One of Britain’s leading climate ‘experts’, Professor Kevin Anderson, has provided a valuable insight into the increasingly bizarre demands that surround the promotion of the collectivist Net Zero political project. Writing in the Conversation, he argues for Net Zero within 12 years, complete with a refit of U.K. housing stock, a withdrawal of all combustion engine cars in favour of expanded public transport, electrification of industry, the roll out of ‘zero-carbon’ energy, and the banning of all fossil fuel production. To achieve his aims, Anderson suggests mobilisation on the scale of the post-war European reconstruction Marshall Plan. Others might suggest his crackpot schemes will leave the country facing a similar scale of destruction, ruin and poverty to that caused by the Luftwaffe.
Anderson is currently a Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester and he has plenty of form when it comes to extremist claims and calls for widespread rationing. As early as 2010, he was calling on politicians to consider a rationing system “similar to the one introduced during the last time of crisis in the 1930s and 40s”. He also suggested a limit on electricity “so people are forced to turn the heating down”, and a limit on goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.
On a practical level, Anderson’s latest calls for radical societal restructuring under the guise of a ‘climate emergency’ are plainly ridiculous. Retrofitting Britain’s well-ventilated housing and industrial stock along with installing heat pumps would cost around £3 trillion, according to a paper published last year by the technology professor Michael Kelly – equivalent, it should be noted, to Britain’s annual GDP. That, of course, is before we’ve factored in the cost of Anderson’s other plans such as retrofitting the entire industrial and transport infrastructure, all within the next 12 years. In its more sane moments, even Extinction Rebellion might be proud of such an ambitious plan.
The Conversation is obligatory reading for those aiming to keep fully up to speed with the latest climate, Net Zero and woke fantasies. It purports to be an independent source of news analysis, written by academic experts working with professional journalists. To the mainstream media, it offers “media-ready” experts and “free” content. It is funded by academic institutions and receives money from a number of billionaire Foundations. Media partners include Reuters, PA Media, Reach (owner of the Mirror, Express, Daily Star and multiple local U.K. newspapers) and Apple News.
Collectivist economic solutions alongside the ubiquitous woke dogma are increasingly dominating debate around climate change. This blatantly political agenda is said to be dictated by ‘the Science’ which its advocates then refuse to discuss, a ruse used to disguise the paucity of evidence that humans control the climate thermostat. Net Zero is becoming the dividing line in the age-old battle between Right and Left, Free markets and Socialism, Cavaliers and Roundheads. In the U.S. the issue is rapidly becoming yet another fight between the Republicans and the Democrats. Similar trends are likely in the U.K. and Europe as Net Zero starts wreaking economic and social havoc.
The Conversation is to the fore on climate wokery. In 2020, two UCL geography professors Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis argued in its pages that colonisation marked the beginning of the Anthropocene (a political renaming of the current Holocene epoch), and racism and the climate emergency shared common causes. In his recent article, Kevin Anderson argues that “given deep inequalities”, the rapid reduction of material consumption and the deployment of a zero-carbon infrastructure “is only possible by re-allocating society’s productive capacity away from enabling the private luxury of a few and towards wider public ownership”.
Last week the Daily Caller castigated the IPCC summary report of its work over the last five years as a “woke dumpster fire masquerading as science”. Any scientific credibility the new UN report might have had is called into question by its “extensive use of ‘woke’ buzzwords”, it said. Variations of the words ‘equity’ and ‘inequality’ are said to appear 31 times in the 36-page document. Variations of ‘inclusive’ and ‘inclusion’ appear 17 times. Apparently, the document mentions ‘colonialism’ and repeatedly refers to climate and ‘social justice’ for ‘marginalised’ groups.
The Daily Caller quotes a section of the report that states: “redistributive policies… that shield the poor and vulnerable, social safety nets, equity, inclusion and just transitions, at all scales can enable deeper societal ambitions and resolve trade-offs with sustainable development goals”. The publication notes that if you think ‘equity’ is a fundamental pillar of scientific knowledge, then this is the report for you. ”But if you’re like most people and don’t think far-left political priorities have a place in scientific documents meant to advise policymakers, this should alarm you,” it concldues.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Another professor ie quack. Lead on Prof. You first. De-carbonise and show the way Bolshevist.
Another idiot who has never worked, never built, never created, never did anything.
Fossils don’t make hydrocarbon fuel. It is an abiotic, not organic process. Lose the stupid terminology. Fossils are made from water and cement in a compressed period of time. Has zero to do with carbon anything.
A good post, but the down tick left me wondering the intellectual capacity and dexterity of the carbon based life form that initiated it. Perhaps the use of dendrochronology would be an appropriate means of measurement.
Professor Kevin Anderson seems to be a very good reason why the University sector needs to be drastically reduced.
“Fossils are made from water and cement in a compressed period of time.”
What exactly does this mean?
With any luck, his students will end up taking on proper jobs and adopt more rationale attitudes, otherwise they’ll end up on the dole. In the meantime. It looks as if Anderson is exploiting his academic position to campaign for a controversial group of policies.
