This argument hints at why so many rich, virtue-signalling celebrities argue not just for Net Zero but ‘Real’ Zero, with the banning of all fossil fuel use. King Charles said in 2009 that the age of consumerism and convenience was over, although the multi-mansion owning monarch presumably doesn’t think such desperate restrictions apply to himself. Manheimer notes that fossil fuel has extended the benefits of civilisation to billions, but its job is not yet complete. “To spread the benefits of modern civilisation to the entire human family would require much more energy, as well as newer sources,” he adds.
[…]
In Manheimer’s view, the partnership among self-interested businesses, grandstanding politicians and alarmist campaigners, “truly is an unholy alliance”. The climate industrial complex does not promote discussion on how to overcome this challenge in a way that will be best for everyone. “We should not be surprised or impressed that those who stand to make a profit are among the loudest calling for politicians to act,” he added.
– Chris Morrison, Net Zero will lead to the end of modern civilisation
They’re not going to be satisfied until they’ve driven everyone back into the caves, and I’m not entirely certain what they then view as their place in everything… Are they planning on joining the rest of us in our primitive glory? Do they intend to keep on keeping on with industrial civilization, somehow, once they’ve destroyed the underpinnings and reduced the people that make it work into permanent poverty?
The end state of all this is what confuses me: What do they really want? Do they want to be pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers? Do they think they’re going to somehow miss out on the necessary reduction in quality of life for all of this to take place?
Honestly, I think the immiseration is only going to go on for so long until everyone realizes the inherent insanity and inequity in it all, and then these dolts are going to be removed from authority the way the aristocracy in France lost its jobs during the Revolution.
There really is no way back, only forward. You can’t fix everything through backing into primitivism, and even if you did, the next big rock coming by would return the planet to a state far, far worse than the one we’re in today. I’ve got rather more hope for mankind continuing to progress and fixing the issues than I have of us regressing and surviving the experience.
I honestly don’t worry about it, though… Once the reality of what these twats are demanding sinks in with the majority, they’re going to lose their audience and their credibility.
So China, India, Africa, much of South America, Mexico – anywhere with a poor populace – all will be watching as the western panjandrums announce that human progress has come far enough, that we all need to be happy with where we’ve reached, that from here on we’re just maintaining? To save us from the deadly fake two degrees?
Yeah, that’ll sell.
I’m a Philosophical Pessimist, so I’m not bringing anyone into this world to suffer after I’m gone.
I can’t beat the bastards, but at least I can deny them the victory of enslaving my children or grandchildren by not having them in the first place. I can take some comfort in that.
Their big mistake is thinking that they will not be affected by any of this.An outbreak of food poisoning at one of their conferences,or some private jets falling out of the sky, all it takes is some really pissed off peasants .
The thing is, the wannabe aristos of today don’t seem realize that the conditions they believe still obtain… Do not.
Once upon a time, the elite could rely on their better living conditions, their better nutrition, their better everything that enabled them to spend all of their time training for physical combat. They were bigger, stronger, better trained, and fully able to dominate the peasantry.
Those conditions no longer influence reality. The peasants are where the power really lies, and once they figure out that the aristos no longer act in their interests?
It will be ugly.
King Charles did not say anything in 2009 – because there was no King Charles at that time.
What someone may say as Prince of Wales is quite different from what it is appropriate for someone to say as Monarch.
The government led by Prime Minister Truss did carry out its duty to the monarch to remind his Majesty of this fact – and it is to be hoped that he government led by Prime Minister Sunak will do the same.
As for C02 – presently the United Kingdom produces less than 1% of CO2 emissions, and many policies that supposedly reduce CO2 emissions (such as shutting down British manufacturing industry and importing stuff from China – in return for IOUs) actually increase C02 emissions if one is thinking in global terms (making things in China also produces C02 – and there are also transport C02 emissions).
Electric cars most likely produce an net increase in C02 emissions – due to the great difficulty of creating the batteries (there are all sorts of environmental problems associated with the batteries and materials needed for making the batteries), and the fact that much power is lost on long transmission lines.
It was worked out as long ago as the 19th century that liquid fuel cars were more energy efficient than electric cars.
I suspect he has not had a change of heart, he just doesn’t say it any more in public (at least not yet). In likeminded circles found in places like Davos, without doubt the song remains unchanged.
Steven R. They don’t want you to have children, that is part of their plan.
Back to the point at hand, it’s all very well the rich and well to do demanding Net Zero since they have the money to afford alternate sources of heat and light.
Saying to the average Joe and Jill that they’ve got to fork out around 25 to 35k to give them even worse heating and insulation than they’ve got now for even more money (that they also haven’t got) is simply a non-starter.
You might be able to get away with that sort of stuff in sunny Spain, but in dreary old England (and moreso in rainy Scotland), it’s a non-starter.
Even if you ban new installations of gas boilers, all that’s going to happen is that there’ll be a black market in new and used “Illegal” gas boilers and parts to keep the old ones going, it’ll be “Trigger’s Broom” all over again.
Still, I suppose it was always going to go this way, with the rich virtue signalling their NetZero credentials and the poor scraping together whatever they can to stop from freezing to death in the middle of February.
Welcome to Dickensian Britain’s 21st Century revival.
Forgive my ignorance, but I assumed that ‘Net Zero’ applied to people. Zero People seems to be the most likely outcome of the feeble-minded insanity that is prevalent today.
