Greta Thunberg has something of a problem with her plans for the world. Which is that exactly what she thinks should happen is happening. It’s horrible when people actually get to see the results of a societal plan, isn’t it?
The thing being that she thinks we should have a less wealthy society. One which consumes less, travels less, in general walks more lightly upon this Earth. Well, OK, why not? Everyone’s got a vision of the good society and the entire point of this civil liberty thing is that we all get to expound what ours is.
But here’s the problem with St Greta’s:
This gets to the nub of the problem with the climate change movement. We know pretty well we could reverse the problem if we all agree to become as poor as church mice, or return to being peasants in the fields. It is the understandable resistance to such reversion which causes the problem itself. We like being able to heat our food, warm our bodies, travel and generally enjoy civilisation. That, at this current level of technological advance, means the use of fossil fuels – at the cost of changes to the climate in the future.
The question is not whether we should do something about it, but what?
The coronavirus outbreak gives us a neat experiment in what happens when humans suddenly dramatically reduce both production and consumption. And, to put it mildly, most of us are not enjoying it one bit.
The aim of this whole game of having an economy at all is that human beings end up getting more of what human beings want. What they want can be discussed of course, perhaps it is more penguins, clearer skies and chillier mornings. But we’re running that experiment right now and as it turns out that isn’t what people do want. They’d – we’d – prefer the toilet paper, flights and mounds of rare roast beef.
Which is a bit of a problem for a religious movement telling us to reject the second trio as the cost of being able to have the first, isn’t it?
St Greta’s problem – we’ve tried her world and didn’t like it.
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Hm. I see HS2 remains a goer.
Why, therefore, not also jazz hand a few hundred more million on La Thunberg's personal therapy?
Seriously. HMG has bolster chiselled an Exocet into our living arrangements. Then, today, unperturbed, it announces that HS2 remains viable. Assuming it ever was. Which it wasn't. But anyway.
When you're making decisions like this, presumably off your onion on coke and trying not to look at the ancestral service revolver winking at you from the gun cabinet, what difference does another trillion on zero CO2 make?
It's like putting seven year olds in charge of home economy. After you've given them a good toke of the apricot brandy, and made them fall asleep to disco-lit images of Piers Morgan smarming, "FINALLY...!"
Steve Moore has a column on the "Degrowth" movement, and discussion among its proponents that the national shutdowns in response to coronavirus are a sort of proof-of-feasibility.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/beware-the-lefts-degrowth-movement_3312250.html
Of course, I didn't like her world before I tried it.
‘ We know pretty well we could reverse the problem...’
Really? How can this be known when there is no problem?
No trends showing in the long-term, averaged meteorological data (aka climate), hundred year aggregate Polar ice mass data shows mass stable, so no melting Polar caps raising sea levels, sea level rate of increase lower than in early 20th Century, no evidence of increase in severe weather events according to the IPCC, no increase in modest rate of warming since 1996 and actual decline over the last decade.
So what is the problem?
Could the problem be that reality is not meeting the expectations encouraged by computer modelling which became religious belief among the political deadbeats - a bit like the Wu Flu failure to slaughter the 500 000.
No, a LOT like the Kung Flu situation! Publish a "scientific" paper based on a computer model the reader is not allowed to study or test (or recently, a "scientific" paper that merely pursues the consequences of that previous "study") and, Apocalypse On!
"...That, at this current level of technological advance, means the use of fossil fuels – at the cost of changes to the climate in the future....."
That, at this current level of technological advance, means the use of fossil fuels – in spite of untestable predictions made by people who are paid to make pessimistic predictions that somehow the climate in the future will be 'worse'.
There. Fixed that for you....