They are not “controversial”————-They are TOTALLY ABSURD
Well, I think the answer to this piece is self explanatory! He’s a fecking Loon!
No so long ago people with such ethereal veiws would have been taken away in a straight jacket as a lunatic and would rot away the rest of their lives in an asylum somewhere!
Sounds like today’s universities are the new asylums!!!
IIRC, the old asylums have been converted into up-market gated communities.
Are the wealthiest people ever to have lived now overcome by collective guilt? Or have we simply become brainwashed by the false climate change narrative that pretends to be about the environment when it is really about the world’s wealth and resources? As the population recently hit 8 billion and the amount of coal gas and oil in the ground remains finite, the Sustainable Development idea is that the wealthy west who have used up more than their fair share of the fossil fuels in the ground should STOP doing that.———————– In order to convince the western populations that they must ration everything and go without, you need a very a good or at least a plausible excuse and that excuse is CLIMATE CHANGE. But almost everything claimed by the pretend to save the planet people is either totally false or at best a tiny smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency. The Eco Imperialists at the UN, ably assisted by a bought and paid for media (like the Climate Show on SKY NEWS) are convincing most (but not all) of us that an apocalypse is under way, and every aspect of our life must now be controlled by the Central Planners or we face extinction.——-This extinction is entirely based on the output from un-validated climate models which do not even understand the basic climate parameters. eg —–Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS). If that number is high there may be some warming, but if it is low then there will hardly be any. ——Guess what? That number is NOT KNOWN. It is simply assumed to be high. The climate alarmists that you see almost on a daily basis on TV News claiming billions of us will die take the worst case scenario’s from those fanciful models and present them on TV as ultimate truth, with presenters never ever seeming to question any of it. They are given the platform to spout this stuff which has zero evidence to back it up, and people sitting at home will be under the impression that it all must be true. A few recent storms and floods will accompany these propaganda messages as visual confirmation of the coming apocalypse to further convince the unsuspecting public. ———-Wake up people this is the biggest pseudo scientific fraud ever perpetrated.
If we went along with the misanthropic quack’s recommendations to reduce us to serfdom just how much less carbon would be emitted to the atmosphere would it make any difference at all considering China or India?
CO2 = plant food.
“a refit of U.K. housing stock, a withdrawal of all combustion engine cars in favour of expanded public transport, electrification of industry,”
How much energy does this nutcase think would be necessary to completely overhaul our entire housing stock and infrastructure?
Are wind turbines and solar panels doing to be producing the energy to make the steel and concrete and copper cables and mining and transporting the rare earth minerals to build this eco-utopia?
Or are we going to be using MORE oil, coal and gas than we would have done if we had not tried to carry out this hare-brained scheme?
The three battlefronts are climatism, wokism and covidism, each designed to instill fear of crisis, then strip the individual of money, liberty and power.
It’s that simple.
With a very few noble exceptions, the British LibLabConSNP Unaparty is totally committed to all three. They are aided by big tech, corporate multinationals, quangos, unions and academics.
The great news though is there’s more of us than them.
Resist, oppose and disrupt.
So much for the Age of Enlightenment. As I see it, we are currently in an Age of Re-darkenment and these people, (God knows what their internal psychological state is like) the useful idiot shock troops of the billionaire elites who fund them, are the most dangerous people around. I can only imagine how they infect the minds of hundreds of naive and starry-eyed students who go out to do his work and spread the gospel of ‘The End is Nigh’ on metaphorical sandwich boards in businesses, education and in politics.
The climate alarmists don’t like be hauled up on their science. Not one bit. They would rather shriek at you about ‘97% of climate scientists said’ or ‘CO2’ or ‘Polar bears are disappearing’ or point at hockey stick graphs and tell you we’ve only got 5, 10, 15 etc years left and that we’re all going to burn, be drowned, freeze our balls and tits off, or whatever it is we’re going to suffer (sounds like the calls for damnation for all heretics, doesn ‘t it?). It is all irrational and to be perfectly blunt, it is emotional.
The emotional aspect is highly important here. We live in an age of uncertainty with no vision of a future other than the dystopian one offered by the WEF and its acolytes. People are scared. They’re scared of disease, the climate, war, poverty, homelessness etc. It’s all so emotional but then ’emotional’ is a good hook for a movement. Once you’ve scared people, you can offer them redemption, through climate activism (preaching the gospel) and you’ve got ’em. Explaining the actual science or at least asking for a debate about the science is not going to happen because it’s heresy. So, yes, it is a cult based on emotional reactions to perceived crises. Nothing more. And that’s why we’re in a spiritual war, as I see it. Ultimately, it is a battle for souls.
Any scientific credibility the new UN report might have had is called into question by its “extensive use of ‘woke’ buzzwords”, it said. Variations of the words ‘equity’ and ‘inequality’ are said to appear 31 times in the 36-page document.
So it is woke to talk about equity and inequality? What next? Democracy?
