Unrealistic pledges revealed as grandstanding
In this newsletter:
1) The truth about Joe Biden’s climate summit: Unrealistic pledges revealed as grandstanding
GWPF, 3 May 2021
2) Japan's ambitious carbon target sparks bureaucratic panic
Financial Times, 3 May 2021
3) The strange truth about Japan’s climate change target
Philip Patrick, The Spectator, 1 May 2021
4) 20% of electric vehicle owners in California switched back to fossil fuel because charging their cars is a hassle
Business Insider, 30 April 2021
5) Chinese scientists: Most climate models fail to reproduce global warming slowdown
GWPF & Science China Earth Sciences, 24 April 2021
6) Steven Koonin: Questioning the Climate-Change Narrative
National Review, 4 May 2021
7) Tilak Doshi: Let’s work for science with integrity -- Steve Koonin’s new book
Forbes, 30 April 2021
8) Matthew Crawford: How science has been corrupted
Unherd, 3 May 2021
9) And finally: Does Britain really wants to go to war for the climate?
Ben Pile, Spiked, 4 May 2021
Full details:
1) The truth about Joe Biden’s climate summit: Unrealistic pledges revealed as grandstanding
GWPF, 3 May 2021
Most lofty climate pledges look increasingly unrealistic, exposing governments to criticism of political hype and grandstanding.
Of the top 20 global CO2 emitters, not a single one is hitting its climate goals as outlined under the Paris Agreement, according to recent data from the Climate Action Tracker.
"The high-level pledges over the last year, in particular, have been impressive with major economies such as the European Union, Japan, South Korea and China all promising to get to ‘net-zero’ emissions or carbon neutrality at some future date,” Victoria Cuming, the head of global policy analysis at BNEF was quoted in February.
“But the reality is that countries simply haven’t done enough at home with follow-through policies to meet even the promises made more than five years ago.”
At President Biden’s recent Leaders’ Summit on Climate, 40 world leaders repeated or made new emissions pledges and promised yet again to be very good. Most of these lofty pledges, however, look increasingly unrealistic, exposing governments to criticism of political hype and grandstanding.
2) Japan's ambitious carbon target sparks bureaucratic panic
Financial Times, 3 May 2021
Goal to cut emissions 46% by 2030 unrealistic and made with little planning, experts say
When Yoshihide Suga pledged to slash Japan’s carbon emissions by 2030, the prime minister received a warm welcome from world leaders at Joe Biden’s climate summit. But his announcement sparked panic across Japan’s bureaucracy.
Policymaking in Japan normally involves a slow and painful process of building consensus. This time, however, Suga imposed the target — a 46 per cent reduction from 2013 levels by 2030 — with no consultation, little political debate and no analysis to confirm it is possible.
Officials are now rushing to turn the objective into concrete policy, with experts openly doubting its credibility and warning that the Japanese public has not been primed for the sacrifices it will require.
In comments that were taken as emblematic of the government’s lack of planning, Shinjiro Koizumi, the environment minister, sparked criticism and social media derision when he told a television programme that the 46 per cent figure had “just floated up”.
“The government is in total confusion,” said one member of the advisory panel in charge of devising the national energy strategy. “Japan hasn’t done anything to prepare for this.” […]
Taishi Sugiyama, research director at the Canon Institute for Global Studies, said the target was only achievable if Japan accepted a big hit to its economy. A 1 per cent reduction in emissions costs about ¥1tn ($9.1bn) a year, he said, so the 20 percentage point reduction would cost ¥20tn.
That would be equivalent to about 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product, implying that the carbon target would soak up much of the improvement in living standards expected for Japan’s low-growth economy by 2030.
Full story (£)
3) The strange truth about Japan’s climate change target
Philip Patrick, The Spectator, 1 May 2021
Japan has just raised its target for reducing carbon emissions from 26 per cent to 46 per cent (by 2030 from 2013 levels). But how was this figure arrived at, environment minister Shinjiro Koizumi was asked? Through a careful analysis of the threat and a realistic assessment of what could be achieved, taking all relevant factors into consideration? Well, er no, according to Koizumi, the number 46 just appeared to him in ‘silhouette’ in a sort of vision.
