The Straightjacket of Net Zero: Part I
"I call it a command-and-control Net Zero political agenda" Chris Morrison, environmental journalist, on the Tom Nelson Podcast (YouTube)
The indoctrination of populations of the Western world and beyond, with a belief in man-made-CO2-caused ‘global warming’ (→ ‘climate change’ → ‘climate emergency’ → ‘global boiling’) has been going on for three decades. The result is that a vast majority of ordinary people in the indoctrinated nations, who do not have the time or inclination to dig more into the issue, are now convinced that CO2 is an evil ‘greenhouse gas’.
In their minds this CO2 will cause the warming of the planet to the point where catastrophic changes to temperatures, weather, sea levels and polar ice will occur and make life dangerous and miserable for ordinary people. This belief is so strongly held by some, the ‘fact’ of the ‘climate emergency’ so unquestioningly accepted, that they will condemn anybody who questions the scientific consensus. Scientists, journalists, and ordinary people who question that man-made CO2 emissions are a danger to life on earth, are lumped in with the reviled holocaust deniers, as ‘climate deniers’.
The belief of a majority of people in this lie is a considerable problem. I have just seen an article in The Daily Sceptic reporting that Red Wall MPs are calling for a public referendum on Net Zero. At first glance this might seem like a good idea, but some polling, albeit from YouGov, has 62% of those polled agreeing that “Britain should take strong action on tackling climate change even if other countries do not”.
A referendum of a generally uninformed, but thoroughly indoctrinated public could yield a majority vote in favour of Net Zero, and then we would really be in a pickle. I do not believe referenda are a good idea. The world is nuanced, a referendum can only offer a ‘yes’ ‘no’ choice. Many people uncertain of their opinion will vote with what they guess will be the majority choice. Pointless.
So we may be fighting against a majority of people who see Net Zero as a compassionate, environmentally friendly, and honourable goal, and do not see the Globo-Marxist plot to steal our cars, homes, heating, meat, and, ultimately, freedom, all in the name of ‘saving the planet’. We have other problems too:
Our governments, and often opposition parties too, through the Climate Change Act 2008, have signed up to ‘legally binding’ ‘carbon budgets’.
The UN, its subsidiaries, and the IPCC, with an established reach and respected reputation, are promulgating and peddling the ‘climate emergency’ lie.
Long-established NGOs and NPOs such as Sierra Club (established 1892), WWF, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and hundreds of other smaller and newer NGOs are operating within a framework that accepts the ‘climate emergency’ lie as truth.
The ESG framework which is now applied to almost all businesses and organisations large and small incorporates the ‘climate emergency’ paradigm, and the friendlier sounding ‘sustainability’ narrative, into its requirements and measurements.
There are thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of ‘climate scientists’ around the world who rely on belief, or feigned belief, in the ‘climate emergency’ narrative for their grants, funding, and paid academic positions. If they become sceptics they will simply lose their funding and be sacked from their institutions.
There are also thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of ‘green’ businesses providing everything from ‘carbon sequestration’ (fallow land and tree plantations), to solar panel construction, to of course ‘green’ consultancy services, all with a vested interest in keeping government subsidies, and ‘socially responsible investment’ flowing into their coffers.
In short while those of us who were sceptical of the ‘climate emergency’ horror story were innocently waiting for the lie to run into a brick wall of scientific refutation and political common sense, and be abandoned, it was instead spreading invisible tendrils through every government, corporation, and educational institution, in the Western world, and beyond.
This is a hugely complex system to remove. It is worthwhile to understand exactly how far and insidiously it spreads through the world so that we are not fooled that one cancelled ULEZ scheme means the edifice is crumbling.
As objections to Net Zero measures increase, governments, and opposition parties, may move some chairs around on the deck and try to convince us that this is a real ‘U-turn’ or ‘row-back’ or ‘revision’ of Net Zero policies, but it will not be. Net Zero is currently written into a legally binding act, the Climate Change Act 2008 in the UK. There are similar legally-binding instruments in many other countries around the world. The abandoning or alteration of certain schemes will not do anything to change this underlying legislative compulsion to deindustrialise, impoverish, and curtail freedom.
