[awakened53]

Not Dark Yet… But it’s Getting There

I do not think this can be sustained indefinitely. Unless we are rescued by an unforeseen technological bonus, something, at some point, will crack.

There seem to me to be two possible directions of travel. The first possibility is that resistance to Net Zero measures grows and governments respond to that, by abandoning or (more likely) delaying the goal, or by going about it in an economically more rational way, as I set out earlier – though this will of course make the costs even more visible and obvious. This could happen as doubts about the nature of the ‘crisis’ grow, and as voters in the West get frustrated by the persistent slow growth and increasing restrictions on their lifestyle while the rest of the world carries on as normal. The Dutch Farmers’ Party’s success is a straw in the wind here, but to make any real impact mainstream political parties here and across Europe need to pick up the issue, and it would require a persistent minority to push hard to change the debate. This is not impossible – we saw it in the U.S. and U.K. on lockdown policy during the pandemic. But at the moment the political conditions seem a long way from allowing this to happen.

The second possibility is one in which governments recognise they can no longer credibly sustain an economic justification for their measures, but the wider politics and the reluctance to admit error mean they cannot abandon the target and must try to reach it. At that point we should expect to see a ramping up of the catastrophic risk rhetoric in order to justify much tougher measures, the diversion of perhaps 5% of GDP annually, maybe more, and together with assertive measures to control consumption and demand. My worry is that the broader climate of economic and political debate tends to lead us in this direction. The huge focus on lifestyle change to save the planet, the politicisation of everyday lifestyle choices, the emphasis on living local and sustainability rather than being a burden on the earth, and the focus on reducing energy consumption rather than seeing cheap and abundant energy for what it is, a necessity to improve human lives: all this prepares the ground. Worse, policy during the pandemic showed how difficult it was for most governments to escape the climate of opinion they had created, to admit to errors, and to change course. All this is seriously alarming. If we don’t resist this miserabilist approach now, the approach that ends with lifestyle restrictions and rationing, we will risk seriously damaging levels of economic irrationality in the next decade. That outcome would risk us not just going dark through power supply shortages but could set the West seriously on the back foot in the geopolitical competition of the coming years.

We need to be ready for that moment and prepare to argue for a more rational path with a rethink of methods and, almost uncertainly, timetable

The job of those who are willing to question the rush to Net Zero is to see this crunch moment coming and to start to get the politics ready. We must show that pushing for Net Zero on the current timetable and with current methods involves unacceptable costs to the economy and to individuals. We must persistently question the view that voters must just live with those costs and adjust their lifestyles as a result. That doesn’t involve claiming that Net Zero, or something close to it, is an undesirable goal: carbon reduction is worth doing. It involves explaining that we have chosen a method which ensures vast waste, inefficiency, cronyism, and economic decline, the costs of which will be borne by the average voter. Accordingly, we need a rethink of the methods and, almost certainly, the timetable. And we must do this in ways which can be easily communicated and resonate with public opinion.

I suggest the following areas.

● First, we should keep underlining that there is not just a problem, there is a solution. That is gas to nuclear, backed with investment in fundamental research, and taking advantage of technological advances. This doesn’t require massive reinvestment in new energy production of doubtful value. The Government can stop guessing about future winners and support investment in technologies which exist now and offer the best, fastest, and most reliable way of getting emissions down quickly.

● Second, we may therefore need to be more dismissive of current renewable technology as an unnecessary complication. We need to find a much clearer way of explaining why renewables are inherently more expensive than the other options and communicating the obvious point that if you need renewables plus backup, why not just have the backup and avoid all other problems?

● Third, we must keep underlining the costs to the average voter – the mounting totals of renewables subsidies, both on bills and in tax, the extra costs of poor quality boilers and electric cars, the impact of compulsory insulation and energy efficiency, and much more. Moreover we can point out that, even at this level, we are off track to deliver Net Zero. All the pain is not even delivering the goal.

● Fourth, point out who is benefiting: the wealthy who can afford dubious carbon offsets, the green energy companies that are raking off taxpayer subsidies, and many more. They’re getting the benefits and meanwhile small businesses that produce useful products are being crushed by the burdens.

● Fifth, point to lockdown. In 2020 the banning of most human contact and travel resulted in a fall in U.K. emissions of just 9%. Imagine what it would take to get that figure down significantly further. Are people prepared to live with very much tougher restrictions on their lives for ever?

● And finally, be positive. We have allowed Net Zero advocates to become associated with positivity, with the clean green future, when in fact what they offer is a future of rationing, of restrictions, and of miserabilism. We need to keep underlining that we believe in the future, it is we who have a solution for the problem of cost-effective energy at scale, and it is we who believe human ingenuity will solve the climate change issue in a way that makes us all better off.

To conclude. We aren’t dark yet, but we do risk getting there. At the moment we are heading in the wrong direction. We are hamstringing ourselves, making our people poorer, reducing opportunity, and as a result limiting our economic, political, foreign policy, and defence capacity – our ability to get what we want in the world and make ourselves richer. But at the same time there are the first signs of consumer resistance to the practical consequences of the Net Zero ideology. A crunch is coming. We must do everything we can to change the debate and be ready for the moment when we can hope to push things in a different direction. The future of our societies rests on it.

[b]Stop Press:[/b] Bob Ward, the veteran opponent of climate contrarianism, has done his best to rebut Lord Frost’s argument with his usual intellectual acuity.