They are going to get madder and weirder and more and more dangerous until society choses to confront environmentalism, or green ideology causes a deep political, social, and economic crisis.
What do I mean by crisis?
Listen to the protesters. They're demanding not just Net Zero, but actual zero by 2030.
There is no rational perspective being brought to UNFCCC negotiations, and even less to green ideology. It is, so to speak, a positive-feedback mechanism.
You can see this in microcosm at any expression of the green 'movement'. It has no culture of debate. It every level it has eschewed democracy. But also at every stage, it eschews fact, and even the 'science' it claims to be founded on.
E.g. you won't find support for it any IPCC report, but the claim made routinely at COP26 was that civilisation is on the brink. See Attenborough's prognostication, for instance. Nor even do small island states -- the posterchild for the event -- seem to be suffering as expected.
What this positive feedback mechanism leads to is ever more irrational claims and demands for the transformation of society. Ratcheting effects upon ratcheting effects.
So let's imagine trying to get to Total Zero by 2030...
That would be an eight year agenda of reducing the living standards of virtually everyone in the UK to the level of the 16th century. The government would have to confiscate virtually all wealth, shut down nearly all industry, and force people into agricultural labour.
It is of course an absurd proposition, & it's not going to happen.
But that *IS* the demand. And it's a demand that is treated by the political establishment, the media and academia as a far less radical and dangerous proposition than the claim that there is no climate 'crisis'.
There is no way that the *radical* (i.e. impossible) proposition could be achieved without an equally radical transformation of the relationship between the state and the public. Democracy would be dissolved instantly, and the population would be controlled by violent force.
Again, that is of course, the *hypothetical*. And it is only intended to serve as the baseline 'transition' scenario that these lunatic greens are demanding. It is axiomatic, in my view, that such a transformation of society can only happen by the application of violent force.
If we establish this as a baseline, then -- and we agree that no government is likely to take on such a radical project -- then we have to ask, to what extent does relaxing the fundamental terms of the demand reduce the necessity of violent force?
The two terms are the target (Net Zero/Total Zero) and the deadline (2050/2030).
I don't think that there is a great deal of latitude between these parameters.
And again, I don't think there is much rationalism to the process.
NetZero by 2050 still implies a radical transformation of the relationship between government and people. It still implies the termination of democracy. And I think it very likely still implies the application of violent force to overcome the impediments to it & regulate society.
That's not a prediction, it's a question. I have always asked what kind of world environmentalists want. They paint pictures of ecological utopia, with everyone happy in clean air, and all that they need. But their only idea about how to get there is draconian legislation.
And they manifestly fantasise about post-industrial society, as though it would return us to some mythological idyll that we have lost through industrial, capitalist society. That fantasy drives their political ideology and worldview, and their movement and its demands.
They will not listen, and the government, media, & academe will give no platform or opportunity to people who point out the dangerous errors at the heart of the fantasy to correct it, to show society how those idiots are just that.
So it *must* roll on until it creates a crisis.
Remember: *they* think that industrial capitalist society is the fantasy. They think that it has corrupted and denied the idyllic harmony with nature that they are entitled to. They will not look at anything which contradicts that fantasy.
What does history tell us about dogmatic fantasists, carrying in their heads entitlement to a birth right of idyllic harmony with the natural order of things, and a programme of radically transforming society to restore such an order?
In conclusion: I think they will of course fail. But I think the longer that their weirdness goes unchallenged by and in political and public institutions of all kinds, then the more traumatic that realisation will be.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
This isn't a critique of policy that either understands environmentalism, draws away from its excesses, understands its rise, or proposes a meaningful energy policy. He'd be quite happy with NetZero if it hadn't created an opportunity for him.
Since he calls it 'net stupid'... "Hydrogen" is a stupid idea. As stupid as anything in Net Zero, which indeed it is a part of. SMRs are all well and good, but hardly answer the problem for the next decade or so.
"We will invest in brilliant shiny new world-class super-duper fab technology".
The green movement is lubricated by and built on sleaze.
Even the party opposite the likes of Yeo, Gummer and Goldsmith is a party of red princes, blobbers and scandals. And between them, Huhne, and Davey, who got a nice job with the PR firm managing the account for "the most expensive power station in the world" that he commissioned.
Madder and madder and madder and madder and madder...
I half hope he does it, so it will lay bare the absolute disjuncture between the UN & its auxiliaries -- including the little army of little green ideologues -- and reality.
"They hope that an emergency declaration would result in resources and technical expertise being rushed to countries most at risk from global heating...".
The UN has a poor track record in this regard.
People want futures for them & their children, not eco-warrior colonialists.
"Hello, we are from the UN, and we have brought solar panels."
"We don't want your solar panels. We wanted to build a proper power station."
"Well, you can't have one. It's bad for the planet."
"Ok, then get back on your helicopter and fuck off."
And that's what the climate thing is about. Its players live entirely virtual existences, remote and disconnected from the lives lived by billions of ordinary people.
Why does Ed want to be the climate champion so badly? Why does he think he has a handle on what the world needs?
Because he's a complete stranger to democracy. He's from a class of people who believe society is theirs to manage and engineer, no matter what people think.
He grew up in wealth, but with the belief that he was good for the world and could make it a better place without requiring the consent of those whose lives his ideas would affect. It's a left-wing version of Divine Right.