However, let us not despair. There have been examples throughout history when it seemed all was lost and a sudden, spontaneous action or event changed the course of civilisation. The fall of the Berlin Wall is one such example.
Great events do not always have great causes. One of history’s biggest surprises is how sometimes a series of small, seemingly insignificant events can suddenly add up to momentous change.
That’s how it happened with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the point-of-no-return moment in the collapse of the Cold War order. While there were broader historical forces at play, the Wall, a powerful symbol that had separated communist East Berlin from the democratic West for 28 years, would not have opened when and how it did without the last-minute decisions of a secret police officer named Harald Jäger. Struggling with the fear that he was dying of cancer, and angry over insults from higher-ups, he disobeyed direct orders and started letting East Germans through the gate. (history.com ‘The Surprising Human Factors Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall’, Mary Elise Sarotte
After twenty-five years of loyal service faced with an ever swelling crowd of hundreds of people wanting to get through the checkpoint, having overheard an insulting comment from a superior officer, and struggling with an increasingly chaotic situation, Jäger simply decided to open the gate. At 11.30 pm he called his superior officer and told him he had decided to open the gate. The crowd of people began pushing through before the gates were fully opened. Footage of the peaceful and happy crowd was soon appearing on televisions all around the world. The Cold War, an intransigent, grey shadow over Western society for decades, was dissolved in that moment.
There is hope that somehow momentum will gather and people will refuse the ‘climate emergency’ tale and all its attendant restrictive and damaging policies. It may be incorrect, and unnecessarily defeatist, to think that every part of the huge structure must be painstakingly picked apart. In fact we may be able to simply cut it off at the legislative root.
The Climate Change Act 2008
The background
Most articles one comes across crow that the Climate Change Act 2008 “was the first of its kind in the world”. For those of us who take a dim view of this authoritarian, unrealistic, and destructive legislation, the exultant tone and the claim are both infuriating.
There was a time when I used to think the politicians in the UK were relatively intelligent and level-headed, not any longer. Still it is worth investigating how the UK of all places, not Sweden, or Germany, or Finland, ended up being the first nation to have a “legally binding target”.
The 2008 Climate Change Act was based on a private members bill brought in 2005 that had been drafted by the environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth. The main proponent of the Act was Ed Miliband, but shockingly all but 5 MPs in the House of Commons voted in favour of the legislation (the rebels were all Conservative). Miliband holds the position of Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero. If Labour wins the next election he will be in charge of environmental policy (which is now of course just ‘climate panic’ and ‘net stupid’)
In a move that was widely welcomed by environmental campaigners, Ed Miliband, the new energy and climate change secretary, said that the current 60% target would be replaced by the higher goal [80%] in the climate change bill.
Miliband told MPs that the tough economic conditions were not an excuse to "row back" on the commitment to tackle global warming. (The Guardian, 16 October, 2008)
The “tough economic conditions” to which Mr Miliband refers are the 2008 banking crisis and subsequent global recession. If Labour win power next year, do not expect any sympathy for ordinary people struggling to meet the outlandish cost of Net Zero as de-industrialisation and de-growth gather pace.
It is startling to realise that Friends of the Earth had such an important role to play in the creation of the Climate Change Act. I expect few people in the general UK population are aware of this fact.
Friends of the Earth, according to their own website, is present in 73 countries in the world, has 5,000 local activist groups and 2 million members and supporters world-wide. That is not actually that much support. Ok 73 countries out of over a hundred and ninety or so, is pretty impressive, but across those 73 countries just 2 million members. That’s an average of 27,397 members per country. So that means in the UK we have a ‘legally binding’ Climate Change Act with ‘carbon budgets’ locked in place for the next three parliaments courtesy of the efforts of approximately 0.05% of the population. This long-lasting and draconian piece of legislation will adversely affect the prosperity and quality of life of the other 99.95% and we are all just ok with it?! This is democracy in action?
