When more than 10,000 signatures are received on a petition on the Government’s petition website, the Government automatically replies. When that petition reaches 100,000 signatures, it triggers a debate in Parliament. A recent response from the Government to a petition calling for the repeal of the Climate Act 2008 and the Net Zero targets reveals the bankruptcy of Westminster’s favourite policy agenda. But sceptics need to step it up a couple of gears if they want to expose the green agenda for what it is, and to topple green policy madness.
The petition rightly argued that allowing only “one side only of a two-sided scientific debate is not an acceptable basis for significant legislation that could have major impacts on the U.K.’s economy and citizens”. The Government’s reply is a boilerplate reassertion of green political dogma of the kind that got us to where we are. The problem with this response, however, is that unpacking and fisking such concatenations of ideological presuppositions, appeals to authority (“the Science”) and hopelessly vague claims is hard work, and invariably produces 10 words for each of theirs. Challenging the notion that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the work of “thousands of the world’s top climate scientists”, for instance, requires hundreds of words of rebuttal because the IPCC is a complex organisation and its work is a complex process, which is routinely misunderstood, but always presented as a ‘consensus’. In fact, it as often as not shows the opposite: a lack of agreement between scientists.
For those who prefer a longer-form debunking, I have attempted to address the Government’s reply on my Substack. Here I reproduce a handful of those rebuttals. I don’t say this merely to drive more traffic and subs – welcome though those would be – but to anticipate some green wag telling me that I’ve forgotten some key point, to devastating effect. That is how they roll. I haven’t forgotten… All of us, except climate trolls, have limited bandwidth.
If there is a theme to the Government’s reply, it is that, contrary to the petitioners’ claim, the IPCC and other scientific institutions and state agencies have settled any debate about climate change and its consequences. This is epitomised in the statement that “the Government’s policy to support ambitious action on climate change reflects the mainstream scientific consensus, and delaying action will only put future generations at risk”.
The main mistake here is that “future generations” are not an object of the “scientific consensus”. Science has nothing to say about “future generations” because (proper) science does not deal with things that do not exist, and things which are not material objects as such, such as society. If human society is a thing that can be understood as an object, then the problem for the green argument is that no metric of human welfare shows any sensitivity to climate change in the era of global warming, despite 2023 being the “warmest year on record” at “1.46°C above the pre-industrial baseline”. Put simply, far from making life more precarious, the industrial revolution, powered by the combustion of fossil fuels, has vastly increased human welfare, not least by reducing the life-threatening risks we’re exposed to. This diminishing of risks is quantifiable: reductions in infant mortality, increases in wealth and longevity, and a significant reduction in loss of life due to extreme weather and exposure to the elements.
Some climate researchers, who are categorically not on the climate sceptic side, such as Bjørn Lomborg and Ted Nordhaus, have tried to understand what the future will look like, given certain assumptions about economic, technological and social development, and under different future emissions and policy scenarios. Their simple argument is that if the past is prologue and society continues to enjoy economic growth, then human welfare will increase. The extent to which climate change is likely to limit this welfare can be estimated, and subtracted from the total. According to this analysis, a world which continues to power economic growth by using fossil fuels until the end of this century will be many times wealthier than today’s world – perhaps by 1,000% – but climate change in the form of nearly 4.86°C of warming will negate 5.7% of that growth. Similarly, a policy agenda in which growth is (we can hope) powered by a more ‘sustainable’ form of energy and resource use grows by a more modest 500% or so, will cause only 3.24°C of warming, and negate just 2.5% of that growth. In other words, policy has a far more devastating effect on the welfare of future generations than climate change can or will.
With or without climate change, future generations are going to be vastly better off than we are, according to this analysis. They will be healthier, wealthier and safer. So, governments and scientists who claim to speak on their behalf, to put policies in place to protect them, at our expense, must, at the very least, face public scrutiny and answer this criticism. It doesn’t come from ‘deniers’. It doesn’t take issue with global warming or climate change ‘science’. It isn’t funded by oil and gas companies. The Government is wrong: there is a debate.
