There is no logical connection between the seriousness of a problem and the plausibility of various solutions. You can easily imagine things that aren’t serious and are easy to solve (morning coffee not yet made), things that aren’t serious and are hard to solve (instant coffee tastes terrible), things that are serious and are easy to solve (set stove on fire making coffee) and things that are serious and are hard to solve (set planet on fire making coffee). Likewise to change one’s mind on whether a problem is serious doesn’t require changing one’s mind on whether it is easy to solve. But there seems to be a simultaneous retreat underway on both, with people now admitting climate change is not a serious problem while recognizing it’s not easy to solve. For instance, the National Post runs a piece “He’s 28. And doesn’t expect we’ll hit net zero this century” that starts “Prime Minister Mark Carney – celebrated flag bearer for decarbonization – has boldly declared Canada can compete as an energy superpower in a net-zero world… however, there’s a question being asked by many serious people: ‘Is this even a net-zero world anymore?’” The interview subjectis Joe Calnan, “VP of energy for the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, based in Calgary” and he’s daring to say it’s not going to happen and can’t. And he’s not alone.

Consider this story out of Australia:

“Moderate Liberal MPs are pitching Sussan Ley’s potential climate policy as net zero ‘the Australian way’, in an 11th-hour bid to sway the partyroom towards retaining a watered-down version of the ambition that focuses on pragmatism, technology and gas. But conservative MPs argue the push from the moderates to negotiate on a net-zero commitment has come too late, claiming the majority position of the partyroom has shifted in the past month from supporting a version of the ambition to opposing it completely.”

Is ”partyroom” really a word, we ask, then recover our focus and comment that it’s a sign of the times that a “moderate” version of net zero, even when couched in terms like “pragmatism” and “gas” is now deemed an insufficient retreat from the whole concept for a centrist party like the Australian Liberals. To be sure, the term pragmatism is often used to describe things we do not consider practical. Nonetheless we are heartened that it’s suddenly cool to say more sweeping solutions actually weren’t practical just as it’s also suddenly cool to say they weren’t needed anyway.

The retreat from the glorious apocalypse is becoming more and more obvious, to the point that the mood at COP30 is openly grim. As Climate Home News just wrote:

“Squeezed behind rudimentary desks in a minimalist setting on the edge of the rainforest, some 60 world leaders and assorted UN and government officials kicked off proceedings at the Amazon COP in Belém yesterday. The mood was as sombre as the decor.”

Why? Because for all the fiery rhetoric from the ever-irresponsible “UN boss António Guterres” about red lines and trillions of dollars, and people hating on Donald Trump, they know the $1.3 trillion a year isn’t coming and the various pseudo-commitments at previous COPs, on emissions or finances, hadn’t been kept and wouldn’t be.

Reuters “Sustainable Switch” tries to bring some welcome panic with:

“This year’s United Nations climate summit, COP30, is taking place amid a daunting backdrop as the death toll in the Philippines from Typhoon Kalmaegi rose to 114, with another 127 people still missing.”

Yay! A horrible storm! Dead bodies! Unfortunately Heatmap tosses in, in the “Current conditions” daily claim that the weather is awful before getting to COP30:

“A sharp dip in the jet stream will channel Arctic air from the Plains to the Northeast, with snow expected this weekend in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Detroit”.

None of which can distract from the key point that all the hype we’ve been hearing for 30 years about cutting emissions, energy transition, capturing carbon and blah blah blah, so cool and easy when we were young, is now looking not just naïve but depressing. It’s not that they didn’t mean it or didn’t try. It’s that their solutions couldn’t work.

Now some are doubling down, either on the methods or the crisis. But this time the new big thing on climate is a plan to save rainforests. Not that we’re against saving rainforests, it’s just a huge comedown compared to Paris or even Lima (COP20 in Peru in 2014 in case you lost count).

