(The Daily Sceptic) — One of Britain’s leading climate “experts,” Professor Kevin Anderson, has provided a valuable insight into the increasingly bizarre demands that surround the promotion of the collectivist Net Zero political project.
Writing in the Conversation, he argues for Net Zero within 12 years, complete with a refit of U.K. housing stock, a withdrawal of all combustion engine cars in favour of expanded public transport, electrification of industry, the roll out of “zero-carbon” energy, and the banning of all fossil fuel production. To achieve his aims, Anderson suggests mobilization on the scale of the post-war European reconstruction Marshall Plan. Others might suggest his crackpot schemes will leave the country facing a similar scale of destruction, ruin, and poverty to that caused by the Luftwaffe.
Anderson is currently a Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester and he has plenty of form when it comes to extremist claims and calls for widespread rationing. As early as 2010, he was calling on politicians to consider a rationing system “similar to the one introduced during the last time of crisis in the 1930s and 40s.” He also suggested a limit on electricity “so people are forced to turn the heating down,” and a limit on goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.
On a practical level, Anderson’s latest calls for radical societal restructuring under the guise of a “climate emergency” are plainly ridiculous. Retrofitting Britain’s well-ventilated housing and industrial stock along with installing heat pumps would cost around £3 trillion ($3.71 trillion), according to a paper published last year by the technology professor Michael Kelly – equivalent, it should be noted, to Britain’s annual GDP.
That, of course, is before we’ve factored in the cost of Anderson’s other plans such as retrofitting the entire industrial and transport infrastructure, all within the next 12 years. In its more sane moments, even Extinction Rebellion might be proud of such an ambitious plan.
The Conversation is obligatory reading for those aiming to keep fully up to speed with the latest climate, Net Zero, and woke fantasies. It purports to be an independent source of news analysis, written by academic experts working with professional journalists.
To the mainstream media, it offers “media-ready” experts and “free” content. It is funded by academic institutions and receives money from a number of billionaire foundations. Media partners include Reuters, PA Media, Reach (owner of the Mirror, Express, Daily Star and multiple local U.K. newspapers), and Apple News.
Collectivist economic solutions alongside the ubiquitous woke dogma are increasingly dominating debate around climate change. This blatantly political agenda is said to be dictated by “the Science” which its advocates then refuse to discuss, a ruse used to disguise the paucity of evidence that humans control the climate thermostat.
Net Zero is becoming the dividing line in the age-old battle between Right and Left, free markets and socialism, Cavaliers and Roundheads. In the U.S. the issue is rapidly becoming yet another fight between the Republicans and the Democrats. Similar trends are likely in the U.K. and Europe as Net Zero starts wreaking economic and social havoc.
The G20 comprises the most powerful nations in the world – the U.S., Canada, the U.K., the E.U., Australia, India, China, Russia and Brazil among others – and they are discussing climate policies that are already affecting billions of people around the world.
Most of these countries want the world to run on solar and wind power, forcing an end to the use of gas, oil and nuclear power, as well as crushing beef farmers because of supposed methane emissions.
But the harsh impact of such policies is already being felt, with energy blackouts and soaring inflation hammering people around the world, making it beyond time for all of us to speak out.
SIGN: Tell G20 leaders that their radical climate policies are making basic foods, fuel, heating and electricity increasingly unaffordable for normal citizens.
As western leaders turn off the oil spigots and impose draconian restrictions on farmers, we’ve all experienced the pain of increased prices, not least at the pump and the grocery store.
This inflation was entirely avoidable if only our politicians prioritized food and energy security over climate theories, but instead they have succumbed to radical environmentalists whose agenda would cripple the livelihoods and living standards of much of the globe.
Communities all around you are feeling the weight of crushing price hikes, which will soon reach your own food isles and gas pumps if it hasn’t already.
The effects of inflation are being felt in the developing world most, as fuel and food prices sky rocket, making even worse poverty an inevitabilty for hundreds of millions of people.
Reality hits home.
The harshest effects of energy shortages were felt by many in the west last winter, when our leaders’ decisions to cut oil supplies and reject Russian natural gas:
- forced heating, fuel and electricity prices to sky rocket
- continued to make food more expensive
- risked a global depression as inflation spiraled out of control
- prompted blackouts in certain areas
- made civil unrest a real possibility
States like California and countries like England were warning citizens that they faced severe electricity and gas shortages.
Now is the time to speak out and be part of a movement that can halt this runaway train of climate alarmism.
SIGN the petition calling on international leaders to abandon their reckless energy agenda and return the world to economic stability.
The entire climate change industry is based on models that have been consistently inaccurate for decades, with Al Gore among the most infamous prophets of doom to be proven wrong.
In 2009 Gore told the COP15 climate change conference in Copenhagen that the North Pole would be ice-free by 2014, a claim that remains wildly off the mark.
Arctic sea ice has increased since 2012 and is now close to the average for 1991-2000 – another inconvenient fact for climate change alarmists, alongside thriving polar bears and more coral on the Great Barrier Reef. https://t.co/3m7jcaj1hV
— Toby Young (@toadmeister) September 1, 2022
Al Gore is not alone in getting things wrong however, as this brief timeline of scaremongering headlines proves:
The world needs to wake-up to what’s really happening: our lives are being upended on the basis of climate theories and models that have been consistently wrong for decades.
It’s time to stop the scaremongering and push back against the radical agenda of international elites.
SIGN & SHARE: Tell G20 leaders that their radical climate policies are making basic foods, fuel, heating and electricity increasingly unaffordable for normal citizens.
Thank you.
The Conversation is to the fore on climate wokery. In 2020, two UCL geography professors Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis argued in its pages that colonization marked the beginning of the Anthropocene (a political renaming of the current Holocene epoch), and racism and the climate emergency shared common causes.
In his recent article, Kevin Anderson argues that “given deep inequalities,” the rapid reduction of material consumption and the deployment of a zero-carbon infrastructure “is only possible by re-allocating society’s productive capacity away from enabling the private luxury of a few and towards wider public ownership.”
Last week The Daily Caller castigated the IPCC summary report of its work over the last five years as a “woke dumpster fire masquerading as science.” Any scientific credibility the new UN report might have had is called into question by its “extensive use of ‘woke’ buzzwords,” it said.
Variations of the words “equity” and “inequality” are said to appear 31 times in the 36-page document. Variations of “inclusive” and “inclusion” appear 17 times. Apparently, the document mentions “colonialism” and repeatedly refers to climate and “social justice” for “marginalized” groups.
The Daily Caller quotes a section of the report that states: “redistributive policies… that shield the poor and vulnerable, social safety nets, equity, inclusion and just transitions, at all scales can enable deeper societal ambitions and resolve trade-offs with sustainable development goals.” The publication notes that if you think “equity” is a fundamental pillar of scientific knowledge, then this is the report for you.
“But if you’re like most people and don’t think far-left political priorities have a place in scientific documents meant to advise policymakers, this should alarm you,” the report concludes.
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Sceptic.