The Government’s reply goes on to boast about the success of climate and energy policy: “The U.K. is the first major economy to halve its emissions – having cut them by around 53% between 1990 and 2023, while also growing its economy by around 80%.” But these figures are dodgy.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) records three metrics for emissions data. If we count our emissions based on what we consume, then U.K. emissions have fallen by just a third, and not since 1990, but since 2007. (See the top line in the graph below.)
Second, though it’s true that U.K. GDP has grown by 80% since 1990, the population has increased, and U.K. GDP per capita shows far more modest growth.
2007 is significant because it was the year before the financial crash and the year before the passing of the U.K.’s Climate Change Act. The reductions in emissions, therefore, beyond merely demolishing reliable forms of power generation, may well reflect little more than rising prices and economic stagnation. The climate policy agenda, far from creating a ‘green industrial revolution’, powering ‘green economic growth’ and ‘green jobs’ may have in fact prevented a recovery from the 2008 financial crash. On this claim from the Government, too, there is clearly a need for debate.
Third, the Government claims that it “understands the importance of affordable energy bills for households and businesses and is focussed on delivering for energy consumers”. It adds that it is “taking a comprehensive approach to bring down future bills”, which “includes reforming retail markets to be more effective for consumers through the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA) Programme” and “investing across the energy system and supporting the progress of new technologies”. But these claims are false.
Power prices in the U.K. are not expensive merely because of the shortcoming of the design of market regulations. Power prices are high because the Renewables Obligation and the successor Contracts for Difference subsidy schemes pumped (and continue to pump) vast amounts of cash from the consumer to green generators, and because emissions-reduction mandates closed existing and much cheaper forms of generation. Moreover, in terms of energy delivered, electricity is the smallest market compared to gas for heat and transport fuels. The “electrification of everything” required by Net Zero will thus increase the cost of heating homes and transport. And successive U.K. governments, with their European counterparts, have restricted exploitation of conventional energy resources and fracking, increasing dependence on imports, and thereby pushed prices up.
“Affordable energy bills” are manifestly not a priority for the Government because such concerns have been put second to the climate agenda. The green agenda requires the creation of scarcity, necessarily, and for consumption to be prohibited by price. That is the point of the smart meter rollout, which the Government claims will produce a “smarter energy system”, and that such “energy efficiency” will “reduce costs for all consumers”. That is false. “Energy efficiency” is not equivalent to lower cost. Efficiency with respect to use of a resource may mean that you use less of that resource. But if the capital cost of obtaining that resource per unit of energy is higher – as is manifestly the case with renewables – then the costs of using that resource will rise. The Government conflates ‘efficiency’ and ‘cost’ because there has been no debate about costs in Parliament to confront such mythology, and MPs and ministers have been resistant to people making such observations, who have been denigrated as ‘deniers’.
The Government and MPs, all political parties, and the agencies on which they depend, need to be told that there is a debate. They are not going to work it out for themselves without significant pressure.
Petitions work. The Welsh Government’s blanket speed limit has been rolled back thanks to 441,288 Welsh signatures – nearly 20% of the electorate – on a petition that demanded it “rescind and remove the disastrous 20mph law”. But not all petitions attract so many signatures. At the time of writing this, just 11,801 people have signed the Net Zero petition. Yet Net Zero will mean an effective 0mph ban on roads throughout the country for millions of people, who will be confined to homes they cannot afford to heat, even if they have a job, and even if their smart meter hasn’t disconnected them.
It is up to critics of the climate agenda – sceptics – to close that gap, and to put the case to the wider population. And there has never been, since the Climate Change Act became law in 2008, such an opportunity. The democratic torpor is lifting. In both houses of Parliament, a small number of peers and MPs, including former ministers, have begun challenging the Government on Net Zero costs. And ahead of a looming Labour Government, even unions are starting to find their voice. But it is not enough and not fast enough to stop the Net Zero agenda before it causes more harm. Sceptics should embrace the few remaining instruments of democracy left at our disposal. Meet your MPs at their surgeries. Send them letters. Sign petitions. And organise and support challenges to them when they fail to represent your views.