Others are starting to engage in a retreat from wildly unrealistic cures as well as diagnoses. Including the Post’s voice of youth. The interviewer gushes “I’m struck by his youth – he’s not quite 29”. By contrast we grumps take for granted that young people are young, while trying in vain to grasp when and how we ceased to be and somehow instead got to where the calendar insists we are. But once she gets over him being under 30 before even turning 30, and includes “I… watch him flinch at my question, but he quickly recovers” and she does too, she reports that he’s noticing stuff we codgers thought obvious:

“‘International cooperation is really breaking down,’ he acknowledges, and it’s hard to foresee a future where the United Nations is able to edict net-zero targets. ‘Countries are going to be acting very much in their self-interest,’ he predicts.”

And we will hazard a guess that this prediction will come true. After all, one of us is a historian whose doctorate was on foreign affairs, and in consequence of being informed on the subject does not believe international cooperation has ever really been a thing, that the UN ever was or was ever going to be in a position to “edict net-zero targets” (also having studied English we doubt “edict” is a verb) or that countries ever did not act in their self-interest, ever will, or ever should.

As Bertrand de Jouvenal once said, he believed in world government until he crossed the Swiss border half an hour ahead of the pursuing Nazis. In the Middle Ages an ominous writ of “praemunire” awaited anyone who said the English government was not or should not be sovereign in its decision-making. And the doctrine of decentralization in a difficult and dangerous world means it is highly desirable that there be separate nations answerable to their own citizens and nobody else, both to preserve room for policy experimentation and to furnish a refuge against terribly widespread tyranny and corruption.

That said, let’s look at some of the reasons our subject is “definitely not as convinced as I was back in, say 2021. And even in 2021, I had my doubts.” At the ripe young age of 24. So wise. Because we also very much doubt that it ever was a “net-zero world” except in the gassily unrealistic world of climate orthodoxy-enforcers.

Indeed, his first point is that the vaunted “technology to decarbonize” is as expensive as it is ineffective. (Told you so.) Thus in key sectors like “cement, steel and fertilizer”, he realizes, and says:

“It’ll be difficult to get countries to basically make themselves permanently less wealthy by making all these things more expensive.”

What? Wasn’t the fabled “green energy transition” going to make us all richer as well as cleaner and more self-satisfied? And if you knew four years ago, why didn’t you tell us?

Still, there are a lot of people who should know better blithering about decarbonizing hydrocarbons and so forth, including in Canada’s energy sector and its bloated political class.

Indeed, the voice of youth notes of Canada’s inertly pivoting Carney administration that they’re not shutting down the oil wells just yet:

“You don’t invest in Pathways carbon capture and storage system if you’re not planning on oil and gas production beyond the next 25 years.”

And then it doesn’t work, we add. For his part, the kid adds:

“I think we should be thinking more strategically for Canada and longer term. We should be thinking well beyond 2050. What’s our infrastructure strategy for 2080?”

Look, dude. We don’t know and neither do you. It is literally the equivalent of sitting down in 1970 to figure out Canada’s 2025 telephone strategy. Guess how that would have turned out. Or go unearth some government white-turned-yellow paper on the topic, produced on a typewriter, mimeographed and stapled, and see what gems it contains.

Instead at this point the interviewer swoons again:

“Joe’s youthfulness, I realize, is the most consequential aspect of this conversation.”

Um yeah. His vision is untampered by experience even when it is. But no, she had something else in mind:

“Joe can speak to our nation’s bold aspiration to be an energy superpower from the perspective of a younger generation.”

And we can speak to Toronto’s bold aspiration to be Stanley Cup champions. It just won’t change reality. Or we can listen to him say:

“You can look at the major projects list and I think we really need to make a distinction between those projects of national interest versus nation-building projects.”

Go ahead. We’ll wait with unbated breath. But at least he, and many others, are no longer saying look, we can just shut down all the oil wells and plant solar panels, go grab all the big bad carbon and put it in a sack and bury it, or both. Just as they’ve realized we won’t all die if we don’t.

It’s not entirely logical. But we’ll take sanity even when it looks a bit weird.