Wouldn’t be a bad candidate because whoever is governing the so-called democratic countries, it’s certainly not the people. These have only a very limited, indirect input into the political system.
“So it is woke to talk about equity and inequality? “
Yes. I don’t really know what “equity” means in this context; I just know its meaning in relation to having shares in a company. Perhaps you could explain what “equity” means. As far as “inequality” goes, assuming it means that some person’s lot in life is “unequal” to some other person’s, then it’s simply the natural state of affairs, and indeed the only possible state of affairs, so it seems fairly meaningless to me.
What I have observed is that people who talk about “equity” and “inequality” usually want to come and interfere with me and my family, take away our stuff, prevent us from doing things we want to do, so my default position is that such people are my enemies, until proven otherwise.
Equity has sneaked into the lexicon in place of equality. It’s useful to know the difference:
Equity refers to fairness and justice and is distinguished from equality: Whereas equality means providing the same to all, equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances.
Thanks but still not clear on the difference. Would equality be giving everyone one smartie, and equity would be distributing smarties on the basis of how many people already had (favouring greedy sods who had eaten all theirs and penalising the prudent who had conserved theirs)? Bit like Biden’s monstrous student loan forgiveness plan, thankfully about to get thrown out by the US Supreme Court.
Yes precisely. Equity means making sure people from some groups are bestowed with benefits and advantages that are purposely denied to those from other groups.
Whilst pretending that what is happening is fair.
It’s a recipe for real trouble.
“It’s a recipe for real trouble.”
At this point I fear that the only way this is going to end is with one side utterly defeated and miserable. Hope it’s not my side. Compromising has not worked – for every inch given, a mile is demanded and then taken.
I can’t help but think it’s a deliberate policy.
It’s the old divide and rule coloniser’s trick to get people to fight amongst themselves instead of uniting against the real enemy.
Systematically preferencing some groups over others is what we did in India and several other places. And what the Belgians did in Rwanda.
“I can’t help but think it’s a deliberate policy.”
100%.
Believe me, ToF, it will absolutely our side.
That is precisely the intention.
All the rest is just lipstick on pig.
Miss Dolly has it.
Another way of putting it, is that whilst most people would hope for equallity of opportunity (irrespective of who or what you are); the “Equity” team campaign, often violently, for equallity of outcomes.
So no matter how thick or lazy you are, you must be protected against the intelligent and conscientious.
Curiously, I’ve yet to see anyone suggest that young healthy East Africans must be weighted down when running in competition with young healthy runners of English heritage. This, of course would be most inequitable.
Another interesting factoid is the recent TV celebration of the kind donation of cricket kit to youngsters needing proper kit to learn and play with.
Excellent idea.
The recipient club featured on the telly was the Sheffield Caribbean Cricket Club. Nice to see the youngsters kitted up.
Of course, if you are wondering about establishing a Cricket Club for kids of other ethnic backgrounds, you might need to consider what you call it.
At present, if you fancy a job as a male actor in TV ads, be aware that equality of opportunity is not apparently necessary when interviews are conducted. But “Equity” will certainly be enforced.
Colonization began when Greek city states founded colonies, daughter cities inhabited by settlers from original city, all over the coast of the Mediterranian during the centuries before the Peloponesian War. That’s actually the very origin of the word and daft utterances of history-blind ignoramuses who genuinely believe the world originated in 1492 are best ignored. Not all of what they write or say is that easily exposed as idiocy but one can rest assured that nothing is more well-founded. It’s all just rambling about imaginary big picture scenarios fuelled by a deep aversity to paying any attention to details. That’s boring stuff other people can worry about.
This photo from this morning sums it up
Next event
Wednesday 29th March 11am to 12pm
Yellow Boards
Junction Eversley Road &
Langley Common Road, Arborfield,
Wokingham RG2 9PS
Anderson’s diatribe shows a “50:50 chance of warming not exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”. Who in their right mind would outlay such huge expenditure and have such huge life changes imposed on these odds? And if a professor thinks 50:50 is certain catastrophe, he should consider whether the ‘prof’ title is justified.
The Prof title is seldom justified. It means they are narrow minded and only a bit proficient in a single narrow speciality.
It’s hopeless to try having a conversation on “The Conversation”. Some professor always tries to shut you down with an “argument from authority” which doesn’t work too well with me! They should change its name to “The Narrative(tm)”.
A quick read through the article in Conversation shows lots of of CO2 references but little to no mention of temperature. I wonder why that might be…
I escaped from the silo of climate catastrophe dogma some time ago but most of my friends are still there, actually arguing with similar themes that their graphs are accurate, their opponents cherry- pick data and the academic and professional credentials of those experts prdicting doom mean they must be correct. One argument I didn’t have an answer to is that ocean temperatures are increasing and are more indicative of alarming increase in heat even though atmospheric aren’t as shown in a recent DS article.
If you want to see real climate hysteria watch Jacob Rees-Mogg interviewing a Just Stop Oil activist on GB News 27 March. She made Greta look sane.
Electrification of ‘industry’? Where does he think electicity comes from?