Shinjiro Koizumi, son of former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, made the comments in an interview with the TV station TBS last weekend. The interviewer, despite her face mask, was clearly stunned by the revelation that the country’s emission target did not appear to have any scientific basis. She asked the minister to confirm what he had said; and he did.
Koizumi known by the nicknames ‘sexy’ and ‘the poet’ is, like his extravagantly coiffured Elvis impersonating father, something of an unusual figure in the staid world of Japanese politics. He inherited his House of Representatives seat when his father retired in 2009 – still how things are often done here in Japan – and has been steadily climbing the pole ever since, unhindered by various gaffes, alleged scandals, and now visions, along the way.
He has plenty of fans. And the power of the Koizumi name, his boyband good looks (the diet building sells green tea flavoured ‘Shinji-rolls’ adorned with his likeness), and the glamour brought by his TV star wife got him briefly mentioned as a potential replacement for Shinzo Abe when the former prime minister stepped down last year.
Some starry-eyed supporters see Shinji as the future – he’s only 40, a mere pup in Japan’s gerontocratic establishment – while others think he’s an over promoted odd ball.
Despite his undoubted confidence, it is not entirely clear that Shinjiro Koizumi truly understands the environmental brief he is now tasked with. He first opposed the phasing out of nuclear power, now he supports it; but is also in favour of the construction of two new coal fired power stations in Yokosuka. As for the number 46, it has been suggested, not entirely seriously (but who knows?) that the reason it popped into his head is simply because the number has a buzzy resonance (Keyakizaka 46 and Nogizaka 46 are two of Japan’s most popular girl groups).
Prime minister Suga has not commented on his environment minister’s green-tinged epiphany, but he confirmed the 46 per cent pledge at the 40-leader climate summit presided over by US president Joe Biden via Zoom last week.
Japan’s ambitious stance – carbon neutrality by 2050 is the ultimate goal – was in tune with the tenor of the event. Other notable contributions came from Ursula von der Leyen, who vowed to make Europe the first ‘carbon neutral continent’, while Angela Merkel warned that tackling climate change would require ‘a complete transformation of the way we do business and the way we work’. Biden himself added a ‘resistance is futile’ warning to naysayers when he declared the signs of climate change are ‘unmistakable’ and the science ‘undeniable’. Not that there were many naysayers, only Scott Morrison of Australia struck the faintest tinkling notes of scepticism.
World leaders like Suga, VDL and Biden are no doubt conscious of a shifting narrative in the air as the Covid story gradually fades away, and are eager to tack to the next prevailing wind. Boris Johnson is no exception, with the Prime Minister desperate to ensure that this year's UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow is a hit.
From that event we can expect a torrent of dire warnings, urgent pleadings and reaffirmation of big promises for cuts in carbon emissions. The UK is well ahead here with a Greta-tastic 78 per cent (by 2035 from 1990 levels); in the US it’s 50 - 52 per cent (from 2005 levels by 2030), while the EU is aiming for 55 per cent (2035/1990).
Perhaps we will also soon learn more about how these figures were arrived at. And what they really mean. And whether Boris, Joe, or Ursula are visionaries, like Shinjiro Koizumi.
4) 20% of electric vehicle owners in California switched back to fossil fuel because charging their cars is a hassle
Business Insider, 30 April 2021
Roughly one in five plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) owners switched back to owning gas-powered cars, in large part because charging the batteries was a pain in the… trunk, new study finds.
In roughly three minutes, you can fill the gas tank of a Ford Mustang and have enough range to go about 300 miles with its V8 engine.
But for the electric Mustang Mach-E, an hour plugged into a household outlet gave Bloomberg automotive analyst Kevin Tynan just three miles of range.
“Overnight, we’re looking at 36 miles of range,” he told Insider. “Before I gave it back to Ford, because I wanted to give it back full, I drove it to the office and plugged in at the charger we have there.”
Standard home outlets generally put out about 120 volts of power at what electric vehicle aficionados call “Level 1” charging, while the high-powered specialty connections offer 240 volts of power and are known as “Level 2.” By comparison, Tesla’s “Superchargers,” which can fully charge its cars in a little over an hour, offer 480 volts of direct current.
That difference is night and day, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Energy by University of California Davis researchers Scott Hardman and Gil Tal that surveyed Californians who purchased an electric vehicle between 2012 and 2018.
