfaction of seeing two birds come down as one loads for the next brace, or hearing the hounds change their throw of tongue with a find!
Not “impossible,” just requires mass production of technologies still under development. See my longer post elsewhere on this page.
Let’s see what will happen in the UK.
Perhaps the green agenda will simply be quietly dropped without much clamour to avoid losing face.
We can but hope. The first goal for any UK government should be to achieve energy self sufficiency, by any and all means – nuclear, wind, solar, fracking and re-opening coal mines. And ditto for food. And while they’re at it, provide everyone with decent, secure and affordable housing. Not much to ask.
No, that’s all easy. What will they do on Thursday’s and Fridays?
..and the money put into flood relief, storm and fire damage repairs, anti-drought measures and air-conditioning.. because without green action you’re going to bloody well need all those!
Indeed a fine article. I also have a question (and apologise if the answer is obvious): what is the WEF’s/the elites’ objection to nuclear? I mean the real one, not the objection fabricated for popular consumption.
Here is one idea:
I recently read Fixing the Game by Roger L Martin. https://rogerlmartin.com/lets-read/fixing-the-game
(It is not a new book. It’s not a hard read, either.) It claims there are 2 economies now, the economy of the real (where you measure wealth in terms of real goods, manufactured goods) and the economy of expectations (where you measure wealth in terms of getting the financial markets to keep boosting your stock prices). It’s difficult to describe the difference in a few sentences.
There has been a terrible struggle playing out between two capitalist elites since the 70s, and the WEF are leaders in the economy of expectations. The economy of the real has historically been tied to the oil industry. It’s a ‘convert hydrocarbons into wealth’ economy at heart. The WEF (who aren’t mentioned by name in the book) are down on fossil fuels because they want to club the old capitalist economy to death and replace it with the new sort. They have been quite successful with this.
The problem with nuclear is that it can easily cause a revival among the old capitalists, because they don’t need hydrocarbons, per sé, just energy. The book is too old to talk about reindustrialisation, but we’re certainly talking about that now. What’s possibly worse from the WEF point of view is that nuclear power is local. You don’t need an international bureaucracy of energy rationing if your solution to increased energy demand is ‘Start building 2 mini nuclear stations; will be ready to go in 3 years; problem solved.’
“What is the WEF’s/the elites’ objection to nuclear?”
A very good question, for which I’ve also not yet read or heard much discussion about.
I suspect their position is to ignore it and hope it goes away, for it seems to me they are using the ‘climate emergency’ only as a convenient excuse to ram forward their plans without due reflection and pause, or indeed scientific scrutiny.
If the world started building more nuclear power stations, then not only would the climate emergency – if it were true – be averted, but the all important ‘urgency’ about it would be defused and vanish into thin air. They appear to desperately need ’emergencies’ to hasten their plans.
Laura Creighton’s point, about nuclear energy production being more local and not subject to international manipulation, is an important one. These globalists want centralized control above all, and want no nation to be self-sufficient in food, energy etc. Which is the real answer to all of this…to rebuild our communities and go local in every way; to never ever again be dependent on imports for anything.
Most people’s objection to nuclear is the price tag. Even subsidized, it has real costs 3x those of natural gas. We have better options.
Cheap nuclear may have become a reality if we had pursued small MSR / Thorium designs in the 1960s. We didn’t. That ship has sailed.
China hasn’t given up on MSRs and a trial reactor in The Netherlands has gone through its first experimental run. The only two significant problems are corrosion in the pumps – a materials science problem that somehow didn’t happen at the Oak Ridge thorium reactor – and the constant chemical processing side they want to put in but isn’t really needed to be done that way.
China’s also looking at a design called traveling wave that sounds interesting, but I don’t know much about that design.
Glad you asked this, and glad for the replies from Laura Creighton and Michael Craig. I had not thought about the fact that nuclear plants would be local and therefore would make their jurisdictions energy-independent–thus preventing the central control of energy.
That’s an excellent point – and also probably explains why small MSR plants (possibly powered by Thorium) were never pursued by any government post WW II. They all wanted the POWER of nuclear weapons; the electrical power was just a bi-product. No political leader wants to see energy become decentralized, which is the almost certain direction we are going, because it reduced THEIR power.
Something like 60% of France’s electricity comes from standardized nuclear reactor design instead of every one being a separately designed plant as happens here. Another big chunk for France is hydroelectric so they’re pretty green already.
..no money in it for them.
There is also the material objection against nuclear of safety. It’s startling there is not even a starting mention of it in the article. Given Chernobyl and Fukushima, I don’t believe the objection can be too airily dismissed. When these plants were built, they were presumed safe. Safety objections do not apply to renewables like Wind and Solar. People espousing safety concerns may move on to the meta point that Nuclear may fix the short term but it is a can-kicking activity in that it saves up decommission at scale problems for later. I am in no position to assess the validity of this point but that is their starting point for this discussion. Put differently, they might say, ‘given everything we know about likely risks, this time let’s get energy generation ‘right”.
Having worked in research on methods of nuclear waste disposal, I’d say that’s a very big issue.
If we can get truly reliable rockets, with safety contingencies if they fail, to shoot the stuff into space – then it becomes more realistic.
You’ve worked in the area, so I’ll ask you: Has anyone considered stabilizing the waste into a form which will not dissolve in sea water and dumping it on the ocean floor in a subduction zone where it will be dragged into the ocean floor by the shifting of the tectonic plates?