You can sign the Net Zero petition here.
Subscribe to Ben Pile’s The Net Zero Scandal Substack here.
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Young people tend to be pretty illiberal and have totalitarian attitudes. Schools are hellholes of verbal abuse and violence that would get you arrested if you behaved that way in the ‘grown up’ world. It’s why I don’t think anyone under 25 should be able to vote: by then most people have spend a bit of time working for a living.
I was ‘groomed’ by the education establishment to vote left wing and did so in 1997, when I was 22. I realised within days how much I’d been conned (in fairness, Major’s regime was tracing paper thin different from Blair and would likely have been as bad with that size of majority!) Had I been 25 and spent some time in employment, I know I’d have thought differently. I certainly shouldn’t have been voting in local elections when I was 18. I was still doing my A-Levels and only had a weekend job.
The 25-34 generation, as the article states, has a different view, because they’ve spent some time out of school and away from the left wing madrassas that pretend to be ‘Yewnis’. It’s a flaw of our societies that we have pushed voting ever younger when we should be going for maturity. So I wouldn’t sweat the 18-24 bracket’s view too much: by the time they hit 25-34, they will simply have grown up a bit.
I strongly disagree with the idea that the voting age should be raised to 25, or any age higher than 18. Such an odious and ageist idea only makes a country that much more illiberal in practice. “Old enough to go to war but not old enough to vote” has zero place in a free and liberal democracy worthy of the name. In fact, I actually think the voting age should be lowered to 16. You know, like it is in Brazil, hardly a bastion of lockdown-loving woke zealots.
Let’s not forget, it was people WELL OVER 25 who locked us down in the first place. Had 18-24 year olds been in charge, they would most likely have implemented their own version of the Great Barrington Declaration by grounding their parents and grandparents for a few weeks, while young people built herd immunity by keeping calm and carrying on, and keeping everything open and functioning normally.
Is there any real reason why some 12 year olds shouldn’t vote (possibly with certain safeguards)? Let’s remember that within living memory, 14 year olds could get a job (taxation without representation and all that), 15 year olds could drive, 12 year olds could marry. Yes, some might be manipulated by parents, but many are rebellious and would vote for something if they felt strongly enough. Would children have voted for all these lockdown related policies that were all harm and no benefit for them (and the rest of us, come to think of it)?
And I’ll say another thing. There was once a remarkable survey of children (primary school in Luton, I think). They were asked what their first priority would be if they ran the country. The most popular response? Ban divorce. Yes, sometimes children really do know better than adults! I know someone who wrote a book about child prodigies. I tend towards the view that quite a lot of patronising nonsense is written about under 18s and voting. Yes, some would not be in a position to vote wisely, but then again, nor would some over 18s.
Indeed, as I like to say, if the Kardashians can vote, Trump can vote, alcoholics can vote, drug addicts can vote, psychotics can vote, and developmentally disabled people can vote, there is no valid reason why 16 year olds (and perhaps even younger) can’t vote.
I would say as a student of history, I disagree with the idea of banning divorce. But otherwise I agree with you overall. Very well-said.
Certainly there is a legitimate debate to be had about whether these things should be banned or whatever. But we should remember that with divorce, lockdowns, killing the unborn and other issues besides, the interests of children, who are often the most affected, need to be considered. Sadly the Birkenhead Drill (women and children first) appears to have been largely abandoned. The late, great journalist Christopher Booker (who paved the way for the UK independence referendum) wrote about how, despite international treaties, the views of children were simply not being taken into consideration by the (corrupt) family courts in custody disputes and adoption cases, and this is simply not acceptable.
Indeed it is true. Children have been, and still are, fundamentally denied any sort of voice, unless of course it is convenient for those in power. And that is unacceptable. Yes there need to be safeguards, but they should still have a voice and a seat at the table as the human beings that they are.