Roughly one in five plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) owners switched back to owning gas-powered cars, in large part because charging the batteries was a pain in the… trunk, the researchers found. […]
The researchers warned that this trend could make it harder to achieve electric vehicle sales targets in California and other countries, and the growth of the market overall.
“It should not be assumed that once a consumer purchases a PEV they will continue owning one,” Hardman and Tal wrote. “What is clear is that this could slow PEV market growth and make reaching 100% PEV sales more difficult.”
Fixing the charging issue will require more participation from automakers, who have yet to find a profitable way of producing electric cars. Even Tesla, easily the leader in the category, was only able to eke out a first-quarter profit by selling energy credits and bitcoin.
Full story
5) Chinese scientists: Most climate models fail to reproduce global warming slowdown
GWPF & Science China Earth Sciences, 24 April 2021
A new study by a team of Chinese climate scientists and published by Science China Earth Sciences, a journal cosponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, reveals the failure of most of the latest climate models to reproduce the global warming slowdown during 1998–2013.
Could CMIP6 climate models reproduce the early-2000s global warming slowdown?
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11430-020-9740-3
Abstract
The unexpected global warming slowdown during 1998–2013 challenges the existing scientific understanding of global temperature change mechanisms, and thus the simulation and prediction ability of state-of-the-art climate models since most models participating in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) cannot simulate it. Here, we examine whether the new-generation climate models in CMIP6 can reproduce the recent global warming slowdown, and further evaluate their capacities for simulating key-scale natural variabilities which are the most likely causes of the slowdown. The results show that although the CMIP6 models present some encouraging improvements when compared with CMIP5, most of them still fail to reproduce the warming slowdown. They considerably overestimate the warming rate observed in 1998–2013, exhibiting an obvious warming acceleration rather than the observed deceleration. This is probably associated with their deficiencies in simulating the distinct temperature change signals from the human-induced long-term warming trend and or the three crucial natural variabilities at interannual, interdecadal, and multidecadal scales. In contrast, the 4 models that can successfully reproduce the slowdown show relatively high skills in simulating the long-term warming trend and the three key-scale natural variabilities. Our work may provide important insight for the simulation and prediction of near-term climate changes.
Full paper ($)
6) Steven Koonin: Questioning the Climate-Change Narrative
National Review, 4 May 2021
Editor’s Note: The following are extracts from Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, by Steven E. Koonin.
The first two, which are brief, are from the introduction. One sets out the basic thesis of the book, and the other is a summary of Koonin’s background. The third, which is lengthier and lightly edited, comes from a chapter entitled “Apocalypses That Ain’t,” wherein Koonin discusses climate change’s effect on the economy.
From the Introduction
‘The Science.” We’re all supposed to know what “The Science” says. “The Science,” we’re told, is settled. How many times have you heard it?
Humans have already broken the earth’s climate. Temperatures are rising, sea level is surging, ice is disappearing, and heat waves, storms, droughts, floods, and wildfires are an ever-worsening scourge on the world. Greenhouse-gas emissions are causing all of this. And unless they’re eliminated promptly by radical changes to society and its energy systems, “The Science” says earth is doomed.
Well . . . not quite. Yes, it’s true that the globe is warming, and that humans are exerting a warming influence upon it. But beyond that — to paraphrase the classic movie The Princess Bride: “I do not think ‘The Science’ says what you think it says.”
For example, both the research literature and government reports that summarize and assess the state of climate science say clearly that heat waves in the U.S. are now no more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the U.S. have not risen in the past 50 years. When I tell people this, most are incredulous. Some gasp. And some get downright hostile.
But these are almost certainly not the only climate facts you haven’t heard. Here are three more that might surprise you, drawn directly from recent published research or the latest assessments of climate science published by the U.S. government and the U.N.:
Humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century.
Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago.
The net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century.
So what gives . . .?
* * *
I’m a scientist — I work to understand the world through measurements and observations, and then to communicate clearly both the excitement and the implications of that understanding. Early in my career, I had great fun doing this for esoteric phenomena in the realm of atoms and nuclei using high-performance computer modeling (which is also an important tool for much of climate science).