And subduction zones are where earthquakes happen that can physically shatter whatever way you’ve packaged up the waste and release it into the oceans.
Finland has a project for a new type of disposal system that sounds promising though. Here’s a link to the description: https://www.science.org/content/article/finland-built-tomb-store-nuclear-waste-can-it-survive-100000-years
But who knows what will be useful in the future? Molten salt reactors can use what is now nuclear waste as their fuel. Lots of energy left in it. Only about 2% max of the potential energy before the rods are taken out and replaced.
And a lot of countries are getting worried about powering space missions. They use a plutonium-238 based heat generator for power and it’s pretty close to being used up since it was only made in breeder reactors and those have long since all been closed down. There’s a project underway to start a small reactor at Oak Ridge to make more, but I don’t know if it’s actually up and running yet.
But no one is proposing building more Soviet-style reactors or doing experiments on them like the one that led to Chernobyl. And, viewed objectively, Fukushima is actually an advertisement for the safety of nuclear power plants: it was hit with an earthquake beyond its design parameter, followed by a tsunami that took out its power supply, the core actually melted (the thing anti-nuclear alarmists tell us would bring near total destruction to the surrounding area) and well, the results weren’t all that bad.
It does offer a few morals: (1) don’t build nuclear power plants that lack a failsafe shutdown mechanism that works without an external power source; (2) don’t put nuclear power plants in earthquake prone areas; and (3) don’t store spent fuel rods in places prone to tsunamis.
High pressure water reactors, the kind we use today, with the fuel we use today can’t operate any other way. The *need* power for cooling for months, if not years, before the rods have stabilized enough to be safe in ambient temperatures. Listen to all the reasons why the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station is so dangerous with power being lost and re-gained and lost again. There’s only enough diesel to last for six days of keeping the cooling systems on without external power.
No place is immune from earthquakes. Some are far more active than others, but there are millions of Americans living on or near places that we *know* have had earthquake activity in the last few hundred to a thousand years or so, but not since they’ve become populated. Places as diverse as Missouri to New England have had *major* earthquakes in the past. The New Madrid fault is beyond due at this point, but no one is doing anything to prepare for it. Who knows about the ones we don’t know about – the unknown unknowns, as it were. If Yucca Mountain isn’t safe enough for the environmentalists then no place is.
Shipping nuclear waste to a common depository was the original idea until the environmentalists knocked it out of the park with objections to moving it, whether by truck or train, where any human being might possibly come into contact with it in case of an accident. So now it’s been sitting at the reactors and they’re now designed on the assumption that long term, on-site storage will be needed until someone waves a magic wand to teleport it to an absolutely 110% guaranteed “safe” for 100,000 years place that also doesn’t exist.
Since current reactors need a *lot* of water and an easy way to release that water, building them on coastlines makes sense. France is having a problem now with reactor water mixing with rivers whose water is already warmer than normal being too hot and having a negative effect on the water ecosystems. Almost all ocean coastlines are subject to the possibility of a tsunami, again, even ones that people know little to nothing about.
To some extent we have little choice but to accept some risks … unless we can magically get rid of the environmentalists and we do still need some of them to call us out when we’re being really stupid. either that or, well, maybe look at the new nuclear designs that are being tested in other places that are far safer than the water reactors we use today. The NRC won’t allow any even small test reactors of different designs to be built in the US. China is testing some and The Netherlands has done its first run on a molten salt reactor. Maybe we’ll just have to license the designs from them.
Thousands die from dams everyyear. Nobody died from the nuclear explosion at Fukishima, Wikiphas rewritten the story of the dam collapse but at the time 5000 were reported to have died from it. 120 dead in Chernobyl, , then, with nuclear power active since the mid 1950s. It is a fantastic safety record. Obviously much better than coal, and equal to gas ( not counting the hundreds of deaths each year from unserviced gas boilers).In the early 1990s, there was panic in tbe West about Russia’s nuclear submarines. They are still going, and a nuclear powered ship was towed to the Arctic a few years ago to keep a small town warm and lit.
More people have died installing solar panels than from nuclear accidents. But one small correction. They decided that one guy that died from cancer a few years after Fukushima did likely get that cancer from his work there when the plant went down. So one death was attributed to Fukushima.
Overall, safety takes a back seat to cost. Nuclear energy costs 3x gas/coal/oil.
They decided that one person died from the Fukushima accident from a cancer he died of a few years later. No one died at Three Mile Island. Even Chornobyl wasn’t as bad as they expected. About 50 died right off the bat and a few dozen more not too long after. But the rest are expected to be primarily thyroid cancer and that’s the most curable type out there. Something like only a 1% fatality rate if it’s caught before it’s pretty much all done. Iodine pills are all that’s needed to deal with losing the thyroid.
And exactly *no one* is proposing making reactors like the Soviets used to. They didn’t even use containment domes, just a ceiling – which blew when the reactor blew.
There are reactor designs that are walkway safe. No power? No problem. There are freeze plugs that need power to stay frozen. Lose power? They melt and gravity takes over from there to let the thorium (or whatever other salt they’re using) drain down into separate containers. No additional cooling needed. It’s shut down. They can even use current nuclear waste as fuel and what they generate is far safer and radioactive for a *much* shorter time than what you get from enriched uranium fuel.
There is no climate or environmental “crisis” – there are challenges certainly, which we are more than capable of meeting, but not by hysteria and panic. And certainly not by “net zero”.
Hear hear
Quite! The greatest confidence trick in history, or at the very least since the Resurrection.