In what I like to call the “Great Cosmic Custody Battle” between the forces of patriarchy vs matriarchy, for thousands of years, children are always the very first and very last casualties. It wasn’t long ago that children were treated like livestock for the most part, at least children of the bottom 99% of the population. Now things are supposedly more “enlightened”, where children are treated as exotic pets when they’re “good” or wanted, and vermin when they are “bad” or unwanted, often arbitrarily defined. But still never quite treated as fully human either way, and still commodified. The more things change, the more they stay the same…
And when they become teens (and even young adults in some countries like the USA), they are hypocritically treated as children when they are “good”, and as adults when they are “bad”.
Reminds me of Claudio Naranjo’s interesting idea. Where adults seem to have this atavistic and overblown fear that children and young people if given an inch would not only take a mile, but ruthlessly tyrannize their elders with an iron fist, as allegedly happened in the Paleolithic era. Just like men tend to have the same atavistic and overblown fear about women, as allegedly happened in the Neolithic. But the idea of what Naranjo calls a Tri-Une Society between women, men, and children seems to fall on deaf ears. Perhaps he had been taking too much Ayahuasca, but I would like to think that is more than a mere pipe dream.
Voting is a privilege, not a right. There is a very clear reason why children should not have the vote. They are too easily influenced and accepting of lies beyond their experience as human beings, as the rise of Greta Thunberg evidences. It is just an opportunity to manipulate a large group into handing over their votes unquestioningly
On the other hand, I do think that our Parliamentary Representatives should be a minimum age of 55.
Incidentally, during lockdown, I decided to avoid the endless offers of masks, and dirty looks when I refused. I went to ebay and purchased a sunflower lanyard for the princely sum of £2.99, and the wearing of which allowed me to regain free movement and personal choice over masking without question or rebuke. Once a rebel, always a rebel…
Both my daughters (in their 20’s) were appalled that I could possibly subvert the system on such an important matter. My eldest didn’t talk to me for nearly a year, and our relationship is still altered today. She will vote Labour against the cruel Tories I expect, but they don’t see that it isn’t Labour vs Tories anymore. Its Elite vs Citizens and our people are under the boot of propaganda.
Well said NP. I’ve had the ‘interesting’ experience over the past 3 years of my wife refusing to discuss the rona stuff as she disagreed with my scepticism and reliance on evidence. The publication of Hancock’s self-pitying garbage has changed her mind. Not that she has told me I was right of course! She’s even reading articles by Anders Tegnell. Perhaps there is hope for your eldest? I do hope so.
Well said, True! Totally agree with your various points. I draw the line at actual minors voting but when you look at the absolute ninkompoops and toxic, dysfunctional pondlife that can vote it makes you wonder how much worse off we can be. Mind you, I’m now at the point where I fail to see any signs of true democracy in Western societies and that most general elections are rigged. And that’s if you even get to have an election in the first place!
N.B Actually can prisoners vote? I genuinely don’t know the answer, but rationally one would expect them to lose that right as soon as they get sent down.
As I recall the EU told the UK that our prisoners had the right to vote but it didn’t happen??
Thank you.
Indeed, very well-said. I doubt very much that teens would have reflexively voted for lockdown, at least not before they developed Melbourne Syndrome from the trauma after the fact.
I should add that I absolutely support parental rights (including legitimate chastisement), and indeed have been campaigning on behalf of someone standing as an independent in the local elections on the issue of parents being able to remove their children from classes teaching inappropriate material. I just get furious about how the interests of children are sidelined on some issues, and not least during the lockdown shambles where it now seems clear that children died to supposedly protect adults.
Have you ever actually met a 12 year old?
If you had, you would know the reason why they shouldn’t vote.
So raise the age at which you can go to war: how about 21? And make the voting age 21 as well, since by then at least some of the snowflakes will have grown up a bit.
Non sequitur, what you just said.
‘Let’s not forget, it was people WELL OVER 25 who locked us down.’
With emotional and intellectual age of 18 months.
