November 27, 2023 - 6:00pm
The UN’s COP28 climate conference has always been more political than scientific. But now more than ever, the green agenda looks to be in jeopardy.
Whatever you may read in the establishment press, the world is turning away from draconian climate policies. Already developing countries are increasingly open about expanding the use of fossil fuels. Indeed, the two rising world powers, China and India, as well as wannabes like Iran and Russia, all plan to burn more fossil fuels, including coal in the coming years.
This has occurred even though climate extremism has been adopted almost universally by most established institutions, promoted by Wall Street, and feverishly pushed by a compliant media. Yet on the ground level, the Western middle and working classes seem less than enthusiastic about an agenda that seems determined to lower their standard of living for the coming decades.
In green hotbeds such as Germany and California, much of the population already suffers high rates of “energy poverty”. Citizens are being told to limit the size of homes, reduce meat consumption, consume insects instead of meat as well as stop using air travel and cars. Even green zealots like Bill Gates are warning that austerity makes the climate agenda a difficult sell.
The dynamics of climate policies are weakening the West while also handing the economic future to China and its assorted allies. The Middle Kingdom already enjoys a market share of manufacturing exports roughly equal to the US, Germany and Japan combined; American manufacturing meanwhile has recently dropped to its lowest point since the pandemic — made worse by the West’s massive green regulatory onslaughts.
China, which already emits more greenhouse gases than the rest of the high-income world, is primed to be the main beneficiary of the forced march to electric vehicles. It dominates the solar, battery and EV markets, with its coal-dependent industry producing cars roughly half as expensive as its Western competitors. Maybe in the future, the UN should ask China to pay the bill for these worthless events.
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SubscribePope Francis says the Chinese coronavirus global pandemic is “certainly nature’s response” to humanity’s failure to address climate change.
It seems to me that the world has been struck by another pandemic – a pandemic of general idiocy
Milei is right about Bergoglio.
Which pandemic brought on the Covid idiocy and the Green idiocy.
“the green agenda looks to be in jeopardy”
HEAVEN BE PRAISED!!!
‘Heaven be praised’ as the world turns to hell. With exclamation marks too!!!
Heaven be praised that the world is actually becoming more like heaven. A more abundant world, a world where 99% of the people can no longer have to spend all their time dealing with their own food production, a world with only 1% of “climate related deaths” compared to 100 years ago, a world where most living have what the richest in history couldn’t even dream of with more and more getting access to this when authoritarianism is rejected.
!!
The entire net zero agenda is destined to implode on itself. The only questions are when, how much damage is caused and if the west can recover from this self-inflicted madness.
It will take a lot. The MSM is working so hard to push the climate apocalypse, but average people are smelling a rat. The reality is that nature is strong, life does not get snuffed out so easily and has survived much worse in the last 4 billion years.
We need governments who are willing to reverse stupid regulations. There are other options being developed. My prediction is that EV’s will lose out again as they did against the combustion engine at the start of the era of the automobile.
Wow, still in denial eh? I thought some of you folks were starting to see through the Exxon agenda.
Try and get hold of the November issue of The Critic and read all the lies about wind power.
Denial of what? That net zero is utter madness? The Exxon agenda is junior high argumentation. Wind and solar are not a threat to fossil fuels. Exxon loves wind and solar because it distracts from nuclear energy, which might actually be a threat.
You’ll find the tinfoil in the cupboard under the sink.
Naughty, nasty Exxon eh? Forcing people to burn oil and gas that the world is 80% dependent on!. We would starve rapidly without this massive contribution to world energy supply. Pitiful comment. You will be increasingly embarrassed by your position as the years go by.
The climate is warming; the world will adapt to it. Millions of Dutch people are not drowning – not in fact are Bangladeshis.
The real issue is the damage done to science. All these chants of “follow the science” of the last few years have been a disaster. We, the public, have followed the science. We have done as we were told during Covid and watched governments around the world blow enormous sums for marginal returns at best. We also listened whilst they told us that puberty blockers were just a pause, we watched whilst women have been de-sexed for paraphilias. We listened to claims of snowball earth, then drought earth, now runaway climate earth. In all cases we have been told to follow the science whilst we watch its distortion by compliance to political ideology, whilst it changes its mind and whilst it seems utterly blind, and silent, to the polluters that exist today and not 200 years ago at the start of the Industrial Revolution. We also see it in the media with its 24 hour news cycle and endless creation of what it passes off as “public opinion” when really it is ideologically captured opinion broadcast through the mouths of elitist journalists that despise the working classes.
What did they think would happen when they kept laying down in our roads, pushing up the costs of living, marching for terrorists, striking for obscene pay rises whilst on the highest salaries in the country, screaming about the lack of democracy whilst they force their opinions on the rest of us via academia, the press, DEI and f*****g rainbow shit and not by being popularly elected.
The gaslighting of the entire public needs to stop and it is your industry that is most to blame in its chase for ever higher clicks.
Surely science has been damaged because it has deserved it
Some good points, well made. I’m not sure what puberty blockers have to do with the Green Agenda though.
All bedfellows of Marxist identitarians that want the destruction of the west because they are bored and hateful.
I guess I am just one of those old school types (the spiritual child of Reagan and Thatcher) who have never seen what is generally described as the “woke agenda” as being a component of economics.
I get the feeling Western political elites will keep pushing this thing all the way up to economic destruction, social unrest and their own imminent political suicide.
Their political suicide is fine with me as long as they don’t take the rest of us down with them.
They can’t reset until the prosperous economies of the anglosphere are destroyed. That’s why every one of these countries have had their cabinets well and truly “penetrated”.
The BBC green propaganda machine is unstoppable; its environmental droning infiltrates every nook and cranny of its broadcasts and publications 24/7.
So don’t tune in.
It keeps going on about balance but there is never any balance on this subject.
I don’t! Not sure the purpose of your comment.
“The middle and working classes are tiring of draconian climate policies”
Well of course thy are since they are being asked to fit the bill. You do thing for one moment the elites and luvvies cheering this are going to give up meat, private jets, and heating their many homes.
Here is the real crisis;
https://twitter.com/GoCOtwo
The only thing ‘draconian’ and ‘extremist’ here is the nature of this article. How can anyone take this author seriously when he links the zerohedge website for his source of credibility.
Seriously Unherd, this has to be the worst content you have ever published.
I don’t think that you see the point.
Do something to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Yes! Do anything at all to reduce our dependence. No!
The future is incredibly important. Yes! The future is so important that we need to kill a few million people to get there. No! (Certainly not to save a few lizards in Africa).
Wind power is good. Yes! Wind power as a prime energy source. No! Wind turbines in the sea. No!
If you go to, say, Germany, you will see that they have wind power and they have no problems with it. But they don’t have much sea. So the wind turbines are on hills near to each town – where they are in full view. The point is that our government is doi g the job so badly that you just can’t support what they are doing. Because it will be a true disaster.
He references at least 15 backup articles, many from major publications, and you singled out a Zerohedge article that reports on polls that are in the public domain, and easily verified. What utter nonsense. Let’s debate which points he makes that are incorrect or did you miss WIlders win in the Netherlands amongst other developments, such as the Germans starting push back as well..
If you can’t refute the argument, attack the speaker.
It’s a common leftist tactic. I’m just surprised that racism, sexism, transphobia, etc were not mentioned.
That’s the thing with Robbie. It’s always argument from authority, never an evaluation of the points being made.