You blaspheme sir! How could St Greta Turdburg possibly be wrong?
Even our King, of sacred name, believes her, so why don’t you?
“St Greta Turdburg”
I must remember that, hilarious 🙂
Indeed. The money could be allocated instead to flood relief, dealing with wildfires snd storm damage and investing in refrigeration and air conditioning. After all cure is better than prevention isnt it?
We were not responsible for the end of the last ice age and we are not responsible for global warmingThe cycles have happened for millions of years
certainly we should work on reducing pollution but one decent sized volcano wipes out all the gains from the last 10 yeqrs
Lab tested and proven from over 100 years ago. If you double the concentration of CO₂ in a gaseous mixture and keep everything else the same, the ambient temperature will increase by about 1.1°C. The pre-industrial level of CO₂ was about 270ppm. So doubling that would mean 1.1°C or warming when the concentration gets to 540ppm. Another 1.1°C at 1080ppm. Then to 2160ppm. We’re currently at about 425ppm, so not at the first doubling yet. I seriously doubt we’ll double it again.
The Holocene optimum was about eight thousand years ago. We’ve been slowly cooling off ever since with several ups and downs, but the trend line has always been down. Nothing higher since then. Until recently.
Plus climate systems are all mixed together. Warmer air means more humidity and good old H₂O is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO₂. However, H₂O only stays in the atmosphere for about 4 days on average, whereas CO₂ can take 100 years to settle back out. But H₂O also creates clouds and clouds reflect solar radiation back out into space before it gets down here. We don’t understand clouds very well yet, at least not to the point we can really model them.
So yes, there is considerably more CO₂ in the atmosphere than there would be naturally. So at least some of the observed warming in the last hundred years or so is undoubtedly due to our actions. How much? We don’t know. “Significant” to a scientist could mean anything above 5% or anything above 50%. It’s not a word that’s defined very precisely so anyone can mean almost anything when using it.
What best to do about it? We don’t know. What can we do about it? We don’t know. Not yet. Not in the real world. It’s not it’s the only issue mankind has to deal with. How much should be used to deal with which problem? Who decides? On what basis? Is it really a crisis? We don’t know. It’s a word that gets thrown around and tagged onto everything. The war on this and the war on that. And those in power “never let a crisis go to waste”. Anything and everything can be used to centralize even more power in their hands.
Adaptation is better than the fools’ errand of trying to control the climate. “Decarbonizing” the energy economy only works if
(1) the theory that human greenhouse gas emissions are driving global temperatures is correct.
(2) we have not already passed a tipping point so that the climate will continue warming anyway
and
(3) the developing world joins in rather than continuing and even increasing their fossil fuel use.
Adaptation works regardless.
So the great Climate Change debate shifts, from whether it’s real, to what’s the best replacement to fossil fuels. It’s not such a bad response. If Climate Change is real then nuclear is an efficient source of energy to replace fossil fuels. If it is not real then we have simply moved to a modern form of energy that replaces the old. This is a far better debate than whether Climate Change is real or not.
Are you actually serious? You propose essentially giving a free pass to an agenda that has tricked us all into handing over trillions collectively in tax money to solve a problem that basically turns out not to exist after all, just because there is a supplementary reason why some of its objectives might still be a good idea.
The problem with this, apart from the obvious danger of permitting activists, politicians and bureacrats to get away with planetary scale fraud, is that the solution here, nuclear power, has been a fossil fuel alternative for decades before the climate crisis anyway. It failed to replace fossil fuel power largely through the efforts of the same lying scumbags who now infest the climate change agenda. So it’s not tenable to argue what you appear to argue: in fact it is outrageous.
I have no idea what you mean in relation to my comment.
..me neither! I think you spoiled his rant and he ain’t happy.
Liam, are you being ironic Mr Pot?
Climate change is real: the climate has been changing continuously ever since the planet was formed. We’ve been into and out of several ice ages, each involving temperature changes far exceeding those experienced since the industrial revolution, without any help from mankind.
What aren”t real are the alleged catastrophic consequences that are supposed to result from not achieving net zero by 2050. They aren’t real at all.
Yes, I think you’re on the right track. I explored these issues briefly in my latest substack post “Now is the winter of our disconnect”. In there is a reference to some recent scientific work that calls the IPCC models into question. The scientific debate about the causes of climate change is very much alive!
..you think the current climate extremes aren’t true? ..or aren’t serious? ..or are you hopful of magic tech solutions? Do you think the billions far worse affected will stay put and just die where they are? Do you have room for a couple of hundred million flooded out Pakistanis (and soon Bangladeshis?)
I think he said man made climate change is not real
One lesson we should take is not to live on flood plains unless your house floats
I remember when it seemed like the Bangladeshi were getting flooded out, often leading to famines, with 10,000 or more dying every few years. The storms haven’t moved. We just got a lot better at predicting them and they got a lot better in dealing with them when they did hit. It’s not unheard of for 75% or more of the country to be underwater. 25% or so is the norm, with some places being under water for nine months out of the year. They have found ways to make floating farms so that they can harvest quite well, whether flooded or not. They’re now getting advice on how to live below sea level from the Dutch. It’s not just sea level rise but also subsidence of the land near the ocean on top of that. Much of the Netherlands is below sea level, as low as 6.5 meters or so below. But they manage quite well nonetheless.
How can you call wind etc a modern form of energy? “Modern” means what you need and want when you need and want it, not when it happens to be available. It’s like trying to run a restaurant with stuff off your vegetable patch. The gulf between dispatchable and non-dispatchable is vast.