Also, young people (though clearly not all of them) are like that largely because of those who indoctrinate them, who tend to be much older than them. Perhaps the latter should be the ones to lose their right to vote, by that logic. As for the idea that only people who “work for a living” should be allowed to vote, that would of course exclude not only students and unemployed, but also pensioners, housewives, many disabled people, and so on. Eventually, by that slippery logic, no one would ever be able to vote again. Then it’s a one way express train to the mud and muck of tyranny.
Be VERY careful what you wish for, because we all know what they say about wishes.
Young people tend to be ignorant, incapable of intelligent thought, illiterate, innumerate, spoilt.
Voting age should be at least 30 and nobody under 45 should be allowed to be MP or local councillor AND must have had jobs in the private, wealth creating sectors, and serve terms of no more than 12 months.
We don’t live in a liberal democracy. We live in a socialist society with increasingly fascist characteristics.
Our economy is a.mix of socialism and crony capitalism. There are pockets of free.market enterprise, but increasingly fewer.
Politically, we basically.live in a one party technocracy run mostly by bureaucrats and fronted by politicians. On all.major policies the two major parties agree giving voters no actual say on the most subatantial iasues of our time. The system is completely rigged, so no new party can really emerge with any chance.of success.
It really annoys me when people suggest liberal democracy isn’t working, or young people don’t by into it. When we had it, people loved it. The problem is that it has been taken away by collectivists, technocrats and plutocrats.
I repeat, anyone can stand in the local elections, no deposit required. I urge all who are able to do so or support a good independent (or a party such as the Heritage Party). Anyone can print and deliver leaflets on the issues that matter, or distribute copies of The Light (I saw some copies the other day in a takeaway). When enough people do so, and enough people care about these issues, the old, corrupt parties will be forced to change tack or face being swept away like so much muck from the Augean stables.
Too true – there are several campaigns encouraging people to not vote for Westminster parties – and you can even get some leaflets and deliver them door to door. Here’s one campaign I’d recommend (not least because it is my own!) NotLibLabCon https://www.notliblabcon.org/
In theory yes, in practice no.
Just take the most successful recent attempt to create an alternative: UKIP
They got 12.6% of the votes and just 1 seat or 0.1% of the seats.
And that was even after the Conservatives “stole” their star policy with the promise of a EU referendum.
Then they tried to sabotage the referendum.
Then when they still didn’t get the referendum they wanted, they did all they could to sabotage Brexit.
Then when they didn’t quite manage to do that, they diluted Brexit to the point where it pretty much makes no difference.
In theory, I can set up football team and win the Premier League. There is, in theory, a pathway for that. In practice, it’s impossible because all the rules of the game are rigged so you don’t really have a chance. And if by any chance you start to be successful, they’ll throw obstacles in your way that aren’t even part of the rule book.
From personal experience local elections generally have a turnout of around 20 – 30% of the electorate. It’s hardly democracy in action.
They’re less intelligent than older people, both because indigenous IQs have been falling for about 150 years and because increasing proportions of younger people are desperately thick Third Worlders.
They’re more poorly educated ( despite having more “qualifications”) than older people, because an education system that several decades ago was at least partly about education is now entirely about indoctrination.
They’re scared of disagreeing with the official truths because they see that bad things happen to those who do.
And the white boys have been deliberately utterly demoralised.
Our people are pushing for education that teaches rhetoric, logic, critical analysis and real history, among other things. I suggest supporting those who do likewise.
“Why don’t they teach logic in those schools?”.
Wow, the Melbourne Syndrome is quite strong with them. That’s what I call it instead of Stockholm Syndrome, because #SwedenGotItRight.
Perhaps they have not yet learnt the financial consequences. Later on, they will.
Assuming this guy is correct, this would make young people markedly more conservative than the erstwhile neoliberal radicals nowadays posing as conservative because they believe that 40 years would be a jolly long time. That the state is supposed to uphold safety and common standards was still considered perfectly established wisdom about 50 years ago, this being a culmination of about 1500 years of European development outside of the umbrella of the Roman empire.
“As liberal democracies increasingly fail to deliver the promise of greater opportunity and prosperity,…”
That is because liberal democracies have almost ceased to be liberal or democratic. This all began with the global corporations ripping the heart out of many western communities, first by handing all the skilled work over to China and then helping to undermine any sense of national identity and culture.
