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The Headlong Rush to ‘Net Zero’ Makes a New Great Depression a Racing Certainty

by Andrew Montford
29 September 2022 3:38 PM

An article in the Critic asks if we are facing another great depression. I’m surprised that there is any doubt about it. Twenty years of vandalism of the energy system was only ever going to have one result, and will not be fixed in a hurry. But how did we end up here? Why did we let it happen? The answers lie in the two great tricks that have been played on the public.

Firstly, the man in the street has been led to believe that global warming is a crisis. Make no mistake, this is a lie. That’s because, in the official view of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, unabated global warming might lead to 3.6°C of warming and result in a loss of just 2.6% of GDP. Yes, those figures are correct; the worst that the climate might throw at us will only cause a small loss of wealth. That makes sense when you understand that by far the biggest impacts of climate change – sea-level rise and flooding – can be addressed through simple and relatively cheap adaptation measures. Nevertheless, relentless scaremongering by green activists and hate campaigns launched against naysayers have done the trick, to the extent that the idea of a ‘climate emergency’ is now received opinion, despite the lack of supporting evidence.

The second trick has been played by the renewables industry and green activists, which have together persuaded most people that an energy transition is possible. To do this they have engaged in a 20-year campaign of disinformation about the costs of wind and solar power and about the availability of storage technologies for when the wind stops blowing and the sun isn’t shining. So, for example, while the green blob shouts that offshore windfarms are bidding very low prices to supply to the grid, serious analysts – including in the peer-reviewed literature – point out that their audited accounts show that their costs remain high, that they are refusing to take up their contracts at the agreed price, and that the whole exercise is, in essence, a scam to fool the politicians into keeping the renewables boondoggle going.

The public has thus been caught in a pincer movement between two huge lies, and politicians, who only survive if they respond to public concerns, have wasted countless billions on renewables and have strangled the fossil fuel industry, the only sure way of keeping the lights on. As a result, families across the country face the prospect of winter nights spent shivering in the dark for years to come, and sky-high energy prices alongside.

Even if politicians wanted to do something about it, they seem to be cornered. They cannot address the energy crisis without being accused of “endangering the planet” and ignoring “cheap renewables”. The lies have done their work.

This explains the new Government’s reluctance to suspend the Net Zero targets and introduce the radical policy measures that are the only way to prevent the energy crisis turning in an economic catastrophe. Lifting the fracking moratorium, the single concrete measure announced to date, will not make a difference without further changes to the regulation of the industry. The team at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy seems to be pinning its hopes on splitting off renewables into a separate market, a plan that will bring no relief in the short term, and which will, at best, reduce wholesale prices to the level required to keep offshore windfarms operating, which is perhaps four times what is necessary to save the economy. In other words, our Government is currently working on plans to make energy prices permanently high.

So yes, another great depression appears a racing certainty.

Andrew Montford is Deputy Director of Net Zero Watch.

Tags: Carbon dioxideClimate AlarmismClimate EmergencyNet ZeroPropagandaRenewable energy

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16 Comments
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Arum
Arum
1 year ago

If you want to teach youngsters about the environment, take them outside and get them doing some natural history.

141
0
True Spirit of America Party
True Spirit of America Party
1 year ago
Reply to  Arum

But that would make too much sense!

27
-1
RW
RW
1 year ago
Reply to  True Spirit of America Party

That would make absolutely no sense. They supposed to fear it, not to come to love it.

8
0
Gefion
Gefion
1 year ago
Reply to  Arum

But they’d get wet and need special clothing… They’d also really enjoy it for the most part and learn a lot.

17
0
Roy Everett
Roy Everett
1 year ago

In my limited experience teaching science in schools the Hobgoblin was cancer. In particular one homework in the set book was “draft a letter to your MP about how you are scared of cancer because it was not “settled science” that overhead high voltage power lines did NOT cause cancer. In my own childhood the Hobgoblin was the threat of Nuclear Winter. There is always some scare being cultivated in order to obtain political and economic power. The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the shift from war towards environmental scares.

86
0
Jon Garvey
Jon Garvey
1 year ago
Reply to  Roy Everett

And yet when I grew up, in the fifties and into the sixties, although the risk of nuclear war was the greatest it ever has been, it was not thought necessary to teach us by fear. The only thing I remember was the civil defence man coming in to warn us about the very real risk of leftover bombs from Word War II.

Otherwise we picked up on the state of the world – no doubt biased and certainly sometimes catastrophised – from looking at the same newspapers and TV news as everyone else. It was all a long way away and less important than Supercar or football.

An example comes to mind from my brother’s early years at grammar school, coinciding with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Tsar Bomba etc. As a poetry assignment some kid wrote:

Fallout from the atmosphere

Made radioactive milk

Kennedy objected

And so did Acker Bilk

I suspect such uncommitted levity about Ukraine, climate, gender or any of the other ideological tropes would get that kid suspended nowadays.

22
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huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

https://www.technocracy.news/four-billionaire-technocrats-are-creating-an-alternate-autocratic-reality/

The four killers named:

The prime actors: Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Marc Andreessen. These billionaires represent the tip of the spear. ⁃ TN Editor

Last edited 1 year ago by huxleypiggles
28
-30
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Blimey 77 are back are they?

26
-9
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

And if it’s not 77 perhaps one or two of the halfwits could tell me why my assessment is so wrong.

20
-19
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Good question. I missed this yesterday. Disappointing that no-one managed an argument. I think Musk is an overall ally judging by what he has done with “X”, but I doubt he’s trustworthy and may be a wrong’un. Afraid I don’t have time to read the article, but perhaps it’s the criticism of Musk that drew the downvotes.