I didn’t say wind energy was a modern form of energy. The modern form of energy I was referring to was nuclear.
Another issue NEVER discussed by our betters who push this “climate change” and “carbon neutral” nonsense is that their policies will kill hundreds of millions of people in the developing world. They don’t care about that…at all! That should tell you the kind of scum we are dealing with.
Kill millions outright and condemn billions of born and unborn to short, brutish, and nasty lives of slavery to the viscissitudes of nature and their rulers.
At 77 I shall likely be bowing out sometime over the next decade anyway, but what makes you think the genocide plans are limited to the developing world?
..those hundreds of millions will not stay quietly where they are: especially when they know that their former colonialists caused..
A. their poverty that prevents them from coping
B. the climate crisis itself (industrial revolution)
You can expect a goodly number of them to call round as things hot up and water runs out or rises up to flood them: not least Pakistan and soon Bangladesh..
Who do you mean by “their former colonialists”?
What is the relevance of past colonialism to the point you are making?
The real intention of Net Zero is to drive down living standards. You will live in a tiny flat with a timed shower. A car will be a luxury fit only for the wealthy. Regular timed power cuts for residential areas will give you the time needed to go outside and consume using your UBI money.
Excellent article. With the exception of
The latter is the truth.
The use of the term ‘decarbonising’ is not accurate or correct. I would agree that we need to pollute less and use less single use plastic. However, can we remember that plants breath CO2 and produce oxygen. Decarbonisation is insane. Unless we don’t need plants anymore and will grow everything in labs instead. Would be a great carbon write-off! Additionally ‘climate change’ is not a premise, never mind reason.
Regarding power, just sign-up for a ‘carbon neutral’ tariff where your power only comes from renewable sources and laugh at the prospect of rationing and blackouts.
Joking aside, at least for now the reality is that the desire is for consumers to only purchase the most refined value-add product. Thereby maximising the potential for profit. You get to ‘do your bit’ by buying nice clean electricity (which is produced from fossil fuels and “offset” via deception as described in the article).
I am most certainly NOT that consumer. I have never signed up to a virtue signalling (AKA green) tariff, only to the cheapest one – that was clearly in the good old days when one had a choice of supplier and tariff.
You forget that it’s the extra CO2, ie the tipping point that is the problem. 97% of CO2 is not man-made but is absorbed by plants in a nice balancing act. Think of straws and camels’ backs..
Net zero, ESG and wokism are all nurtured to give cover to corporations to allow them to carry on making huge profits with ordinary people making sacrifices. Climate change is real and the only solution to provide enough power is nuclear. Last week in the UK there was a period when wind was generating less than 2 GW of electricity even though the installed capacity of wind is 25 GW. UK needs 200GW of power typically including about 35GW of electricity so this represents less than 1% of UK’s total energy needs when the wind is not blowing. Wind will never be sufficient and solar only works in the day. Biomass is a con – burnt plant material takes years to regenerate. Hydro can be used in favourable locations with plenty of land but can generate only a small fraction of the energy we need. Damaging the food system is criminal and immoral and will only increase the price of food driving people around the world into poverty. With adoption of nuclear and maintaining and improving food production, ordinary people will not have to make these sacrifices.
Climate change is NOT real, and most certainly cannot be controlled by man.
There is an Environmental problem and we do need to sort out our waste and overproduction of polluting items, such as plastic bags and bottles etc.
I agree that environmental pollution is an obvious and visible problem. But human contribution to climate change is probably (very) significant with 90+ per cent probability. So it’s sensible to take reasonable measures without busting a gut. There is no ‘climate emergency’ which is why we have time to move over to nuclear and other low carbon energy sources while maintaining our standard of living and freedoms But we should not do absolutely nothing.
A nuanced opinion clears gets flak from fanatics and deniers
You assume the bad actors are corporations. Corporations do not themselves do anything. The culprits are professional managers. Net zero, ESG and wokism (DEI in the corporate context) are not excuses for fat profits. They are all excuses for fat pay packets and bonuses even when the corporation is not making huge profits. Key your pay packet to something easier than delivering profits to the shareholders and get that approved by your fellow managers on the board or those that are voting most of the shares in your company, since they’re not held by the actual captialists, but by investment houses like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and Berkshire Hathaway.
Professional managers are the Western analogue of Djilas’s “New Class”.
I am not saying that corporations are bad actors or that profits are bad. I don’t want to claim that any particular types of individuals are bad actors as I haven’t got any evidence of this. I can’t even claim that the energy and food ‘chains” are being targeted specifically to make people poor – rather this a side effect of the group think on net zero, ESG and wokism which seems to have captured education, the media, the institutions, government and corporations. I just think this group think is extraordinarily damaging to ordinary people is very misguided and is not conducive to human flourishing – but who am I to dispute the group think ?
“This, then, is the great Net Zero lie: it’s primary goal isn’t remedying the climate crisis. After all, a solution to the crisis stands right in front of us — only to be ignored by our political and financial elites.”
But this has been obvious for years anyway. It has taken a few years for me to work this out, but the last twenty years in which the IPCC and UNFCCC has found themselves collecting data that proves that we are not in immediate climate danger is not, as you might think, bad news for the global warming establishment.
