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.
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The EU came to believe that it could operate as a counter to the U.S. in international affairs.
That is one of the reasons that Britain left the EU.
Europe has now emerged blinking into the real world of power politics where zero armoured divisions means as much international influence as the Pope has.
‘In foreign affairs, the only principle is to have none’
To have entered that world having unilaterally disarmed over the last thirty five years looks a great deal worse than just simply careless.
For the last few decades politics has been mostly word games. Politicians ‘count coup’ by landing a verbal slap on an opponent.
But you could reasonably argue that all the benefit of mere word games has been extracted and it is now back to politics through actions. Although the realisation is taking some time to sink in.
Trump is making the right noises.
Hopefully, he will carry them through.
Although there is a “new sheriff in town” it remains to be seen if his actions differ from the old liberal regime in their end result.
My fear is that he will carry on with US hegemony and the US centric Unipolar World but just use different tactics to his Democrat predecessors.
US isolationism would bring a more peaceful world.
A conspicuous part of the information war is the ridiculous panty wetting by Europe over what Vance was supposed to have said yesterday. Any reasonable analysis of his words shows that he was not indicting Britain but was referring to random countries who have had no recent exposure to combat, which has to include all the former neutrals.
It was perfectly obvious that Vance was speaking in general terms and the gist of his remarks were TRUE.
These people show no shame with the dishonest faux outrage they spew across the ether so promiscuously.
These wombles can FRO.
It’s a normal and regular tactic by American Democrats and media who are opposed to Trump and his voters to twist what is actually said and turn it into a myth to be repeated over and over until believed by many.
“If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it,
And what is more YOU WILL COME TO BELIEVE IT YOURSELF”.
…….Joseph Goebbels
This is how the liberal-left live over:
Covid-Vaccines (“safe & effective”)
Russia – Ukraine (“unprovoked attack”)
Global Warming oops..”Climate Change”…oops….????
The European weenies cry and shake over “the new Sheriff”, because they have pumped out Ukraine propaganda for three years, censoring any speeches/interviews/press conferences by any RussiaN voice (notably Foreign Minister Lavrov) and so now are BRAINWASHED BY THEIR OWN LIES.
Reminds me of a Leftist caller on FIVE LIVE yesterday, he accused the Right of being totalitarian and into ‘eugenics’. That is typical of the Left accusing the Right of what they do.
I’m curious why my post (and what changed) when last edited by @Hardliner? Who is that?
In Washington, a spade is a spade. In Europe’s capitals, a spade is a mobile manual excavating paradigm. Word salad meets American plain speaking.
If you’re in a hole in Russia’s former front garden, stop digging.
… or in hole in a European garden.
End the War on Freedom now
I was disappointed that Starmer didn’t get the Zelensky treatment before VZ did. After Munich, when the new landscape was made perfectly clear, Starmer should have been given a public ultimatum by Trump, starting with Starmer’s position on freedom of speech: ‘Are you with us, or without us? We prefer with, but we’ll cope with either answer…’
Meantime,US-based YouTube is still censoring Katie Hopkins, who as a result is taunting them and enjoying it. Most recently they shut down her discussion about Tommy Robinson, which just set her off on a rant – which they then broadcast. Go figure…
She is so brave, and honest!
The entire reason that Britain and Europe have been able to control their agendas and ignore huge sections of their own populations is entirely die to the absence of free speech and the establishment’s efforts to police speech that dies not align with their own views. It is intentional and insidious. The establishment knows full well that were free speech possible here then it would surely be game over for their deluded policies and narratives.
Both sides of the Atlantic need to clear out the stables by removing the offenders from positions of power and influence.
The perpetrators are from the same political wing, being very unpatriotic, and attempting to destroy the very fabric of their own country, with help from anyone, often a foreign country or financial concern, and especially from each other!
Trump: USA was Secretly Funding UK Trans Movement
https://youtu.be/Rv26KfeEhy0
And the same process would benefit the countries in the Europe: yes, between each EU country, Brussels, and the UK. And it might even improve the their relationships with Russia.
This is quite an eye opener to me, I had little idea that the EU had overstepped the mark quite so far. High time there was a reset.
We saw the Authoritarian British Establishment’s attempt to fight back against JD Vance this week.
Vance, commenting on Two-Tier’s hilarious “coalition of the willing” commented about the likely performance of “a random country which hasn’t fought a war for 30 or 40 years.”
He didn’t mention Britain or France, and he obviously excluded them from his comment since they have both fought in wars within that timescale.
But in a performative outrage, the assembled ranks of British politicians and their tame poodles in the MSM, expressed their outrage that he could make such a remark about the UK …. when he quite obviously hadn’t. Even Farage got in on it … presumably thinking he needed to demonstrate his patriotism.
The anti-Trump Establishment thought they would be getting 2 years of an active Trump Presidency, followed by 2 years of a lame duck. They’ve just woken up to the fact it will be 4 years of a very active Trump Presidency, almost certainly followed by 8 years of President Vance. So they’ve started the process of discrediting him in the eyes of the Sheeple now.