On their website, Friends of the Earth UK celebrate their campaign for the creation of the Climate Change Act, as well they may, it is quite an achievement:
The Climate Change Act and its implications have never been more important. Despite the chaos in Westminster, we can still make government accountable for its actions. The Act is powerful as it creates a framework in which action can and must be taken by the government.
…we recently took the government to court and won. In a landmark victory, the High Court ruled in July that the UK government’s Net Zero Strategy is unlawful. This strategy is supposed to explain how emissions targets will be achieved, but we argued successfully that it was legally inadequate and didn't contain sufficient detail. The government sought an appeal, but we’re delighted to confirm that it recently decided not to pursue this after all. That means our win in the High Court stands. Now the government has to revise its strategy and lay out a credible plan for meeting emissions targets. Friends of the Earth
Clearly it would be naive to assume that MPs were misled and pressured by this group into implementing such a far-reaching and destructive piece of legislation. It is just as possible that certain individuals, or even the entire government of the time, encouraged this action, and worked with Friends of the Earth to achieve it. The charity’s (pressure group’s) established reputation as a defender of the natural planet would serve to distract from the economically destructive nature of Net Zero’s de-industrialisation agenda. Then again, I’m beginning to believe politicians are just not very bright.
It is also worth mentioning that a later Conservative government, led by Theresa May amended the Climate Change Act in 2019 to commit to 100% reduction in emissions based on 1990 figures, or Net Zero, by 2050, thus outdoing Ed Miliband and the Labour government. The motivation here is unclear but commentators suggest it was an attempt to leave some kind of lasting legacy from her shambolic time in government.
MP Alex Chalk brought the private members bill on which the amendment was based. His speech on the occasion is recorded in Hansard. As is so often the case with those arguing the (unproven) case for man-made global warming he cherry-picks examples of weather events, confuses weather with climate, throws in some grandstanding phrases and capitalises on ‘climate hysteria’:
Although our current trajectory sets us on course for an 80% reduction in our emissions from 1990 levels by 2050, the science is now clear: if we continue to pump even that remaining 20% of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it is very likely that climate change will accelerate, and with it global temperatures. Indeed, if we stay on the same path, our children can expect to grow up in a world of surging sea levels, more insecure food supplies, degraded wildlife and destroyed coral reefs. We also risk the deeply alarming prospect of hitting climate tipping points—such as the melting of arctic permafrost and the subsequent release of huge stores of frozen greenhouse gases—which could cause us to lose control of our climate for good. Hansard
Sir Christopher Chope, provides a counterpoint:
…the line that those of us who voted against that Bill took has been endorsed in a very important report, issued last year to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Climate Change Act 2008, in which it was described by Rupert Darwall as
“History’s most expensive virtue signal”.
That was obviously an expensive virtue signal, but what my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) is proposing would be an even more expensive and extravagant virtue signal…In 2011, the former Member for Tatton the right hon. George Osborne told the Conservative party conference:
“We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business. So let’s at the very least resolve that we’re going to cut our carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe.” Hansard
Of course the bill passed.
What on earth is a ‘carbon budget’?
A comment piece in The Telegraph on August 9, 2023 called ‘The public still isn’t being told the full horrifying truth about the net zero permanent revolution’, has come as a bit of a shock to me. Firstly because this was the first time I had heard anything about a ‘carbon budget’, despite having spent the last thirty years or more as a news junkie. Secondly because this was a journalist in the mainstream press giving us actual true, factual, and useful information, and coming within a gnat’s whisker of saying the truth, which is that the ‘climate emergency’ is a lie cooked up for political advantage.