Look at it from their point of view: they successfully harnessed huge democratic support – and tax money – from mostly wealthy Western nations to build a supranational political power base for themselves to solve a problem that they told us was a planetary existential crisis. They then discovered that the problem, though it exists, isn’t existential, and isn’t in fact anywhere near the top of global environmental and economic concerns.
What do they do with this? Admit they were wrong and disband? Or keep the money and the power, don’t bother trying really to change anything, cosy up to a bunch of corporations, political activists and A-list actors with greenwashing strategies, and then in another 25 years when the climate is still just fine, claim that what they did worked and that the world owes them for saving it.
They’d take the second option, obviously, and that’s exactly what they’re right in the middle of doing.
We may have “had enough” but that won’t stop them from giving us more and more and more. Nothing will stop them. In the US, elections are now determined by those who count the votes. And even if we could “vote the bastards out”, all we have to choose from, R or D, are bastards. Anyone who makes it to high office who really opposes all this will get the Trump treatment, good and hard.
Our options are dwindling fast.
A new political party is needed urgently in the UK which isn’t corrupt and isn’t ideologically blinded. A party of the people.. maybe one will emerge from “We won’t pay” “Enough is enough” etc. It needs to be heavily weighted in favour of young people since it is they who will suffer the most unless this insanity is stopped.
Poor ol’ Corbyn is starting to look not such a bad option now is he?
You might apply Occam’s Razor. A conspiracy requiring the participation of many countries and groups is extremely complicated even if those involved have the brains and/or time (neither is likely). Incompetence is much more likely. NetZero is nothing more than a form of mass virtue-signalling – no different from aristocratic support for religion in the past – that was supposed to imply minimal costs and inconvenience. The problems arise when the bills fall due.
Remember too that Green Parties everywhere hate nuclear power much more passionately than they desire NetZero because most of them were founded out of opposition to various nuclear projects.
Finally, and most importantly, developing countries – including China and India – have not the slightest intention of allowing notional commitments to reduce CO2 emissions to deflect them from their longer term goals for economic growth.
Overall what we have is a veneer of NetZero sustained by the pretence that technology will solve all difficult issues and zero public acceptance of either the costs or other choices that might be involved to make the commitment mean something. In the meantime, the reality is a form of economic self-harm by which the future economic weight of Europe and some (though not all) other developed countries goes to zero. NetZero of a different kind!
Gordon, as you say of Western Europe’s future prospects trending to self-destruction: Canada under Trudeau is another country determined to run itself into the ground.
But we Canadians have some fresh hope with the election of a new national Conservative party leader whom we desperately hope will not be drawn to woke knee-jerks and virtue-signaling at every turn.
The interesting thing is that James Lovelock of Gaia Hypothesis fame, was also a strong supporter of nuclear power. I can see that there may be issues around proliferation of nuclear weapons, but it is definitely part of the medium term solution. Maybe one day we will get thorium reactors working or even nuclear fusion, but not yet.
If we had spent 1/100th of what we’ve actually spent on renewable subsidies, on Thorium molten salt reactors instead, we would now be approaching the orginal holy grail of energy too cheap to meter.
That 1st century nutter, Hero(n) of Alexandria had the same problem when Vespasian & Co rejected his ‘steam engine’. It cost us a thousand years.
You may well be right. I know there was a group of UK MP’s supporting it a decade ago and the Thorium Energy Alliance are trying to push it. Doesn’t seem to be that much being spent on it compared to other potential energy sources. I must get up to date with it.
Solid points here: only one misleading mistake: the author write that 70% of subsidies go fossil fuels, 20% to renewables. Even if true (which it’s not) fossil fuels produce roughly 40 times as much energy than wind and solar. But the subsidy calculations are almost always highly biased. They always exclude the enormous taxes and royalties paid by both consumers and producers of fossil fuels. I strongly believe that fossil fuels are on balance burdened on a net and comparative basis. That doesn’t take away from the authors main point that netzero’s goal for some has little to do with efficient replacement of energy sources and more to do with some neo-Malthusian agenda
The subsidy argument (if you read his link) relies on counting tax relief on massive investments, which any legitimate business would get, as “subsidies”.
It’s a disgrace of an argument, designed simply to divert attention from the massive and costly market-rigging in favour of wind and solar.
And, as you say, does nothing to balance this with the enormous taxes, carbon taxes and royalties, not to mention “windfall taxes” paid by oil and gas, which Wind and Solar companies will likely never be faced with – despite them cashing in on current high energy prices drive by the price of gas.
Not to mention that hydrocarbons’ benefits go far beyond fuels, making the outdated term “fossil fuels” hopelessly inadequate when referring to liquid hydrocarbons extraction.
Does this sound familiar?
“The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer, and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard‐of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.” —
from an Associated Press report published in The Washington Post on Nov. 2, 1922.
The Global Warming Apocalypses That Didn’t Happen
Then again, it has never been about ‘saving the planet’:
The United Nations has been one of the organizations leading the manmade climate change push. The paragraph below, from the February 10, 2015 Investor’s Business Daily article “U.N. Official Reveals Real Reason Behind Warming Scare” seems to state the goal clearly.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism. “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
But you forgot to add that climate change can only be achieved by racial minorities and the LGBT Q!
Of course they want to change it. get rid of capitalism. Capitalism is the anthesis of power/control over the masses by the wealthy few. It enables peasants the opportunity to pull themselves up and out of servitude. Some have even come to challenge the elites hold over select industries & fields and that can not be allowed to continue! They must Reset things so we’re back to a modern global Monarchy with the elites as the modern day Kings & queens while the rest of us are peasants and land serfs.
