As needs no retelling here, this week saw the return of Donald Trump to the Whitehouse. Among many of his first acts were important and far-reaching interventions on climate and energy, continuing where he left office in 2020 and re-reversing the changes he made in his last term, which were emphatically unreversed by Biden. So, what were these actions, and what do they mean for the global climate agenda, for Europe, and for Net Zero here in the UK?
In response to what the new President argued was inflation caused by “massive overspending and escalating energy prices”, in his inauguration speech he declared “a national energy emergency”, the solution to which, was: “We will drill, baby, drill.” “America will be a manufacturing nation once again,” he continued, powered by “the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth”. “We will end the Green New Deal and we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate.”
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‘a buoyant Ed Miliband declared that “Britain is back in the business of climate leadership”. But who are we leading? ‘
More like the first lemmings over the cliff
a boy called Ed Miliband
“World Leaders” in impoverishing their own citizens so they can get a little gold star on their lapel from the UN.
And doubtless a large bank deposit as well.
Leading the race to the bottom, and economic ruin. Yeah!
Germany are ahead of us at the moment although that maybe just because we have very little industry left to destroy.
People First Net Zero Last
Britain, the Saudi Arabia of Wind, is quickly becoming the Saudi Arabia without Sand
That’s stupid statement, anyway, as Saudi-Arabia became a rich country by exporting oil but there’s no way Britain can ever make money from exporting wind, especially not by importing turbines.
Well it was made by a stupid man noted as being a liar.
If the climate ain’t broke don’t fix it, The Planet is perfectly capable of saving itself.
Stand by for Sir Two-Tier to reverse ferret, in the long run saving Red Ed from a fate worse than Mussolini. It might take a while, but in the end most lost sheep usually get rounded up.
Bring it on.
I don’t want to save Ed from a fate worse than Mussolini, if you make your bed you must be forced to lie in it.
Neither do I, but in the world of realpolotik Miligoon Minor will end up with a job at the Globalist Trough, just like big brother.
Seconded
The climate can never be broken.
Climate just is.
I think see where you’re coming from Hux. Come the next little ice age, let natural variability and inherent fluctuation unequivocally consign “climate change” to the dustbin of pseudoscientific history.
In the meantime we have to slay the dragon once and for all by all means at our disposal.
True. Just like that old ‘market failure’ canard; markets never fail, they just do what they do, but in doing so may fail to achieve the outcomes that some fool thinks is desirable or necessary. But the fault lies with the objective not the market.
Miliband: “The transition is now unstoppable”. Meanwhile, in the real world, at 7:15am on Wednesday 22 January, wind and solar is producing less than 1% of the electricity being used in the UK. Add the 99% of electricity NOT being produced by wind and solar to the gas energy being used to heat peoples homes and the petrol and diesel energy powering most peoples cars as they head to work. Who’s in charge of Energy Security?
Jim Dale? Coco the Clown? Chris Packham?
One of the sayings of Mrs Dale (of diary fame) was “I’m worried about Jim”. Me too.
It’s now 12.30 and according to the NG website wind is producing 0.7% of our electricity. Even on a cloudy day in January, solar is managing 3.2% and hydro 2.3% for a grand total of 6% renewables.
The most impactful thing that Trump can do to kill the Net Zero, climate insanity agenda is to use his massive bullhorn to tell everyone the climate change story is a hoax.
If enough people finally see the hoax, then the agenda will be killed for good. If not, his successors may very well reverse everything he’s done, just like they did after his first term.
Can he evict the UN from New York?
At peak time on Wednesday morning 22 Jan renewable energy is producing NONE of our electricity
It’s all gas, nukes, wood pellets, and interconnectors
Even if we had invested the trillions needed to treble the renewable generating capacity (and double the Grid, to cope with it) we’d still be completely in the dark and cold without fossil fuels
Pray tell us, Messrs Miliband et al, what are your well thought out proposals for dealing with this? Whilst you’re about it, perhaps you’d share some of your evidence that the global climate, or even the climate in the UK, is actually changing?
Some evidence of your previous successes at directing and managing projects – indeed anything – would also be helpful
Every politicians smart meter *should* be wired up to cut their house’s power whenever there is a brownout or blackout elsewhere in the UK. That would concentrate their minds – so it will never happen
Good idea – Or as I suggested before – make the Houses of Parliament and House of Lords heating ‘renewables’ powered only, plus the bar and restaurant systems…
Terrific suggestion. Now that would concentrate tiny minds.
