On Monday, GB News ran a story on UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband’s vow to "double down" on the Government's environmental agenda whilst accusing Net Zero critics of "making up nonsense and lies". In a “strongly worded statement”, Miliband warned that abandoning the Net Zero agenda would not only risk "climate breakdown" but would also "forfeit the clean energy jobs of the future".
The hangman’s noose concentrates the human mind wonderfully, Dr Samuel Johnson once observed. But this evidently does not apply to the government bureaucracies ensconced in Westminster or Brussels. The oil price shock triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — “the world’s worst energy crisis in history exceeding the combined shocks of both the 1970s oil prices shocks and the Ukraine war”, according to the IEA chief Fatih Birol – has led the environmental justice warriors among the ruling elite to yet more muddled thinking.
Econ 101 anyone?
Instead of applying basic economic principles — comparative advantage in international trade, portfolio diversification to manage risks and the role of marginal costs in commodity pricing — Europe’s elites have doubled down on their Net Zero dogma. The theme is now familiar: the two great energy shocks of the past five years – the 2022 Ukraine war and today’s Hormuz crisis – prompt not a return to economic rationality but a frenzied acceleration of the very policies that created the vulnerability in the first place. Economic illiteracy, it seems, is an incurable condition: those afflicted are immune to intervention by reality or logic.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
I’d wager that miliband and Starmer are working for the Chinese.
Put simply, without all the crap, whilst Liebour pursue this insanity we are screwed, anyone who thinks this isnt the WEF agenda must be braindead, and when the west is destroyed, then what?
Im glad I decided to read Tilaks excellent contribution. It reinforces my belief that net zero is a cult and its zealots are exhibiting beautifully the Dunning Kruger phenomenon. (Well worth a google) Their high priest Milliband justifies his policies on the UK becoming an exemplar for others to follow. What with Mazlo’s heirarchy of needs its obvious that logic will fail to undermine their convictions and they, lemming-like, will not see there’s a cliff edge. And to paraphrase Corporal Frazer were f**ked…
If Miliband gets Starmer’s job I predict riots within weeks.
Because the WEF / Agenda 2030 cult demands this.
The Scottish election for Holyrood MSPs is on 7 May and BBC Scotland TV have been doing a series of election debates in front of studio audiences. Last night was from Aberdeen, home of the North Sea oil and gas industry which is reported to be losing jobs at the rate of up to 1,000 per month thanks to Uniparty Net Zero policies.
The Uniparty panel members all waffled incoherently on Net Zero and its impacts, the Conservative to a lesser degree except that she still talked about the fantasy “transition” – after almost 20 years of striving, the UK is still (2024) 79% dependent on fossil fuels for its primary energy supplies, the world as a whole 87%. Only the Reform member spoke common sense and he got good rounds of applause from the audience, apart from sullen-faced Net Zero ideologues.
That’s the other crazy point – all these jobs Millitwat talks of – they are subsidised jobs, they cost us money, there is now profit… most of the jobs lost in Aberdeen created value, and therefore profit, and earned money – growing our economy. Subsidised jobs are enabled by private sector jobs paying for them…
And to paraphrase socialism’s main failing, you will soon run out of private sector jobs.
Achieving “Net Zero” in the UK is like cleaning one room in a filthy house. I suppose snake oil is not a fossil fuel.
The climate industry does bear a very close resemblance to the religious prophets of doom of yesteryear. We have greatly sinned, we must atone for our sins by doing away with our creature comforts and donning on sackcloth and ashes, and if we do not do so we will be punished by some almighty force which we’ve upset. But this is all driven by fear of progress and change. Climate Change is a call to eliminate innovation and creativity as these threaten the status quo – the current order of elites and proles needs to be preserved at all costs.
Politics is simply a great big game of Call My Bluff.——-It is like that seventies quiz show with Patrick Campbell and Frank Muir where two teams of players would read out the meaning of a particular word. The other team had to guess which version was true. Two versions were false and only one version was the truth. The idea of the game was to convince the other tem your version was the right one.
The difference with Miliband and his Call My Bluff is that nothing he says is true. Not even remotely. He is a United Nations ass licking parasite that puts the phoney planet saving agenda FIRST and the people LAST. ——-But the tragedy is that he isn’t alone. Almost the entire political class are in on the eco socialist scam that pretends to be about averting “the climate crisis”. A crisis which is entirely manufactured for political purposes.