The author does an excellent job of breaking down the situation for us:
Tories, Labour, Lib Dems: have all signed up to legally binding five-year plans, known as “carbon budgets”, which stipulate a detailed programme to re-engineer society to cut emissions by a specific amount…
…We are now on our fourth such carbon budget, valid from 2023 to 2027…the next two -up until 2037 - have already been enshrined in law, making a mockery of the next two or even three general elections…
…all of the consumer-facing changes - in 18 months, no newly built homes will be fitted with a gas boiler, in seven years’ time, it will be illegal to buy new petrol cars, in 12 years, you will no longer be allowed to replace your existing boiler like-for-like - have been accounted for in the plans, gravely limiting room for political manoeuvre…any significant deviation from these carbon budgets could trigger legal action from pressure groups…
It’s a shock, and pretty daunting when you see it laid out like that. It also crosses the mind that it is very, very undemocratic. The main three UK parties are all signed up to these ‘legally binding’ agreements. No matter which of them is voted into office, when it comes to environmental policy we will get Net Zero. In addition binding promises have been made years into the future, and no doubt will continue to be so. We will not be free of ‘legally binding’ ‘carbon budgets’ at the end of 2037, we will simply have another eight or twelve years of them ahead of us.
This is, quite simply, authoritarian madness. Each budget has a list of binding carbon reductions and a series of detailed policies to achieve those reductions. Those policies must be enacted by the end of the budget period. The targets must be met. There is no kicking the can down the road on things like banning petrol cars.
Comments beneath the article are generally a mixture of horror, anger, and absolute rejection of the Net Zero/CO2 scam:
The public only support the decarbonisation lunacy because they’ve been indoctrinated with the idiotic belief that CO2 levels need to be cut. Any person with a brain knows this [sic] all about control, power and money as always. Wake up people it’s a scam.
Why are our political class so determine to sell this pure virtue-signalling eco-bankrupt nonsense??
There are a few true-believers of course who object to the premise of the article including one who responds with the predictable cliché:
We have to reduce levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and that is going to require tough choices. Change is difficult but the alternative is unthinkable.
The “alternative” is, maybe, some wetter, warmer weather, the “tough choices” are going to result in loss of comforts, freedom, and prosperity (of course there are always some people who can’t wait for their chance to get in a bread queue!).
Other commenters sensibly point out that the Climate Change Act, as an Act of Parliament, can of course be amended or entirely scrapped by any government. That is no great comfort, considering that the Climate Change Act received the support of all but five MPs when it was passed in 2008.
On the one hand dealing with the UK’s Climate Change Act is easy: Parliament can amend or repeal it. On the other hand it is very difficult: find enough MPs principled and brave enough to vote to repeal the Act, despite the fact that perhaps a majority of their constituents mistakenly believe it is a good thing, and that all the universities, mainstream media, NGOs and so on will proceed to lose their sh*t. There is also the international opprobrium to consider. Whilst some nations may just be waiting for somebody else to ditch their Net Zero policy so they can do the same, international organisations such as the EU, the UN, probably the World Bank, the WHO will all be vociferously and quite possibly threateningly outraged (see the experiences of Victor Orbán, Sweden over lockdowns and now their ‘right-wing’ government, Giorgia Meloni, and most recently Imran Khan in Pakistan). Still it’s worth remembering nobody has gone to war yet over a European nation pursuing different internal policy, although there is often heavy criticism.
A visit to the UK government ‘portal’ is not just illuminating but shocking. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (!) issues a ‘Final Statement’ after each ‘carbon budget period’. It’s amazing to see this nonsense in black and white but here it is:
This is the final statement for the first carbon budgetary period covering 2008 to 2012 as required under Section 18 of the Climate Change Act 2008. This statement sets out the steps taken to calculate the “net UK carbon account” for the first carbon budget period. The net UK carbon account is what we compare against the first carbon budget (3,018 MtCO2e) to determine whether it has been met. The net UK carbon account must not exceed the level of the carbon budget at the end of each budgetary period.
This statement shows that, over the first budgetary period, the net UK carbon account was 2,982 MtCO2e, which is 36 MtCO2e below the cap of 3,018 MtCO2e. On average this means emissions as measured by the net carbon account were 23.6% lower than 1990 base year emissions.
