The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,’ claimed America’s most prominent young Left-wing politician, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in January 2019. We have only 10 years to go, she says.
The seeming interminable frenzy sanctimonious virtue signalling, histrionic Fear-mongering and shameless Environmental Hypocrisy are certainly trying to make the twelve days of the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow feel like 12 long years.
Joe Biden was the one who looked confused at his speech claiming that it was the most significant event in history. It must have been awful for the US President, who turned his 85-vehicle gasoline-guzzling motorcade of planes over the Atlantic and his four-plane fleet back to the US so that he could make his way home to witness his Democratic colleagues get defeated in local and state elections.
With Biden and other world leaders safely shuffled off the stage, the United Nations’ giant green jamboree enters its second week by no doubt getting down to the real business: a bunch of unscrupulous lobbyists and mobile phone-wielding activists cooking up ever-more ambitious schemes to pressurise big businesses to pretend to go green whether their customers like it or not, and forcing taxpayers to foot the bill through shady corporate subsidies extorted from feckless politicians too timid to stand up to any of the moralising eco-blackmail.
Boris Johnson was the host of the Cop26 conference, which took place in Glasgow. It was meant to bring attention to the topic of climate change.
Are you cynical? I’m not the only one. Saint Greta Thunberg called the summit a failure. She said: ‘It is not a secret that COP26 is a failure,’ accusing participants of ‘greenwashing’ and adding that the whole thing ‘has turned into a PR event’. She has never been more right than me.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking: ‘Vote Blue, Go Green.’ ‘Hug-a-Husky.’ Wasn’t the environmental agenda at the heart of David Cameron’s bid to ‘modernise’ the Conservative Party? And wasn’t I, as his special adviser in No 10, at the heart of that?
It is true. But the slogan wasn’t ‘Vote Blue, Go Dumb’.
I’m all for sensible policies that help protect the environment – just like pretty much every Conservative I know.
WE LOVE NATURE and respect and love it much more than the Left-wing crusaders. Their idea of nature is a small pot on their balcony and they need an app to see which oak tree is silver birch.
Yes, climate change is real. It has been caused by humans. We should do everything we can to combat pollution, as well as protect our planet for the future. I’m a strong supporter of the American Conservation Coalition, which mobilises the young around environmental action through common-sense, market-based and limited-government ideals.
I have regularly hosted Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of the world’s leading environmental campaigners, on my Fox News TV show to make the case for practical solutions to climate change that avoid the kind of manufactured alarmism and reckless catastrophising by ‘climate’ zealots that has most normal people rolling their eyes and reaching for some coal to burn just for the hell of it
I have regularly hosted Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of the world’s leading environmental campaigners, on my Fox News TV show to make the case for practical solutions to climate change that avoid the kind of manufactured alarmism and reckless catastrophising by ‘climate’ zealots that has most normal people rolling their eyes and reaching for some coal to burn just for the hell of it.
But the increasingly fatuous drivel served up by our leaders in the name of the ‘climate agenda’ – as they insist on calling it and which the Glasgow summit pushed to new heights of embarrassing incoherence – is not advancing the cause of environmental protection but harming it, and it’s time we said so clearly. Let’s start with the most obvious and egregious stupidity: the fact that Western countries, in the name of curbing carbon emissions, are clamping down on their own domestic production of fossil fuels while at the same time begging OPEC to pump more oil to fill the energy gap that has been the inevitable result.
In California, the ruling Democrats have moved to ban fracking and, over time, all oil and gas extraction – while increasing imports from Saudi Arabia! Is this a way to fight climate change
Shipping accounts for more carbon emissions even than air travel, not to mention the fact that fracking is the main source of natural gas – which is far less damaging to the environment than oil or coal, producing around 60 per cent less carbon dioxide.
Politicians don’t care. Let’s just get a pat on the back from the activist groups for ‘taking on the fossil fuel industry’. Does it cause emissions to increase? And who cares if it empowers authoritarian dictators such as Vladimir Putin, now exploiting Europe’s self-inflicted energy crisis to bolster his power and play geo-political games?
The same gap between self-righteous green groupthink, reality and real life applies to fossil fuel options that we know are capable of taking on the power to our future economies. Wind ’n’ solar, wind ’n’ solar… they repeat it like a mantra at every opportunity. Mother Nature was not told by anyone.
According to recent research, different countries use fuel in different ways.
What happens when there’s a ‘windless summer’ as Britain just experienced? We’re about to find out, and it may not be pretty. According to international energy experts, the worst-case scenario for society is one of rising energy prices and vulnerable people. Are excess winter deaths among our most old and frail really a price worth paying for some negligible or non-existent progress towards a ‘climate’ target?