The UN has made no secret that global warming was invented to push for a global totalitarian government and to transfer wealth from developed nations.
The main dysfunction that I see is in the minds of people who insist on assuming that the purpose of nation states is to serve their subjects and maximise their welfare.
The purpose of nation states is for its controlling elite to pacify and use its subjects for their own benefit.
Once one understands that, it’s very obvious why the UK and the EU push NetZero. Comparatively speaking, they have no oil and gas, the most valuable resources on the planet, the resource that conveys the most wealth and power. And as for the last 200 years the UK and EU nations have ruled the planet, NetZero is their last desperate gambit to cling on to that rule.
But it’s not going to work because the play requires the rest of the world to buy the climate disaster bullshit and sign up to the same ludicrous plan, and the rest of the world just aren’t biting.
Why don’t the UK and EU crazies just give up? Why would they? NetZero doesn’t hurt them personally. And the price of admitting they screwed up and failed is unthinkable. So they’ll carry on until they’re stopped.
Totally agree – we have reached the point of hubris and pure idolatry as the driving factors. As Doshi says, there is more chance of getting a menorah into a mosque than converting the NZ acolytes. Science and engineering left the chat some time ago.
Oddly the article seems to do everything but answer the question the title poses. I think your last paragraph sums it up well. There is an element of grifting, opportunities for controlling people and for personal glory, some true belief.
We could have done a lot more to explore our own oil and gas reserves, onshore and offshore, and of course built nuclear, not to mention coal. Those all seem like better ways to pursue the geopolitical goal. Why didn’t we do that?
I think the approach you mention would serve to make the UK more energy independent. But it wouldn’t do anything to promote our establishment to the top of the global pecking order.
To be somewhat fair, they have launched to massive nuclear projects. The masses do need to be pacified after all and total empovroshment would be a problem.
But the level of regulation around nuclear is so insane it makes new nuclear projects take forever and cost much more than they should.
Our whole system is f**ked.
The French managed nuclear, not sure how.
I cannot fathom why even an idiot ideologue could think that windmills could put us near the top of the pecking order. I really don’t know what goes through these people’s heads.
France built its reactor fleet very early before a lot of the stupid regulations came in. Their most recent one has been a disaster as it has been delivered 12 years late and 5 times over budget. It mirrors a similar EDF plant built in Finland, and of course, EDF are building Hinckley Pointso we can expect the same here. We could have gone for a S Korean plant that is a modern design and has been delivered in 4 years.
Because they were difficult, long term decisions requiring foresight and vision – not enough balls in politicians of the last 25-30 years for that. They’d also have upset the greens and didn’t want to do that either – they could have lost some votes…
Net Zero won’t hurt the Eco Crazies personally. Their well paying jobs will continue, They will still get to eat well. They will still be able to fly to their ‘conferences’.
An outbreak of common sense and economic reality however will threaten all their privileges.
I am not so sure, the ropes around their necks may well limit their travel.
Regarding nation states I think they do serve some useful purposes, but like everything else useful they are open to abuse.
States are incredibly useful.
It’s a perfect symbiosis between people who want to dominated others and people who crave being dominated and “taken care of”.
I think there is a middle ground. The idea of a group in a specific geographical area with shared language, DNA, history, culture banding together to preserve those things and protect themselves from other groups makes sense. It has just gone too far, as things are wont to do.
A tribe, if you go back far enough…
That is an interesting perspective. But the Climate Agenda comes from the UN not the EU and the UK. But they are the biggest drivers of it ofcourse. There are many facets to the eco socialist scam and many now use the term “Climate Industrial Complex”.
Spot on, but it’s not just the UK and Europe who are Net Zero-crazy, it’s all of the “Five Eyes” countries, in other words all the countries affiliated to the British Deep State. Or at least it was until the USA voted out the Democrats and broke ranks under the Trump administration.
Like others I was hoping Tilak’s article would supply the big answer (memories of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy). I think his answer is that they are mad. I would say they can’t possibly be that stupid so they must all be bad, as suggested by Catherine MacBride et al in their recent paper with the question mark title “Premeditated Industrial Destruction?” https://gbbc.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Premeditated-Industrial-Destruction-Final-31-March-2026-with-a-plan.pdf.