Why just the heating? Take it off-grid altogether. They’ve got lots of roof space for solar panels. I think they have car parking space that could be given over to batteries, with MPs/staff being forced to use public transport/cycle/walk to get there. Oh, and force them to eat a locally-produced plant-based diet, with nothing being imported from abroad.
Good idea – I stopped at the bar pumps being enough to focus the minds…!
Brilliant idea.
No! Far too kind. Their system should be linked to the amount of wind and solar on the grid and the voltage reduced accordingly.
The main reason the climate agenda will collapse aided by the likes of Trump is that it really isn’t about the climate and never was. —Climate is a Political Agenda about control of wealth, resources and YOU. —The climate is simply the excuse that most ordinary people who don’t follow politics closely accept because they think it is all about “science”. —–The Climate Agenda called Sustainable Development is about reducing consumption and standard of living because the Commie UN/WEF say our lifestyles are “unsustainable”—-The tragedy is that our squirming eco socialist politicians agree with that and are setting about impoverishing us all and pretending to us that we are “saving the planet”. ——It is to hoped people see how cheap energy becomes because of Trump compared to ours and the EU’s and realise they are being played for fools
You can argue that part of the reason for the Government response to COVID was to establish an ’emergency’ justification for side-lining democracy – which petered out as the ‘epidemic’ petered out. The Climate Change scam however is the ’emergency’ which keeps giving. It’s always in the future… until perhaps the weight of public opinion turns against it. Thank you President Trump.
‘climate policy is far more dangerous than climate change’
Brilliant, Ben! Sums it up in just a short statement.
This is pretty good too:
‘a buoyant Ed Miliband declared “Britain is back in the business of climate leadership”. But who are we leading?‘
He also pulled USA out of the WHO yesterday, have not seen it reported on sceptics yet.
The MSM have gone into a mini meltdown including the Telegraph, but then most of these have their health journos and commentators supported by Mr Gates, the man who essentially owns the WHO and strangely enough is a major investor in Big Pharma and vaccines, no conflict of interest there at all.
I agree. Trump exiting the WHO is just as significant as withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Unfortunately, it might mean Billy pulling strings and demanding greater financial contributions from the rest of the mugs. Us.
As I write this, wind energy is producing 94MW of the UKs power according to https://winderful.uk
Effectively, 0%.
More forcefully expressed as 0.094GW. Now up to 0.11GW but even in the depths of winter solar is outperforming it at 0.12GW. So renewables are poviding a combined total of a quarter of a gigawatt out of a demand in excess for 42GW.
At COP 26, under Johnson’s treacherous administration, Sunak pledged to “rewire the financial system for Net Zero.”
He failed at that, as with everything else.
I would just like to state categorically, Climate Policy is real, and it is a threat to every person. and every living organism on the planet.
Of all the things that grind my gears, climate policy is #1. Right minded people need to fight everywhere against this ruinous policy. Have the difficult conversations with everyone you know. The tide needs to change and President Trump has shown leadership. I hope the trickle down economics of this decision will put enough pressure on the govt so they make the changes needed. Its going to be a tough fight.
Pro-climate Obama was followed by anti-climate Trump, was followed by pro-climate Biden, and now Trump again.
The green nihilists are not “pro-climate”, they’re anti-human. “Pro-climate” is their lying label for themselves – a label we shouldn’t use.
Absolutely. Bang on. As usual the globalists seeking to invert language.
It’s silly to say that Biden was “pro-climate” and that Trump is “anti-climate”. Those labels are catchy but meaningless. We all recognise that the climate is not going to go away, and that we all want it to be conducive to a comfortable life. The problem is the idea that we can “save” the climate through human intervention, by returning ourselves to pre-industrial ways of living.
As those other countries abandon Net Zero policies and pull ahead economically, the pain of Britain sinking into a post-industrial abyss will become too much even for Miliband
I wouldn’t count on this. There is no way out for Miliband. He will press on regardless of what the rest of the world is doing. Only Starmer can put a stop to this zealot. He may well do so. I don’t think Starmer is quite as insane as Miliband.
A comprehensive and heartening summary Ben. Thank you.
We have the problem in Britain, however, of whether this excrutiatingly awful and spite laden government can be bludgeoned into ceasing it’s suicidal course on our behalf, or preferably completely dismissed, before the damage becomes irreversible. It’s not looking good.
