Chris Bayliss weighs up UK energy minister Ed Milliband and this politician’s determination to press on with his decarbonisation, Net Zero agenda, facts of reality be damned:
Others may argue that making reasonable concessions to public opinion at critical moments might benefit the green agenda in the long run, by limiting the chances of a backlash. But climate politics lives or dies by its sense of inevitability. There are only so many true believers like Miliband or Al Gore who get near positions of power. The movement is only effective so long as it retains its power over the cynical or weak-willed — the likes of Angela Merkel, David Cameron or Boris Johnson. And that power comes from the green movement’s monopoly on a vision of the future, at least in terms of energy.
With nuclear power largely removed from the discussion, opposition to the green agenda can only talk about fuels associated with the past — gas, oil, sometimes coal. If jaded politicians want to look modern and relevant, they are forced to talk about renewables. They can tell the weary public that they just have to get used to it, and that it’s the future whether they like it or not. It might not make them popular, but it makes them look potent. This is why “backsliding” is considered the most deadly sin by climate campaigners. In order to maintain that impression of inevitability, policy must only ever be seen to move in one direction. “True believers” are under an even greater obligation to hold the line, or face the wrath of the movement.
The green ratchet is bearing a huge load of bad ideas in British energy policy that don’t hold logical water even if you share their assumptions about the severity of climate change. Most obviously these relate to the electricity system and the atrophying of firm generation capacity in a system that relies on gas back-up when intermittent sources do not produce. There is a growing public awareness that critical detail has been excluded by renewables proponents, and this is responsible for the growing cost of electricity, rather than wholesale gas prices.
Reading all this, it is hard not to think of how Milliband, and others who share his views, hold the intellectual equivalent of the sunk cost fallacy.
Meanwhile, at the Daily Sceptic:
The climate science world (‘settled’ division) is in shock following the discovery in ancient ice cores that levels of carbon dioxide remained stable as the world plunged into an ice age around 2.7 million years ago. Levels of CO2 at around 250 parts per million (ppm) were said to be lower than often assumed with just a 20 ppm movement recorded for the following near three million-year period. In addition, no changes in methane levels were seen in the entire period. Massive decreases in temperature with occasional interglacial rises appear to have occurred without troubling ‘greenhouse’ gas levels, and this revelation has caused near panic in activist circles.
I remember the late Brian Micklethwait, of this parish, telling me a while back that sooner or later, the lies and exaggerations of the climate change alarmists would be exposed, and the anger of electorates over what has been allowed to pass would have major consequences. Remember, gentle reader, that much of the deindustrialisation of the West, and all that this implies, has been driven by those who championed the end of fossil fuel production.
“…the lies and exaggerations of the climate change alarmists would be exposed, and the anger of electorates over what has been allowed to pass would have major consequences…”
Exposed by whom? The legacy media? And how might “major consequences” arise? Certainly not by the powers that be.
Don’t get me wrong, Jonathan, I agree with you and thank you for the post. And the chances that Brian (RIP) was right and I’m wrong are very high so I find solace in that!
I remember the late Brian Micklethwait, of this parish, telling me a while back that sooner or later, the lies and exaggerations of the climate change alarmists would be exposed, and the anger of electorates over what has been allowed to pass would have major consequences.
With all due respect to the late, great Micklethwait, when has this ever happened? Where government has pushed and pushed a destructive agenda and when all their predictions came to naught there was a huge backlash from the public? On the contrary, “An Inconvenient Truth” came out TWENTY years ago and has been proven wrong on every point. Yet Gore is still jetting around on his private jet to fancy high priced speaking gigs telling us to turn down our thermostats, and that if we liked air conditioning we hated polar bears.
And OT, but an interesting thing for the “I believe science” crowd, we have been harangued about the dangers of microplastics in our food and air and water. It seems that a lot of the signal instead comes from the nitrile gloves the experimenters were using to handle the testing materials, where particles from the gloves instead of actual microplastics are actually what is being found in your food, air and water.
Not that I am saying that microplastics is a scam, what I am saying is the blind faith in science is just as foolish as blind faith in your religion. In fact it is when science is used as a substitute for religion — which it is for many people — that the true power of science is lost. To “not question the science” is entirely a contradiction in terms.
Greg: Exposed by whom? The legacy media? And how might “major consequences” arise? Certainly not by the powers that be.
No, I doubt the legacy media – or much of it – will do that. Alternative news services and the increasingly undeniable facts of reality will do the job eventually.
One of the main reasons why we use the word “legacy” is because of how supposedly sensible, centrist Dad types have been asleep at the wheel on many issues or actively connived at going along with lies.
Will that do any good? On another topic, the grotesque mistake of mass third world immigration, the public has been well aware for years, even the MSM report daily horrors and nothing is done. The enshittification of Britain accelerates.
Ed Miliband is following the policies the officials and “experts” push at him – as British politicians tend to do.
Only two Prime Ministers in my lifetime have resisted the establishment and its endless “Social Reform” (i.e. endless statism) – Margaret Thatcher, who lasted 11 years, and Liz Truss – who lasted only a few weeks, NOT because Liz Truss is a weak person (she is NOT a weak person) – but because the officials and “experts” now have vastly more power than they did back in the 1980s (although they were very powerful even then).
It is also true at local level – every year County Councils and Unitary Authorities go through the charade of endless “budget consultations” and meetings, yet everyone knows that the Council Tax will go up, every year, by the maximum permitted by law. Because Adult Social Care and Children’s Services are, by national policy, “demand-led” (i.e. blank cheque) services.
In short the “democratic process” has been turned into a hollow sham – with government spending not really under elected control.
Let us say that a newly elected government in Britain wanted to scrap Net Zero – would they be allowed to do so?
“Paul – Parliament can do anything” – can it, when the entire machine of government is ideologically committed to policies that will destroy Britain?
And this is an international agenda – NOT an agenda to reduce Carbon Dioxide emissions, they do not give a damn about Carbon Dioxide from China.
The international agenda is to destroy the West, which the “International Community” (made up of “educated” people) holds to be evil.
Mr Milliband is nothing special – he is just another puppet of this agenda.