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Climate Panic Movement Not Catching On
The Great Climate Change Revolution is headed for failure. You can tell that because it is already in big trouble before the ultimate heavy lifting has even started.
International accords, (i.e. Paris Agreement) passed with great fanfare to ensure cooperation on emissions reductions, are ignored by most of the signers, notably China. Consumers worldwide are balking at increased energy prices. Unsold EVs are piling up.
All this resistance is occurring well before the full rollout of the regulations and restrictions needed to achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2050, the agreed-upon goal of climate activists worldwide.
It may not seem at first glance like the climate change movement is struggling. After all, mainstream dogma still holds that man-made warming has us careening toward disaster, possibly an uninhabitable planet. The only solution is to “just stop oil” along with coal and gas.
As John Kerry explains, there is no alternative. Biden’s proposals have nothing to do with politics nor ideology. “It’s entirely a reaction to the science, to the mathematics and physics that explain what is happening”. It was no surprise, then, when Biden officials recently rolled out new CO2 emissions requirements, maintaining the same endpoint by 2032. The only way for auto makers to comply would be for gas-powered cars to comprise only 30% of new car sales.
But there’s a telling detail. The 2030 requirements have been relaxed, which means that they’re still going to put the squeeze on to force more EV sales, just not right now. But what’s going to change to make regulations more palatable in 2032 then in 2030? There’s no evidence that the demand for EVs will be greater or that consumers will be more interested in purchasing them.
EVs were envisioned as the cutting edge of the “zero by fifty” campaign. If we could replace the outmoded, smoke-belching anachronisms on the roads with sleek new vehicles lacking tailpipe emissions, the new atmospheric standards would be a piece of cake.
But there are problems. Consumers aren’t wild about EVs. After years of the feds promoting them and subsidizing them in every way thinkable, they still account for just 8% of new car sales.
They are still too expensive, refueling can be difficult and they have poor resale value. Moreover the giant batteries are a disposal nightmare. EVs increase soot pollution. Depending on the fuel source used to produce the electricity, they may produce no net carbon reduction anyway!
Auto makers for now are slashing prices on the mandated EVs and making up for it with profits from gas-powered cars. Ford alone lost $4.7 billion last year on EV production, a whopping $64,000 per EV sold.
Yet the Biden administration soldiers on, insisting EVs can capture 70% of all sales within eight years. Hint: they can’t. Look for other accommodations to reality to be made. Meanwhile they are doing a lot of economic damage, for no possible benefit.
Americans are less caught up in climate panic than ever. Surveys revealed that of all the issues in this year‘s election, voters rank climate change 10th in importance. “We’re number 10” may not make an inspiring campaign slogan, but the massive media, academic and governmental infrastructure dedicated to its promotion means the climate change industry won’t disappear anytime soon.
As Swedish economist Björn Lomborg points out, climate change is a problem but only one of several mankind must grapple with. Meta-analysis of all scientific estimates shows climate change costs will likely average one percent of GDP across the century, a figure sure to be dwarfed by anticipated economic growth. Meanwhile, the proposed solutions insisted upon by the panic advocates will average $27 trillion annually or seven times more than the problem itself.
Costs aside, we lead better lives because of fossil fuels. Abundant energy has more than doubled lifespans, dramatically reduced hunger and increased personal income tenfold. Climate related deaths from droughts, storms, floods and fires have declined an astonishing 97% over the last century.
The worst thing we could do is to drive ourselves into poverty by “following the (false) science”. We need to stay economically and technically strong to be able to accommodate change as needed. Human beings do that, you know.
Published in General
I am not so sure. The Climitistas just got their big win against Mark Styne. Power instability in getting worse, not better, and car makers are making less gas driven models. “green” is the faith of most of the general public. New dishwashers and washing machines stink.
As far as my personal life is concerned, the siege is still on. There is no army on the horizon.
The great majority of movers and shakers, academics, media types, and bureaucrats everywhere are all in on alarmism. What the regular folks believe and reality itself may not be enough to prevent further idiocy. Following The ScienceTM is still a very powerful cult.
So a Swedish economist tells us climate change is a problem. Wow. I’m a geologist: we see the climate change throughout earth’s history. To think or believe that we can do anything to affect earth’s changing climate is folly. (My birthplace in Ohio was once covered by a mile thick ice sheet in the not too distant geologic past.) It is a problem for us because there are a lot of grifters making money off of their scam while trying to drive us back to the Stone Age.
Any climate event or change not attributable to CO2 is natural variability. Natural variability ended in 1979. Since then all climate-related events (warming, cooling, floods, droughts, hurricanes, doldrums, obesity, impotence, inflation, war, famine, capitalism, the death of Jeffrey Epstein, American Idol, manbuns…) are the result of the CO2 control knob.
Climate change is a time bomb: the children are marinating in the fear of it and it will be used to get and keep votes for anyone who knows how to harness that fear.
And most people speak about the ice age, as if there has been only one. There have been, what, five great ice ages? And who knows how many little ones, but way, way more. I guess we’re supposed to believe that God spent billions of years turning the thermostat up and down and up and down, and just when he got it set to the perfect position, those damn humans started burning coal and ruined it all. We would have the same global temperatures as we had in 1890 in perpetuity, if not for man. Specifically, capitalist man.
We are still in an ice age.
100%
My husband and I took a long car trip down 95 to Florida from New England about a month ago. What was really noticeable to me was that all of the trash bins in the restaurants and gas stations and so on had the labels removed.
There were still two receptacles, but they weren’t labeled the way trash cans used to be. We appear to be embracing comingling trash once again. I assume that’s because the Chinese are no longer “recycling” our trash. But it struck me that people were happy to get rid of this part of their daily life. That said, the color-coded trash bins are still everywhere. But I wonder how much sorting people are doing. I wonder if they will disappear soon. As I understand it, the trash collecting companies are taking these color-coded bins and just throwing their contents all in the same pile.
I can’t help wondering if people are tired of the whole climate change hysteria. I hope so.
I had a university office which was populated with a trash can and a bright blue recycling can. One night I was working there when the janitor made the rounds.
I realized at that moment that the janitorial cart only had one bin for both the cans.
Most of the time there is no polar ice to speak of and sea levels are higher. And we have seen sudden cooling catastrophes bring years of famine multiple times in recorded history. Volcanic eruptions and such. What brilliant measures have we taken to handle the next such occasion?