Kirk wrote:
The same thing that happened in the French Revolution and in the fall of the Tsar and in a hundred other revolts of the commons in history: the people on top die, the people on the bottom get manipulated by the power hungry, a new social order is established with new names and faces promising change, and we start all over again.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Our betters know this won’t last forever and eventually heads will literally roll, and they’re just doing their best to make sure it isn’t them, and maybe not their kids or grandkids if they aren’t total sociopaths, that end up at the end of a rope or up against a wall.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Best tracking I know of the net zero lunacy is from the GWPF in London: https://www.netzerowatch.com/ Strongly recommend subscribing to their free newsletter, and also sending them something by way of a donation!
You think the France of today resembles the France of 1750?
Sure the wheel revolves, but it also moves forward. Napoleon III was emperor, but had to watch himself in the way Napoleon I never did.
Charles de Gaulle was a modern emperor, but had to survive votes.
Things change slowly, sure, but they do change.
Perry – yes I suspect that the Gentleman may still have the same opinions, although hopefully we will not find out.
As monarch a man or woman has to stay out of political matters – and I fully understand that this may be very hard for someone with strong opinions, especially having to change the habits of a lifetime at the age of 74 (very hard indeed).
But it is the price of the Crown.
The silent majority are silent for many reasons, but IMHO, it’s mostly because we’re busy (we have jobs, families, lives!) and we have a lot to lose. Once that remove the “we have a lot to lose”…watch out!
Presumably, that’s why they want to disarm us first.
Well yes GregWA.
Chester Draws – things do indeed change, but they do not, in politics, always “move forward” in the sense of get better – things can (as you know Sir) also get worse, politically, over time.
For example, both the United Kingdom and France have far bigger governments, even as a proportion of their economies, than they had a century ago, or two centuries ago, and they are also far more regulated than they were a century ago, or two centuries ago. Things have got worse from a pro freedom point of view – not better.
As President Calin Coolidge noted – political “Progressives” think they are moving forward to a wonderful new society, but they are really moving backwards towards tyranny and despotism.
Calvin Coolidge could see this in his own life – the United States of the 1920s was far less free than it had been in 1872, when he was born. And by the time he died in 1933 it was much worse than it had been in the 1920s.
Indeed the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of whom it could be truthfully said that the nation was freer when they died rather than when they were born, was Gladstone – and he died 1898.
The decline of liberty, the rise of the state, has been the grim reality of the history of the Western world for the last one and half centuries.
Ludwig Von Mises (1881-1973) stated it best – “I wanted to be a reformer, but I ended up an historian of decline”.
The decline he was talking about was the decline of liberty, the rise of statism, which had been going on all his life.
But, yes, it also possible for things to get better.
For example, in the Middle Ages King Louis X of France ended slavery in France as a violation of natural law, natural justice (future shyster lawyers said “but he did not say this applied to French colonies” – France had no colonies at the time) and largely ended serfdom (a few people remained technically serfs – but French courts did not enforce the ban no movement which is the key feature of serfdom).
In the late 18th century (Chester Draws mentioned the date 1750 – i.e. improvements after this date) King Louis XVI ended religious persecution laws (apart from in Alsace where he was told he had no legal power to act), and “putting the question” (judicial torture) – these and other reforms occurred well before the French Revolution.
Even the French Revolution itself is not just terror (mass murder) and much higher taxes, some good things happened as well – such as the end of monopoly guilds (which had been imposed by King Henry IV back in the early 1600s) in 1791 – although it would have been better to make these associations voluntary (as was done in Prussia in 1810-11) rather than just abolish them.
France most likely reached the peak of liberty (in the sense of low taxes and few economic regulations) in 1869 (for example there were no tithes, religious taxes, in 19th century France – and there had been in 1750) – but it was still a fairly small government country right up the First World War.
In Britain there was massive rolling back of the state after the Napoleonic Wars – with Prime Minister Lord Liverpool greatly reducing government spending (which victory allowed him to do), restoring gold money and ending income tax in the 1820s (it came back in the 1840s).
Indeed taking all taxes together as a proportion of the economy, British taxation may have reached its low point as late as 1869 – in Kettering (where I am writing this) as late as 1874 (as we did not impose a School Board in 1870 and national taxes and economic regulations did not start to increase till Disraeli came to power).
In the United States government in the Northern States may have reached its low point (in terms of size and scope) in 1860 (only one State, Massachusetts, had compulsory state education by then) , but we must not forget the great stain of slavery – and that was not really ended till 1865. Although we certainly should not forget the great early 19th century work of such Presidents and Jefferson (ending internal Federal taxation) and Jackson (ending the National Bank – although, tragically, he put tax money into state banks, and they acted as despicably as the national bank had done, rather than establishing an Independent Treasury and putting the physical gold tax money there to be paid out as needed to finance government spending).
After the Civil War government declined in size and scope in the United States till at least the 1880s – perhaps reaching its low point (in size and regulations) in 1885.
Indeed government, local, State and Federal, was very small and limited in regulations in the United States right up to 1913.
As for the decline of American (and general Western) SOCIETY, this is even later – there is little evidence of social and cultural decline in the Western world till the 1960s.
Indeed I would argue that society was generally (generally – not in everything) better in, say, 1960 than it had been in past centuries.