By Benny Peiser & Andrew Montford Daily Sceptic, 26th April 2023
The
Net Zero bandwagon was always going to grind to a halt when it bumped up
against hard realities. As Abraham Lincoln observed, you can’t fool all of the
people all of the time. To which the physicist Richard Feynman added the
important rejoinder that you can’t fool nature either.
The eco-zealots in the think tanks, the civil service and the Green Blob have
been trying to do both. Consider, for example, the oft-repeated claim that wind
and solar power are cheap, which is demonstrably false, and carefully overlooks
the fact that a renewables-dominated grid would require trillions of pounds of
electricity storage to make it function without backup. As a result, we have
seen gigawatts of wind and solar power installed, and the slow strangulation of
investment in conventional energy sources. However, nature, refusing to be
taken in by all the claims of ‘cheap renewables’, has responded with 20 years
of relentless electricity price rises.
The silver lining to the very dark cloud of the Ukraine war and the energy cost
crisis that followed is that most people now realise that a world with rising
energy costs is not very pleasant at all. Others have been awakened, perhaps
rather unexpectedly, by the Biden administration’s decision to launch its own
Net Zero spending spree. It is rapidly becoming clear that this has the
potential to turn into a disaster for the U.K.
Already unable to compete with the cheap energy and cheap labour of the Far
East, many businesses are now having to face the reality that they will soon be
unable to compete with the U.S. either, because of its abundance of cheap gas
and its tidal wave of subsidies. Even companies that have been here for years
are now thinking of upping sticks and crossing the Atlantic to take advantage
of the green bonanza on offer. The U.K. and much of Europe are therefore facing
an exodus of businesses, and a drying up of foreign direct investment. That
could be catastrophic for the economy, and for Government finances already
reeling from the pandemic.
The realities of Net Zero are also hitting home for the general public. The
threat that the project represents to livelihoods and liberties is becoming
more evident by the day. Recently, the mathematician Norman Fenton tweeted an excerpt from a
Government-funded report that set out what Net Zero U.K. might
look like: no airports, no shipping, no beef and lamb to eat, and most food
imports eliminated. Sounds grim, doesn’t it? Lots of people thought so, and the
tweet went viral, garnering over three million views.
The threat of being effectively locked into a 15-minute zone of a city has also
concentrated minds. Anti-ULEZ protests are kicking off, and civil disobedience
has followed in their wake, with cameras vandalised, bollards ripped out and
barriers destroyed. Awareness of the threat of programmable digital currencies,
which would allow the authorities to dictate your purchases (“No beef for you
this week!”), is becoming more widespread too.
Seeing such policies alongside the restrictions on movement and lifestyle, and
the ongoing censorship of criticism and opposition, many will conclude that
climate catastrophism is simply the latest manifestation of mankind’s habitual
tendency to totalitarianism. They are right to do so: green fanatics aspire to
dictate every aspect of life, for you and everyone else in the world, just as
the National Socialists and the Communist commissars tried to do.
So, as more and more of the impacts of Net Zero hit home, word of the economic
and societal threat is spreading. Another surge in energy prices next winter or
the winter after could prove the final straw for hundreds of thousands of
businesses and the public alike. A small ray of hope is that in some parts of
the world, the green cult is having to make compromises. The EU was recently
forced by Germany to abandon its planned ban of combustion-engined cars. At the
recent G7 meeting, ministers refused to set a date for the elimination of coal
from the bloc’s energy systems, rolling back a pledge made at the Glasgow
climate summit.
Yet most Western governments, including Mr. Sunak and his cabinet, remain
almost entirely in thrall to green dogma. The reality is that far too many of
them are Net Zero ideologues themselves, and far too many of the rest are cowed
by the antics of the eco-zealots and the fulminations of their supporters in
the mainstream media. We should expect no real change of direction under the
current generation of ministers and MPs.
This inability to tackle the Net Zero cost crisis is almost certain to clear
the way for Labour to sweep into power and to do… precisely nothing about the
energy crisis. The damage being done to our economy and society will continue,
and perhaps even accelerate.
But eventually a turning point will be reached, and the public, mugged by
reality, will realise where the Establishment is taking them. They will look at
the cold, dark, miserable Net Zero world that Norman Fenton described and will
refuse to go any further. They will instead return to the path they have chosen
in the past, the path to liberty and prosperity. The established political
parties cannot see the inevitability of this reversal, but eventually they will
have to accept it, and follow on behind, or face becoming irrelevant.
Benny Peiser and Andrew
Montford are Director and Deputy Director of Net Zero Watch.
via climate science
April 29, 2023 at 02:04AM
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