0
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

“Teaching materials sent to schools last month by the Devon Climate Emergency (DCE), a local authority-led climate change initiative, aim to combat growing “climate anxiety” among five to 16 year-olds.”

Never fails does it – scare the children and then in the guise of helping ramp up the fear with “teaching materials.”

The children become confused and fearful and on top of that let’s make them physically poorly by pushing them in to veggieism. Many children will fail to understand the implications and requirements (supplements) of a vegetarian diet. Quite possibly the parents are not veggie so now we have children in dispute with parents. Pretty soon we have a poorly nourished generation of zombiefied youngsters ready to carry out any and every whim of society’s “leaders.”

Textbook stuff by the Davos Deviants.

Last edited 1 year ago by huxleypiggles
93
-11
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

As this short article makes abundantly clear, the children are NOT to be educated but indoctrinated as per Bliar’s favourite mantra –

Indoctrination, indoctrination, indoctrination.

You did it Tone.

85
-11
allofusarefat
allofusarefat
1 year ago

Anti-human death cult alive and well…

38
0
DomTaylor
DomTaylor
1 year ago

And whilst one group of people is busy pushing their absurd net-zero agenda and another group of people is busy protesting against these agenda, most remain distracted from the big story: the collapse of the debt-based monetary system. An economy propped up by quantitative easing and massive government spending, persistently negative yield curves, the Bank of England predicting major losses for the first time in its over 300-year history, major banks collapsing, the housing market crashing with the stock market set to follow, Evergrande finally admitting bankruptcy, rapidly rising interest rates to control runaway inflation of basic necessities whilst economies dive into recession, unsustainable levels of public and private in the face of natural demographic decline. Oh yes, and the small matter that two thirds of the human population has been poisoned as part of a desperate attempt to usher in a centrally-planned globally economy.

47
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
1 year ago
Reply to  DomTaylor

+1000

Include politicians printing money to give to their friends’ businesses for “vital” products/services to keep everyone “safe”, then taking a percentage under the table as a “thank you”.

Followed by the “trickle down effect” of the bill being paid by the gullible public through the mechanism of inflation.

Last edited 1 year ago by Marcus Aurelius knew
29
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

https://off-guardian.org/2023/08/28/were-all-suspects-in-a-dna-lineup-waiting-to-be-matched-with-a-crime/

The disturbing implications of the DNA databases being built, and rapidly, by our governments.

19
-3
DomH75
DomH75
1 year ago

It particularly angers me that they’re targeting children in a heavily rural county where farming is still a significant industry. Chances are that in many classrooms outside of the two cities there will be at least one child with family connected to the farming business. Why is public money being wasted on these lies? Who has authorised these materials for use? Is this something that’s emerged from the local civil service blob or has it been okayed by the council itself? This is the trouble with Devon County Council operating from a relatively small city like Exeter with a large student population who will vote for crap councillors in term time while proper residents have to suffer the consequences of the crap for decades.

57
0
zebedee
zebedee
1 year ago

engaging with “hard-hitting” statistics about the planet’s ecological collapse in Maths.

I.e. Don’t teach them Maths and by the sound of it don’t even teach them Stats.

18
0
Scunnered
Scunnered
1 year ago

Good luck with that; been trying for nigh on a decade to get my kids to eat their veg.

18
0
Jon Garvey
Jon Garvey
1 year ago
Reply to  Scunnered

Just wait for what a few lessons about cruel abattoirs and CO2-poisoned walruses will achieve.

7
-1
Scunnered
Scunnered
1 year ago
Reply to  Jon Garvey

My eldest is 100% carnivore with a quasi-ideological aversion to veg. I recall a brief dalliance with vegetarianism in my teens, no doubt similar right-on motivation to go cruelty-free. My father announced at a family Christmas dinner that I was the only vegetarian he knew that didn’t eat vegetables. And that was the end of that!

11
-1
varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  Scunnered

A lady at work announced she was a “vegetarian”. I immediately asked “What part of Vegetaria are you from”? This was met by some sniggering from colleagues——–I think she got the message as all I got was a blank stare and she never mentioned it again.

8
-3
Hester
Hester
1 year ago

We are funding this!,along with the funding for adults to groom children.
Perhaps it’s time to stop paying council tax, watch how quickly sense will come when councillors personal gravy train is at stake.

20
0
beaniebean
beaniebean
1 year ago

It’s the obsession with Net Zero in schools that’s driving the anxiety in children. They need to give it a rest and not bang on about it even more!

29
0
marebobowl
marebobowl
1 year ago

Devon is now screwed. I do not want to take a smelly dirty bus or train anywhere. I own a car, paid for it, paid for its upkeep, paid to insure it. Why do I no longer have the right to choose my mode of transport? Trains and busses exude the worst fumes. My hybrid does not. At the age of 80, I will not take a train nor bus to get anywhere.

24
0
varmint
varmint
1 year ago

There is no science that supports the idea of a “Climate Emergency” so why are authorities brainwashing children that there is one? —–Truth for our children would be that there are huge uncertainties about climate change, and that climate is actually poorly understood. So it means that children are not getting truth, they are getting LIES.————————- Politics is all about scaring the populace with an endless series of imaginary hobgoblins. There is no bigger hobgoblin than the one narrative cautionary tale called “climate change”. ——–Politicians would have great difficulty explaining even the very basics of climate and energy to 5 year olds, yet these same people are making education policy with the intention of influencing the very youngest children so they end up indoctrinated. ——-They might as well put brown shits on the kids and call them “Klima Jugend”

Last edited 1 year ago by varmint
7
0
Alan
Alan
1 year ago

Schools should use a thermos flask containing very hot water to demonstrate that trapped heat cannot warm anything.

0
0

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