There’s no such thing as irreversible damage. However, the industrial revolution happened in the 18th century and it took until the middle of the 20th century for the European infrastructure to have been built up to a sufficient degree to result in general prosperity and I fear that you’re correct insofar that tearing this infrastructure down will be a much quicker process and that we might end up having to rebuild what we already had for some centuries before the ‘climate’ again becomes one which enables Milibands to flourish. Not to mention that this means going voluntarily from the front to the back of the queue in a world where all other countries are also industrialized to varying degrees¹.
¹ Somewhat counterbalanaced by the fact that we buy most of the stuff produced elsewhere and most of the food grown elsewhere. If Europe doesn’t prosper anymore, China and Africa will suffer.
Thank you. I would not disagree with anything you say. Yes, I recognise most damage is ultimately reversible, but as you point out, repairing a process which has taken decades or even centuries in the making is better avoided, as is the disruption that fractures and divides society in the way ours has been over the last 25 years, and even more particularly and painfully in the last five years.
I’m thinking here of serried ranks of largely pointless windmills (not to mention vast solar farms), each bequeathing tons of concrete plugs obstructing land suitable for farming, or simply despoiling vast areas of value as green lungs or wildlife havens, and the breakdown of institutions, such as family farms, which have been the backbone of the country for centuries.
Nothing is immutable, and much change can be positively engineered, but if the Millibands of the nation have their way we will have a rapidly creeping coast to coast non functional “industrial” wasteland by 2029.
This is all nice and dandy but it’s important to keep the following in mind:
This tends to get overlooked because most of Europe has been fractured into statelets which are little more than a capital city plus some surrounding wilderness that’s mostly unpopulated. But for as long as the planet savers firmly control the core of the mad project – and they do, as all so-called European governments¹ are behind this agenda – they have a realistic hope that fractures at the periphery can eventually be overcome and so far, this has worked.
¹ I’m more often than sometimes thinking that most of these governments solely exist because each of them comes with a set of ministries and associated bureaucracies and thus, enables some more partycrats to ‘work’ for a state — Germany is the republic of the SPD (social-democratic party of Deutschland/ Germany), Austria the republic of the SPÖ (social-democratic party of Österreich/ Austria) and for a short while from 1989 – 1990, there was even still a Democratic Republic of Germany which was the republic of the SDP (Social-Democratic Party). I’m not convinced that all these SPs are really different. They’re just regional branches of the German socialists which have acquired a capital of their own and some ministries to staff, especially considering that they’re not anyhow politically different.
We are the poodle. Being the poodle can now perhaps become a good thing. I would follow him around like a lapdog. Starmer duplicates all of his executive orders. Just ensure that we are the poodle at a time like this.
A wonderful article! There are quite a few little gems that uplift and inspire; here are just four that stand out:
‘Trump’s election win preceded an exodus of financial institutions from the Net Zero alliances that had been forged by Carney…’
‘…there are now major democratic movements alive to the fact that climate policy is far more dangerous than climate change.’
‘….the international institutions set up to address them are no less self-serving than national institutions..
‘…..but “the power of example really matters”. After five years under Ed, the UK may well be an example, but not one to follow.’
The Western world seems to be infested by idiot politicians (a prime but not sole example being Minibrain) and these as a group are more dangerous than anything mother nature will throw our way in the climate sphere. (Of course a future certain onset of the next glacial period after our current balmy inter-glacial inevitably peters out will put the lie to that – but we’ll all be long gone).
Immigration is raising our carbon foot print. Deport. Remigration!
Britain is run by cretins. And the voters aren’t too bright either. How in God’s name could people with brains have decided not to vote to ‘punish’ a system that doesn’t care if we vote? If 10 people had voted, and Labour had got 4 votes, they’d have still taken office.
A nation that has bred the stupidest ones and let the clever ones leave
But it’s not pro climate and anti climate. It’s pro lies and anti lies.
If I had one question to ask Liz Truss, it would be “what on earth made you think that Chris Skidmark was the right person to review his own policies?”
I’ve suddenly realised what this “climate leadership” stuff reminds me of – unilateral nuclear disarmament in the 1960s. Ralph Miliband, was involved in the early 1960s formation of the Committee of 100. I imagine unilateralism was a given in the Miliband household.
The problem is that it costs politicians and their parties nothing to pay subsidies and use save the planet soundbites. They would be less willing if it had to come from their own pockets. ICE vehicles and filling stations have never been subsidised and the tax on them has made money for government coffers for decades.