In my home town, the push for zero emissions has generated the unpopular implementation of a wave of ‘traffic calming’ solutions that have caused misery, higher levels of pollution and gridlocks with no sign of abating. Green advocates stand as human bollards oblivious to the discriminatory focus of the initiatives which are all in the poorest parts of town. Local government representatives aren’t interested in the divisive nature of the policy, they don’t care who is hurt because the ends surely justify the means.
Climate change eco sandaloid tree hugger zealotry is an internet driven quasi religion for the ill educated proletariat aching for something to belong to.
“…for the ill educated proletariat aching for something to belong to.”
Actually it’s a religion for middle-class unemployables which helps persuade themselves that they’re better than the rest of us. The people who mostly pay the price of this conceit belong to the proletariat, and they know it’s a crock of shit.
Yes, my least favourite rectum end of the socio demograph!
An obstacle to the development of nuclear power is the massive initial and long-term investment it will require. Private companies even with financial help from government don’t seem prepared to risk the capital and long-term commitment required for nuclear investment – so much for brave risk taking enterprise! Its so much easier for governments and private companies to focus on smaller scale investment in ‘alternatives’ and avoid the financial and political commitment to nuclear.
You are correct. The investments are huge and the risks as well. Southern Company has found this out the hard way in their Plant Vogtle project, which it the first new nuclear plant to be built in the US in something like 40 years. It has cost twice the initial estimates and taken twice as long to complete than projected.
https://www.eenews.net/articles/plant-vogtle-hits-new-delays-costs-surge-near-30b/?msclkid=57255aa7cfe111ec8c6059fc494faaa0
That’s true only for the older reactor designs. The newer concepts, freed from the requirement to produce fissile material for weapons, do not need to be large scale, don’t need high pressurisation, and very often don’t possess the risk of catastrophic meltdown, thus absolving them of much of the raft of excessive safety measures that push up the cost so much.
There is also the fact that nuclear is only seemingly so much more expensive because the externalities associated with it are incorrectly stated, and those of most other energy platforms too, for that matter. The UK has some of the largest waste stockpiles in the world, which presently represent a massive long term liability, presently over £100bn and rising. However, thorium molten salt reactors could burn up this waste, turning it from a liability into an asset. If you convert a £100bn liability into an asset by choosing to pursue thorium nuclear as an option, then it follows that failing to pursue that option costs you £100bn.
So while it’s a bit of a stretch, I would argue that pursuing renewables instead of the new reactor designs that can use existing waste is colossally expensive and unaffordable.
The claim “a recent study of $634 billion in energy-sector subsidies in 2020 found that around 70% went to fossil fuels and only 20% went to renewable power generation.” is disingenuous to say the least.
The nature article is using the same technique that OECD used previously and it is explained very well as being complete garbage by Paul Homewood
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2022/04/24/does-the-uk-subsidise-fossil-fuels/
The sheen will surely come off ‘net zero’ but like banking, covid and all these supposed crisis the money has already been banked never to be returned and nobody will be held accountable: hidden behind a systemic failure interpretation of the problem and maybe a long toothless public inquiry.
Good distinction at last between Govspeak/Corpspeak and the truth of the underlying issue, which is rare here on UnHerd. But I wonder why the ‘intermittency = inadequacy’ argument against renewables never takes account of tidal power? Is it technical or financial?
It’s not technical. I did my final year Civ Eng dissertation on it in 1978 and everything necessary exists. Financially, then, it didn’t stack up.
There are also huge ecological barriers in the planning process, as it changes the local ecosystem in the bays where the barriers are built.
Interesting point, one never hears about tidal power any more. Is there also a capacity issue? I.e. could it generate enough to make much of a difference?
Not a specialist, but I remember reading that the yield was ridiculous, for huge local ecological impact, especially compared to nuclear power.
That was back when rational thinking was the name of the game.
Not sure about tidal power per se, but there is a significant ecological effect of large scale wave power extraction, which for efficiency would probably be combined with that of tidal power.
The snag is that most oxygen is dissolved in sea water along shorelines, where waves break and foam. So if one extracts energy from waves then there is less foaming when they reach the shore in attenuated form. This in turn means less oxygen is dissolved in the sea water, and plant and animal sea life thus suffers.
That was my understanding, but no doubt some expert will soon be along to trash the idea!
Tidal power can and should be used where possible but the places it can be used are few in number and the total amount of energy it can produce is only a tiny fraction of the energy we need.1% would be a vary optimistic target
Yes tidal seems like it should be ideal for the UK. There was a chap on the radio a few weeks ago saying they have detailed plans for 7 projects which would give 10 GW. My understanding is that the problem is environmental. Too much habitat damage, rare species etc and would never get through planning. There was a case not long ago when a 1GW offshore wind array project was cancelled entirely because of a rare bird. Also there was a well developed project in Cardiff Bay 20-30 years ago, and that was cancelled for environmental reasons. If that had gobe ahead and been successful we’d probably be in a different place now.
If global leadership was serious about climate change the discussion would revolve around the most viable carbon extraction technology which is planting trees. One trillion additional trees would absorb all the carbon currently produced by burning fissile fuels. An additional trillion trees would take us back to pre industrial carbon levels within 40 years. This solution buys the world time to create new energy technologies and continues the unprecedented reduction in global poverty that has taken place over the last two decades.