Whether it’s wind or solar, in an age of supposed technological progress and ever-increasing prosperity, why on earth are we making ourselves more dependent on energy sources that are less dependable?
Year-round sunshine is, of course, one of California’s most famous characteristics. So it’s not surprising that solar power has grown to become one of the main components of the state’s energy mix.
What’s more surprising is that the population of California – the fifth largest economy in the world if it was a separate country, the home of Silicon Valley and all its innovation – is now forced to submit to rolling power blackouts and Third World-style warnings about not using air-conditioning in the heat of the summer. What’s the reason? Because the energy from solar power can’t be efficiently stored. Much of the energy from solar power is lost. Yet politicians, transfixed by the notion of ‘decarbonisation’, are not only forcing us to rely more and more on these power sources that are not reliable – they actually want to increase the demands on the electricity grid by making everyone drive electric cars. Here, as always, there are more contradictions and disasters.
The supply chain for these so-called ‘green’ technologies make an oil slick look clean. Ecosystems around the world are being devastated by mining for the ‘rare earth’ minerals that are a vital component in batteries for electric cars. The majority of solar panels made in China are manufactured using slave labor and large amounts carbon-based energy.
The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,’ claimed America’s most prominent young Left-wing politician, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in January 2019. According to Ocasio-Cortez, there are only ten more years.
None of this is to say we shouldn’t pursue these alternatives, or that we shouldn’t expect them to improve their environmental impact over time. The simplistic simplicity of climate activists can often paint a false picture. In fact, everywhere you look, the ‘narrative’ of the climate change movement seems to take precedence over facts and reality.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the demonisation of countries such as the United States (which actually reduced its carbon emissions under President Trump, largely thanks to his deregulation of the energy industry, leading to an expansion of lower-carbon natural gas) and the praise received by ‘green’ countries such as Germany, whose emissions have been rising as a result of Angela Merkel’s disastrous and impetuous decision to phase out nuclear power.
And this brings us to the most glaring lunacy permeating the Establishment’s climate dogma: the rejection of the most reliable, carbon-free source of power we have, nuclear energy.
At the Glasgow summit, nuclear power was literally banished from the high-profile public ‘Green Zone’ because it is despised by green activists. The sentiment I share is one that I can understand. A decade ago, I opposed nuclear power. It was due to my own opposition to it, especially in relation to costs associated with managing nuclear waste.
But ten years on, it’s a different world. We’ve seen rapid advances in nuclear power plant design, efficiency and safety, including the development of a new generation of smaller reactors, and ‘micro-reactors’ that could offer decentralised power to individual communities. These reactors are easier to create and cheaper than those large nuclear power plants that were built during the late 20th century.
Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimate that nuclear power’s total carbon emissions, which includes all construction costs and life expectancy, is 25% less than solar power. Nuclear power requires far less space and more raw materials than wind farms. They’re also reliable and cheap.
So you have to ask why our leaders are so obsessed with forcing us to switch to energy sources that are more expensive and less reliable – and not even especially green, when you take into account their life cycle. There is a spiritual climate cult that has overtaken the business, political and media establishment. They say things that aren’t true, propose ‘solutions’ that won’t work, and ignore the ones that would.
Instead of presenting a realistic assessment of how the climate is changing, and the right balance between adapting to those changes and trying to slow them down – we hear preposterously exaggerated threats of planetary doom.
Do they even know what the word ‘existential’ means, as they casually inform us that life on Earth could soon come to an end (a prediction unsupported by any scientific evidence).
Instead of advancing serious policies that would provide reliable, cheap, low-carbon energy for their own citizens and the wider world, we see the laughable spectacle of shallow politicians, desperate for the approval of self-appointed green zealots, competing with each other to spout ever-more ludicrous targets and timetables, knowing perfectly well they’ll never be held accountable for them because they will have long left office.
The developed world is seen lecturing poor countries about economic development and becoming more dependent upon rich countries. This creates a vicious eco-colonialism that allows China to ignore its climate priorities, and to order a massive expansion of coal-fired electricity without having to pay a dime.
We see our own energy security undermined while we strengthen the hand of some of the world’s worst autocrats and dictators. Higher taxes and higher energy costs are imposed upon those least able to pay them, while subsidies and handouts go to the big businesses and the wealthy.
This whole mess is an incoherent, flatulent collection of incoherences and sanctimony. It is all a big, ugly, unwieldy heap.