U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently told the International Energy Agency that if it doesn’t drop its obsession with Net Zero, rather than find some rhetorically marginally different way to be obsessed with it, his indispensable nation might well pull out. Now that is a climate policy, at once concrete and purposeful. Meanwhile Bjorn Lomborg said in another forum that “In recent months, the once-unshakable European consensus in favor of aggressive net-zero climate policies has fractured under the weight of skyrocketing energy costs and economic reality. With the war in Iran driving up oil and natural gas prices, the pressure on Europe is now even higher.” The continent is deindustrializing, its people are suffering, its geopolitical influence is waning, and the “science” is unraveling. But what is to take its place? Cue the same old. Reuters recently reported that that: “European Union countries gave the final approval on Thursday to a new climate target to slash greenhouse gas emissions 90% by 2040, pressing ahead with the bloc’s ambitious climate agenda despite political resistance.” EU can’t make this stuff up.
If the EU is a democracy or gathering of same, what business have governments “pressing ahead” with disastrous policies voters reject? Or is self-government different there than in the Anglosphere?
We must observe that here even Lomborg still has one hemisphere of his brain in green land:
“The silver lining is that this consensus collapse opens the door to smarter climate action. Obsessing over expensive, low-impact policies diverts resources from real solutions like R&D into breakthrough technologies, adaptation and greater energy access for vulnerable nations, and boosting resilience and welfare in the poorest countries. Europe’s green unraveling is a reminder that climate policy should meet the needs of people, not the other way around.”
But “putting people first” isn’t a meaningful slogan, it’s what a politician puts on their bus when they can’t think of anything substantive to say. Plus if humanity is setting the planet on fire with our stinking “carbon pollution” something drastic must be done, even if it’s blowing up China’s coal plants and hoping someone lives to talk about it. Noticing again that whether a given climate policy hurts has literally no bearing on whether it’s needed.
On the other hand, if we’re not setting the planet on fire, only to put it out with all the floods, extreme rainfall and rising seas, why do we need “smarter climate action” or indeed any “climate action” or “climate policy” at all? Other than from inertia, mental as well as organizational.
In case inertia sounds undignified as well as impractical, we ask what’s “climate policy” in the abstract even for? Foreign policy is to prevent being conquered. Economic policy is to create prosperity. Social policy is to undermine society. But climate policy?
Campaigning on better weather is surely the act of a charlatan not a statesperson. And gesticulating at “breakthrough technologies” that will let us have technological breakthroughs is like Pseudolus’s conversation with Hero in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: “Pseudolus: Wait! Hero: Yes? Pseudolus: A brilliant idea! Hero: Yes! Pseudolus: That’s what we need, a brilliant idea.” And to do what? Sequester carbon? Measure sea level rise accurately? Calm people down?
If we need to sequester carbon, and no modern Edison gives us the magic powder or machine, we need to stop producing CO2, just like the old policy. If we need better data on what drives warming, and it turns out to be primarily the sun, what can we possibly do even if it’s bad? If we need better data on whether there even is a crisis (there really is a lot of uncertainty about the measurements of stuff from sea level to warming), and it turns out there isn’t, we can relax. If we need to relax, there are already drugs.
Bottom line: If there’s no climate crisis, we don’t need to do the great unspecified thing. And if there is, we need to figure out what it is and do it immediately at whatever cost. Fleeing from the latter through the former back to the latter isn’t really progress.