A hundred questions fight for supremacy in my mind. How are the CO2 quantities calculated? For a nation? Say I have a twenty-five year old Nissan and my neighbour has a two-year-old Renault. Mine’s petrol, hers is diesel. They produce different amount of CO2e emissions (also the emissions of her vehicle are far more dangerous to lungs at street level, but I digress). Are these emissions for diesel and petrol cars, ancient and brand-new, just somehow aggregated and averaged over the whole number of cars known to be in use in the UK? What about the other emissions? Factories? Do they submit their own estimates, or does somebody calculate it for them? How much time is wasted by businesses on calculating their CO2 emissions?
Just looking at that final statement, after research I can decipher that Mt is a megaton(ne) ie 1Mt = 1,000,000 ton(ne)s. Also CO2e is a term from carbon accounting meaning that all ‘greenhouse gases’ including methane and nitrous oxide are all wrapped up in a carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) measurement.
However, it is incredibly difficult to discover how these emissions are calculated. The website of the Climate Change Committee, the body that was set up under the Climate Change Act to oversee the setting and meeting of those precious ‘carbon budgets’ is no help. There is no explanation of how carbon emissions are actually measured. The article “Carbon accounting: all you need to know in 2023” from greenly.earth told me nothing about how carbon emissions are calculated. Not ‘all you need to know’ then. Some concerted ‘googling’ and reference to books on the falseness of the ‘climate emergency’ narrative leave me no wiser.
It seems to me that, surprisingly considering how important the ‘climate emergency’ is, there is no readily available information on how carbon emissions, the absolute foundation stone of the concept of a carbon budget, are actually calculated. A concept so central to the Net Zero project should not be this hard to find.
Unable to accept defeat I try one last strategy and arrive at an organisation called Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol. It appears that they provide a greenhouse gas measuring services to Defra. GHG Protocol:
…establishes comprehensive global standardized frameworks to measure and manage greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from private and public sector operations, value chains and mitigation actions.
…GHG Protocol works with governments, industry associations, NGOs, businesses and other organizations. GHG Protocol
The history of GHG Protocol is intriguing. It arose from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) came together in the late 90s with large corporations including BP and General Motors to publish a report called ‘Safe Climate, Sound Business’.
…an agreement was reached to launch an NGO-business partnership to address standardized methods for GHG accounting. WRI and WBCSD convened a core steering group comprised of members from environmental groups (such as WWF, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, The Energy Research Institute) and industry (such as Norsk Hydro, Tokyo Electric, Shell) to guide the multi-stakeholder standard development process.
It was lucky GHG came into being just when it was going to be really important for businesses, cities, and countries to start tracking their CO2 emissions. The collaboration between environmental groups and huge energy and petro-chemical companies is also intriguing. Finally they declare that one of their services:
[t]he Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard provides the accounting platform for virtually every corporate GHG reporting program in the world.
That’s as close as I’m going to get to parsing this one out. I have not found the details of how they calculate GHG emissions, but I have found that this is the company that does it, for practically everybody, so they claim.
There is an almost invisible industry built upon the magical thinking of measuring, reducing, off-setting, sequestering, and trading GHG emissions. This industry provides the information on which the ‘carbon budget’ of the UK is calculated, assessed, and then approved, or not, by the Climate Change Committee. Now it comes to banning gas boilers, banning petrol cars etc this is perhaps the most crucial aspect of the UK government, and governments everywhere, yet it is treated nonchalantly and with little to no transparency.
A recent report of the CCC is, ironically, titled ‘Better transparency is no substitute for real delivery’ it takes the UK government to task on missing “[a] key opportunity to push a faster pace of progress…” towards Net Zero, obviously. It is likely many people feel this pace is too fast already. Perhaps some comfort can be taken from the fact the CCC considers “the scale up of action overall is worryingly slow”, but this is cold comfort for the CCC are a powerful force to push the government forward. Their remit is to only hold the government to account over the ‘carbon budgets’ and not to have any consideration for wider matters of quality of life for UK citizens, preserving the independence provided by relatively cheap petrol cars, the comforts of a warm home, the prosperity attendant on a productive economy, founded on cheap and plentiful energy.
There is a worrying hesitancy by Ministers to lead the country to the next stage of Net Zero commitments. Chairman of the Climate Change Committee
Long may it continue!
Part II on the UN and the IPCC coming soon!