I have maintained for well over a decade that innovation, not government, would get us over our addiction to fossil fuels. I am cautiously optimistic that it still will do so, far earlier than anyone had imagined – but not because any government dictates it.
Eavor dotcom has annonced it is building it’s first commercial application power plant of their new closed loop geothermal power plant, large enough to power 20,000 homes. Not huge, but certainly large enough to prove the concept on a commercial scale. They are also funded for another project in the American Southwest which would probably be considered a bit more experimental in that they propose deeper than traditional drilling. If this one works too, it means geothermal ANYWHERE. The icing on the cake is that they finally are providing some projections on price – less than $60/MWH over the lifetime of the plant, which is competitive with natural gas in the USA but without the gas.
For stationary / grid storage, Form Energy (iron/water/air battery) has similarly sold its first two commercial scale projects, one here in Georgia for a 1.5GWH / 100 hour duration battery. With literally no toxic or scarce materials, and energy density roughly equal to LiIon, two full days of grid storage coupled with appropriate amounts of renewable energy would add only $0.005/kWh amortized over the life of the units. Their first commercial scale factory is fully funded, and unless some utterly unanticipated catastrophe occurs, there could be dozens (hundreds?) of such factories within a decade.
For transportation / mobile uses, Influit Energy has demonstrated a “liquid fuel” already having 1.5x the energy density of LiIon batteries, but without the longevity problems and made from plentiful, nontoxic materials. Working like a flow battery, the fluid can be charged in the vehicle like a battery – or alternatively the fluid can be quick-swapped with ‘charged fluid’ in minutes like at a gas station. They are working on an improved fluid expected to be 4x the energy density of LiIon, which would mean cars / trains / airplanes with greater than 1,000 mile range.
These are the building blocks. These are the first real solutions which meet not only the limited criteria for “toys” (sorry, Tesla, but at 1% of the market your cars are still toys), using exotic / rare / toxic materials, and targeted primarily at the rich, but will be scalable, cheap enough, and safe enough for the masses.
This debate about Net Zero and related matters has become detached from the core issue: Do we have a moral obligation to look after our environment and our planet with the future in mind, or do we not? Past generations have taken it for granted that we do. Many people today seem to prefer to dodge the issue, avoiding the practical discomfort of a positive response and the moral discomfort of a negative response.
Without a clear stand on this, the debate becomes little more than a topic for clever debating.
Past, present and future generations will move that something should be done about the environment and similar challenges only insofar as it doesn’t cost them anything.
It’s either a practical problem or not a problem.
We do have a moral obligation not to squander finances and put future generations in debt just to satisfy our our own moral vanity
Like Co2, net aero is a complete scam by the rich to fleece the population of the world and keep the poor in there place
Tired of arguing. 7 billion people occupy less than 9% of the planet’s surface. 0.9% of England is tarmac road surface. Go up in a plane, balloon, glider and look out, bags of room and generally speaking we can see for miles.
Arguments I can’t win. I often wish we had a sensible but benevolent world dictator. If the climate’s changing it will. Impoverishing puny humans by turning patio heaters off and subjecting people to hypothermia will change nothing. We outbred covid at its height.
Let the climate change. Don’t try and build walls or react as if it has already happened. Move uphill, Live on floating houses or houses on stilts like Borneo’s Kampung Ayer. There isn’t enough water to submerge Ararat. The whole Noah’s Ark thing is more incestuous the more you look at it.
The Ark of Space would never reach Planet Earth 2. New technology spaceships would catch up with it and unload it on their way to New Jupiter, New Mars and New Titan.
Apart from other considerations it seems to me that even if you thought net zero was a good idea putting it into law is a bad way of going about it. Similar to putting into law that we are in a climate emergency, it is such a broad target and the consequences of such a law are so far reaching it is almost meaningless as is trying to commit future governments for the next 30 years. It won’t worry Boris in 2050 I’m sure.
I can see in a way that it might serve the government’s purpose since it omits any kind of detail about how it will be achieved and what the consequences might be. The electorate might think Net Zero is a good thing but having to replace your nice, reliable gas boiler with an air source heat pump or change your car for an electric one might not be so popular.
The other reason I think it’s a bad thing is that it gives every green activist group a legal weapon to hammer governments and local authorities whenever we need a new road, bypass or carpark. I think the government almost came unstuck itself when it approved a third runway at Heathrow. My understanding is that it was only allowed because of a technicality.
the analysis of the problem, the weird Green responses, where energy growth is, elite bandwagonism etc are all spot on. so it’s then really disappointing that the writer plumps so firmly and knowingly for conspiracy rather than c**k-up. the reason nuclear isnt everywhere is because most politicians are cowards and public opinion has been split into Left-Green (claiming urgency but then profering snake oil against bullets) and the Right (reactively dismissing urgency as alarmism). whereas what we actually need is radical Decarbonisation – nuclear, carbon capture, hydropower, solar geoengineering as back up – and yes also renewables, just not as the be all and end all. this is a numbers game – how many people we are now and will be, how much can be electrified or not, when natural feedback loops might kick in or not. run a mile from anyone waving *any* kind of moralising stick at you, whether it is Greens or let-me-tell-you-what-the-real-world-is-like “Pragmatists”.
Why would you assume c**k up over conspiracy?
What is the WEF other than an open conspiracy – rich powerful elites coming together to further their interests? It seems prety naive to me to assume c**k up over conspiracy.
There’s no need to censor the term c**k-up. It doesn’t refer to male genitals.
Oh, I see, now. UnHerd censors it. Wake up UnHerd.