In addition the results of this pole may indicate that many young people lack the inquisitiveness and ability to think independently and critically.
“In addition the results of this pole may indicate that many young people lack the inquisitiveness and ability to think independently and critically.”
See my above post.
Has the Green Party condemned the CCP yet (who, the last I heard, were presiding over coal being hauled from filthy, opencast mines by ageing steam locomotives)?
most of the young people i know were all for the masks the lockdown and the shots ,and had little or rather no interest in fighting it
am very disappointed in the ones like that
Indeed, the very biggest problem with “kids these days” is that they are NOT rebellious enough! It’s like I want to tell them, “Get ON my lawn!” LOL. Not like it is much of a shock from the most heavily restricted and monitored generation (since birth) in all of recorded history, particularly in the USA. Safetyism and cotton wool helicopter parenting truly comes at a cost in the short run and in the long run.
Sorry I don’t buy in to these polls. The other day you said a poll showed 40% of people are still wearing masks yes 40%. That day I went into London to the “Truth be Told” rally. This involved various train and tube journeys and a walk from Parliament Square to the BBC! And of course the return journeys. Now I agree the people I marched with would in no way ever wear masks but we walked past a fair few thousand other members of the public. I counted the number of people wearing masks that day and the total came to 14 yes 14. In my estimation that is less than 1% not 40%. Okay I may have missed a few but even if you double or quadruple or even times it by 10 or even 100 with all the thousands and thousands of people I saw the number of people wearing masks comes nowhere near 40%. So my question is who’s making these numbers up? Think I know why!
I asked my 14 year old nephew who had just spent a week isolating with “covid” why anyone still needs to isolate, seeing as so many people have had covid multiple times and have recovered. His response: “we need to do it for the economy. No – not the economy, the environment. No, not that – we have to do it beause it is good for society.” He seemed to be trying to recall which of the propaganda messges he has been indoctrinated with was the appropriate response.
A perfect anecdote to support my comment below!
Why? Because they have been fed ‘climate change’ propaganda for all their lives by their teachers/lecturers and the MSM. But they have not been taught critical thinking.
I’ve been researching my dad’s RAF service record. Like thousands of 18 yr olds he signed up, sailed over to Canada on the Queen Mary and learned to fly. He finished at Little Staughton, home of the elite 582 squadron of Pathfinders.
One course photo from the British Canada Air Training Plan school shows a picture of 7 youngsters, 5 of whom didn’t survive the war, one badly injured.
80 years difference, when Christian values governed our lives and honour reigned supreme.
I don’t believe the young are that different than the older in their beliefs on lockdowns. Polls I have seen say over 80% of all people agreed with governments policies on lockdowns and that about 10% were skeptics. Propaganda and coercion is effective across all age groups. We have always been constantly manipulated and for many, we are finally waking up to that fact.
We value things according to what they cost us. The true cost of anything is what we had to give up to get it.
The current generations gave up nothing to get: freedom, clean water, modern sanitation, modern medicine, plentiful, varied, cheap food and clothing, education, all their electronic devices, mobility, peace… and more.
These were inherited cost free from previous generations, and being cost fee these nitwits don’t value them.
They need to be made to go without.
Test – can’t post.
The Unherd piece links to a Cambridge study of generational attitudes to democracy containing two very interesting graphs. The first – growing dissatisfaction over four generations – could have been better formatted (it plots age left to right but birth date right to left). If you shift Millenials fifteen years to the right, they actually accord closely with Gen X – both groups get increasingly pessimistic over the current century.
The second graph shows a truly remarkable result. Millenials are more satisfied with democracy when “populists” rather than “moderates” are in power. This need not mean that they voted for the one or the other, merely that they were given a choice.
Take the two together. The twenty years of disillusionment correspond closely to the Uniparty period when politics was taken out of politics. It is at least possible that the young people are as uninspired by the current range of choice as their elders and would respond well to the return of adversarial politics.