Whatever nefarious geopolitical gain the British deep state and its affiliates originally thought Net Zero might yield, it’s high time they finally acknowledged that the Net Zero agenda is just shooting themselves in the foot (in fact both feet and probably knees as well), given that most of the rest of the world including the USA doesn’t give two hoots about Net Zero.
No chance, firstly, they’re not shooting themselves in the foot. More like they’re shooting the toes of everyone around them, but not themselves (yet). And who is going to make them acknowledge anything?
My reading of history is one of leaders causing all manner of misery and pain in pursuit of some worthwhile goal or other, never backing down, and if it comes to it, choosing total destruction over course correction. That to me is the norm, not the exception.
One could argue that the electoral process in western societies can act as a guardrail against total destruction. But not if debate around the most contentious, critical issues is stifled and virtually prohibited as is the case in the UK regarding things like climate and immigration.
We may call ourselves a liberal democracy, but in many key ways we are a quasi-totalitarian society. So total destruction surely becomes more likely.
I usually get mocked when I say this, but President Trump is our best hope of salvation. He has already knocked Net Zero for six in the USA and liberated the US people from the corrupt oppressions of the United Nations, Agenda 2030 and the WHO.
More importantly, he is winning his battle against the British deep state which has been driving Net Zero and other oppressions of the people through the compliant Uniparty and which has caused so much harm to his country and our own over the past half century and more.
Iran has been the covert agent of the British deep state for over a century and President Trump has them over a proverbial barrel. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spelled it out a couple of days ago. The US naval blockade prevents any Iranian oil getting out and essential supplies getting in. On top of that, Operation Economic Fury is cutting the Iranian supply line of illicit financial support, some of which emanates from the City of London.
Because of the USA blockade, all the Iranian oil storage facilities will soon be full and the oil wells will have to shut down. A seldom mentioned inconvenient… Read more »
Because the CCP commands it so.
Sigh. If wind generation was cheap, it wouldn’t get guaranteed strike prices way above the average wholesale price per MWh.
That’s before all the myriad other costs it incurs.
Wind/solar are not economically viable businesses. No business can be which cannot match and plan output to meet demand, sells its output, intermittently, randomly, according to factors beyond its control – the weather – whose key, highly capital intensive, money-making assets are unproductive for between 50% and 70% of the time, and therefore receives an uneven, unpredictable revenue stream, cannot control cash-flow or balance expense with income to make a return on investment.
The whole problem with Net Zero (unsurprisingly) is its promoters treat it like a mechanical system (which they don’t understand) rather than a market economic system.
Anyone wanting great stats should follow mining engineer John Lee Pettimore on X. (@JohnLeePettim13). Fact based demolition of all that is net zero. My favourite is his table of minerals, their reserves, and given our current rate of extraction how long we would need to mine them to be ‘net zero’ by 2050. Its numbers like 3050 years at current extraction rate, but reserves will run out after 70 years anyway.
Lastly, and I will say this despite no one ever showing any interest: during 2020 lockdown human emissions fell by over 7%, and yet at the Mauna Loa Observatory it was not only completely undetectable, but 2020 recorded a particular egregious spike in planetary emissions. When you realise that 7% is equivalent of the EU and UK going net zero, you begin to see the futility.
For me the net zero dogma is a textbook example of the principle that man is fundamentally a religious creature.
On a purely logical, rational basis net zero doesn’t make sense. Everybody knows the numbers don’t add up. Not even the most ardent net zero zealots think that its aim, a zero carbon economy is even remotely feasible. They also know that attempts to achieve these aims would mean mass poverty, economic hardship, pain and suffering for at best marginal gains.
It doesn’t matter.
They are ideologically wedded to the idea.
Nothing will convince them.
Just like the suicide bombers, the communists, the various doomsday cult believers, this is their faith.
There is no point in trying to argue with these people. You have more chance of converting the ayatollahs to Judaism.
In a related way, the reason why these people are dangerous is because they are serious about their faith. Their ideological purity demands action. And, as we know, faith can move mountains.
And the religion that will save us from climate Armageddon is called Agenda 2030 (previously Agenda 21) with its twin pillars of ‘sustainability’ (de-industrialising the West and transferring that industry to ‘developing’ countries) and ‘social justice’ (transferring the wealth that goes with it). See WEF, UN, Davos etc.
Not relevant to the main point if the article, but imports do not subtract from GDP they are irrelevant to it. You just need to subtract domestic expenditure on imports to calculate domestic expenditure on domestic production and therefore GDP.