More results from another ‘Have cake and eat it’ strategy? Classic cognitive dissonance at work in government policy?
Interesting thoughts from Patrick Moore.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/exclusive-former-greenpeace-founder-patrick-moore-debunks-the-false-narratives-of-climate-change_4709568.html
… the latest example of “crisis capitalism”, whereby crises are exploited (and in some cases engineered) by ruling elites to push through restructurings of the capitalist system — usually by concentrating capital and power in the hands of fewer and fewer people in a manner that would likely face unsurmountable popular opposition in “normal” times. …
A similar theme is explored in a discussion between Jordan Peterson and Vivek Ramaswamy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s481xqjOmxI&t=1057s
“causing millions of deaths every year.” …… WHERE IS YOUR DATA ??? ….. What utter rubbish, what about the mainly women who die because they have to cook with wood and animal dung in the third world !!! ….. Give them Propane and Coal electric and you would save a lot of lives.
I’m interested to know how they will actually demonstrate that they have reached the net zero target. Won’t it need some creative accounting?
I’m interested to know how they will actually demonstrate that they have reached the net zero target. Won’t it need some creative accounting?
Four main deceptions here.
1. This usually invites two types of response: the Malthusian-pessimist ….. and the naïve-environmentalist kind…… Both of these responses share one thing: they’re wrong.
Except Human Overshoot is very real and is the basis of the climate and ecological crisis endangering the human species. However, the naive environmentalist is wrong due to hydrocarbon entanglement and the fact that there isn’t enough raw materials for the world to switch to wind and solar.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351712079_The_Mining_of_Minerals_and_the_Limits_to_Growth
2. Fossil fuel use is essential for the build out of renewables whether in terms of extracting raw materials, transporting, smelting and fabrication.
It is called hydrocarbon entanglement, so you are deceiving yourself regarding the motivations of WEF even though they are a highly incompetent crowd of self serving elites.
3. Peak uranium
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351712079_The_Mining_of_Minerals_and_the_Limits_to_Growth
4. Very high levelised cost of nuclear energy would contract discretionary income and reduce standards of living.
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/
This is potentially a small price to pay to maintain adequate above poverty standards of living but will require much greater levels of redistribution and a shorter working week. Essentially nuclear is the degrowth option.
Are you really arguing that Nuclear is not the best (currently available) alternative to fossil fuels?
The climate crises is not real. I’m surprised that in a article filled with examples of calling out government scams, you still buy into the biggest one.
I agree with the need to eliminate use of nitrogen-based fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture. However, the fact that’s telling as to the likely real purpose behind the recent ones is that there’s no mention of transitioning farms to regenerative agriculture and grazing, as would be the case if cutting down on pollution were the real goal.
Great point. Regenerative agriculture can actually reduce atmospheric CO2 as well as restoring soil fertility and biodiversity. And it doesn’t require driving farmers off their land – potentially the opposite as degraded land can be restored through regenerative practices. It’s worth checking out Alan Savory’s amazing before and after photos of some of the places where regenerative agriculture has turned virtual desert into flourishing ecosystems.
A balance sheet has two sides: yet the article assumes continued consumption at existing or even growing levels. This of course is happening but will soon stop, not out of choice but out of actual shortages. Capping the price (UK) will not provide more gas and electricity (but it will increase attempted consumption). The two are utterly distinct.
It is clear to me that consumption must reduce for many reasons and so the possibility of having enough energy from renewables starts to look more possible. The answer lies in a total rejection of the globalist, endless growth, debt driven capitalist model (clearly unsustainable). And the development of its polar opposite: Localisation in which huge numbers of goods are no longer transported all over the globe using vast quantities of fuel / energy. Indeed many of the sophisticated/ high tech goods in question will have to be far more long-lasting and far fewer in variety and number. We will have to revert to consuming half of what we consume now and half of that can be produced in local communities not least food, clothing, housing, power, water (and waste disposal).
In short, with drastically reduced consumption and local sourcing of goods and services it WILL be possible to rely solely on renewables. Because there is no other realistic alternative.
Yes endless economic growth is a fantasy that will soon hit the reality of ecological systems that are finite. I think a more localised life where we have to be more resourceful about meeting our material needs and people live more like we used to, in small, close knit communities, could actually be a much happier one than our current consumer culture. As Lily Tomlin so aptly put it: ‘If you win the rat race, you are still a rat’.
If the loony notions of those who think nuclear power will feed the world (or do anything useful and safe within the next ten years) were taken seriously, the rest of us would be taken for fools. What is it about purported libertarian and free market undereducated over consumers that spurs such delusions and fantasies? I have considered various approaches and believe that the simplest answer is an incredible resentment of science and environmental activists for not indulging the absurd belief system that says there are no limits, accumulating of wealth is desirable and good even when at the expense of Nature, and that capitalism is and has been the fairest economic system imaginable. Dream on, dunces. And by the way, you have all been paying for all those nuclear accidents, and paying through the nose. You have fingered the wrong people and organizations all these years. This condition is called Ignorance.
It’s so easy to talk about nuclear accidents and the cost: the horror. More hyperbole. No one is saying nuclear will feed the world. That’s not what it does. It produces energy. And what an incredible feat, to find the answer to our delusions and fantasies.
I’d say the -16 ratings you have on your anti-nuclear power post are a sign that your beliefs about nuclear aren’t shared by the rest here.
Nuclear is the ONLY viable fossil fuel alternative energy that is currently available.