Are the wheels coming off Net Zero..?

the green reversal of progress is stumbling...

It is only Net Zero cultists and Ed Miliband currently celebrating the indiscernible reduction in the UK’s already tiny 1% of global carbon emissions following the closure of the Port Talbot steel works. The town will now be searching for purpose, or rather the much-heralded green jobs that parliament’s Net Zero Strategy: Build Back Greener promised. It’s a similar story in Methil on the south Fife coast, where thriving yards once building oil and gas platforms now lie empty of nothing but puddles and old rust. Instead, China manufactures our wind turbines using low-cost, coal-fired energy, contributing to their 31% of global co2 emissions, while the Scots apply to become Amazon delivery drivers. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Boris Johnson all promised a green jobs revolution. Our uni-party Labour and Conservative governments must be so proud of creating tens of thousands of new manufacturing jobs, even if they’re in the wrong country.

Martin Sheen in his new TV series The Way blames Westminster for the closure of Port Talbot, but it’s like blaming the puppet for the puppeteer’s action. It’s Net Zero that demands the closure of all industry, with the UK intent upon leading the way. One look at northern Europe dismantling its civilisation is certainly setting the example of exactly what not to do.

It was October 2021, smuggled in beneath the covering fire of un-debated Covid measures, when the UK government made the sort of revolutionary announcement more in keeping with bleary mornings scattered with spent ammo following a coup. The 368 page document Net Zero Strategy: Build Back Greener outlined, in the usual bureaucratic verbosity, fundamental changes in the way we live that no one voted for. It’s written by someone with ‘build back better’ tourettes. This was the latest legislation from the Climate Change Act 2008, the poisoned chalice left by the last Labour government to legally binding, five-year caps on emissions – carbon budgets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 100 per cent by 2050 on 1990 levels. All part of the UN’s commitment to Agenda 2021. This blanket governmental policy affecting every part of how we live is based upon ‘the’ science that is believed to be settled, yet is daily proven as otherwise. Science is rarely, if ever, 'settled', as the dangers of inaccurate modelling during Covid demonstrated.

Despite leaving the EU, the UK government has done nothing to extradite itself from supranational organisations, and is intent upon the same self-harming goals of Net Zero as other European countries locked in by overarching UN sustainability agendas. As with the EU, agriculture is a big target under the carbon budgets, with farmers being told to reduce emissions, to re-wild farmland, while citizens are encouraged to eat less meat. However, rather than the usual submissive response to our rulers, the farmers have realised their power.

No farming no food. It’s terrifying how far we have drifted from our connection to the land and how reliant we are on farmers. Most people don’t know their Leghorns from their Plymouth Rocks, or even a dairy cow from beef cattle, and the farmers have realised it. Because talking of beef, our farmers (it’s an improvement on ‘our’ NHS) have had enough and opted to block motorways with tractors across Europe; it must be the largest collection of badly dressed introverts in history.

And it’s apparently worked. These protests have caused the unelected EU President Ursula von der Leyen to take a break from looking like someone desperately hoping no one else can smell the dog mess on her shoe, and announced they will scrap targets to cut emissions from farms. This must have been the hardest pill to swallow since the EU failed to agree a €50bn financial aid package to Ukraine after Hungary’s veto. The fact that Greenpeace are throwing their wooden sustainable toys out of their pram is always a good sign.

As welcome as arriving guests at a winding-down party, matters aren’t helped by the Arctic sea ice ignoring all climate catastrophe memos and continuing its recovery last month, recording its 24th highest level in the 45-year modern satellite record. Meanwhile, Germany has found itself reverting to coal power in the shocking discovery that wind is not as reliable as it is renewable. With EV car sales plateauing, it seems EV owners are pulling the plug on their so-called green machines due to incentives being scrapped, insurance rising and soaring charging costs; not to mention the collateral cost of (presumably net zero) Gregg’s steak bakes while you’re charging them. It’s not just the consumers, but Ford is hesitant in its EV strategy as losses increase, and Hertz is selling off 20,000 rental EVs in the US, citing higher repair costs and no one wanting them.

And then we have Labour’s Herr Starmer. This is the sort of politician AI would create in its fag break: a bland, yet dangerous flip flop loitering in the wings with the entitlement of an actor awaiting his applause. He has recently retracted his promise of £28b per year of tax payers money to finance a green industrial revolution. It’s a U-turn before even making it into power. Yes, that’s per year, and money they might as well set up as a standing order for to China. They’re now blaming the Conservatives for retracting this generous offer of how to better spend our own money. Politicians reversal of green promises? Biden authorising off shore US oil drilling licences. Consumers wising up to inferior EVs? It might be too soon to fire up the V8 quite yet, but there does seem to be a push against the Net Zero collectivism.

The sinister underlay of Net Zero might have been glimpsed, but it’s unwise to approach a wounded animal, they lash out, more attached to life than perhaps they’ve ever been. It seems impervious to its priests that Net Zero is impossible. Net 15% might have been achievable (if it even mattered of course, after all mounting research shows CO2 is proving to be effective plant food), but Net Zero suggests we should be knitting wind turbines, solar panels and lithium batteries from Llama hair and ritualistic rain dances. Instead concrete is the 3rd largest CO2 emitter and a typical wind turbine uses 566.89 tons of concrete. If that’s net zero then giving up sugar involves a Mars bar for breakfast. Solar panels and wind turbines have a limited lifespan of 20-25 years so are neither renewable nor sustainable.

So, Agenda 2021, in its various guises, marches on. Sadiq Kahn still has a hard on for C40 cities, the global network world city mayors united by inflated self-importance, sorry, I mean action to confront the climate crisis. His next plan from obliging residents to drive at a pre-industrial speeds is to charge car owners to drive per mile under project Detroit, for our own benefit of course. This to be policed by the network of ULEZ cameras that no one objected spying on us other than the blade-runners. And let’s not forget the C40 cities target for making meat and dairy consumption per person as zero by 2030. Kahn appears to have not found room amongst the ‘don’t look at women’ posters on TFL to mention this, presumably because No More Chicken Shops isn’t a vote winner.

There is only one main winner in the green agenda, as a recent Global Warming Policy Foundation report stated: ‘Chinese companies are the main beneficiaries of the green agenda.’ Might it be that people are waking up this? And might it be that the nihilism, pessimism and self-hatred of our times may not be as ascendent and seemingly inevitable as it appears when watching the BBC gorged on the ‘settled science’, and anyone suggesting the earth has fluctuated in temperatures, particularly when emerging from a mini ice age, for much of its existence is called a climate denier?