But beginning in 2004, I spent about a decade turning those same methods to the subject of climate and its implications for energy technologies. I did this first as chief scientist for the oil company BP, where I focused on advancing renewable energy, and then as undersecretary for science in the Obama administration’s Department of Energy, where I helped guide the government’s investments in energy technologies and climate science. I found great satisfaction in these roles, helping to define and catalyze actions that would reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, the agreed-upon imperative that would “save the planet.”
But then the doubts began . . .
Full post
7) Tilak Doshi: Let’s work for science with integrity -- Steve Koonin’s new book
Forbes, 30 April 2021
It is not the global climate system that’s broken, it’s the alleged “climate consensus” that is. That in a nutshell is a central message of physicist Steve Koonin’s new book, “Unsettled: what climate science tells us, what it doesn’t, and why it matters”, available in bookstores and on Kindle on May 4th.
The “climate consensus” alleges that:
Humans have broken the earth’s climate. Temperatures are rising, sea level is surging, ice is disappearing, and heat waves, storms, droughts, floods, and wildfires are an ever-worsening scourge on the world. Greenhouse gas emissions are causing all of this. And unless they’re eliminated promptly by radical changes to society and its energy systems, “The Science” says Earth is doomed.
Settled Science vs. Real Science
“Settled science”, an oxymoron, is anything but settled says the author. Holman Jenkins in his recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal captures the author’s contribution to the climate change literature succinctly: “Mr. Koonin argues not against current climate science but that what the media and politicians and activists say about climate science has drifted so far out of touch with the actual science as to be absurdly, demonstrably false”.
Koonin points out scientific facts supported by hard data and the peer-reviewed literature that stand against the reigning climate change narrative: humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century; Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was eighty years ago; tornado frequency and severity are not trending up; the number and severity of droughts are not rising over time either; the extent of global fires has been trending significantly downward; the rate of sea-level rise has not accelerated; global crop yields are rising, not falling; the net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century even if global average temperatures rise by 30 C which is double the Paris Agreement goal.
To be sure, what Koonin points out as facts and convincing scientific interpretations have been covered by other equally qualified scientists such as William Happer (Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Princeton University), Richard Lindzen (atmospheric physicist, retired Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Roger Pielke Jr. (previously Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder) and Judith Curry (American climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology).
Steve Koonin is more than eminently qualified in climate science. He has degrees from Caltech and MIT; he is an author of over 200 academic papers; he was previously provost at Caltech and chief scientist for BP. Koonin, in short, is a brilliant physicist who worked and interacted with his colleague at Caltech, Richard Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century. But what sets Koonin apart from other prominent climate sceptics are not his impeccable credentials. Happer and Lindzen have equally impressive CVs. But Koonin will be harder to vilify and “cancel” as other sceptics have been (here, here, and here) because he was appointed as Senate-confirmed Under Secretary for Science under the Obama administration serving from May 19, 2009, to November 18, 2011. He served under a President who famously tweeted: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: Climate change is real, man-made and dangerous”. And this is precisely what Koonin’s book testifies against. It is quite wondrous how truth is told to power when one is released from the constraints of a government job.
The Height of Hubris
One of the key contributions of Koonin’s book is its detailed account of how the climate change message gets distorted as it goes through successive filters as the research literature gets converted to assessment reports and report summaries which are then subject to alarmist and apocalyptic media coverage and politicians’ soundbites. It is up to scientists to put forward facts without an agenda or a pre-existing narrative, but it is not easy. Koonin says, “I should know, that used to be my job”. He finds it the height of hubris when scientists believe that they should exaggerate or even lie for a higher cause and there could be no higher cause than “saving the planet”. For a scientist with integrity, there is no dilemma between being effective and being honest.
Why is the science so poorly communicated to the public and policy makers? For Koonin, it is clear that distorted science serves the interests of diverse players, ranging from environmental NGOs, media, politicians, scientists and scientific organizations.
The ideological corruption of the hard sciences has been remarked upon by others but Koonin covers it with telling examples arising from his own experiences over the years. Climate science, he asserts, has been an effort “to persuade rather than inform”, leaving out what does not fit the overarching narrative. Contrary to popular belief, even the official assessment reports – such as those by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the US government’s National Climate Assessments — indicate that “significant human-induced climate change would have negligible net economic impact on either the world or the US economies by the end of this century”.
Who Broke The Science and Why
In examining “who broke the science and why”, Koonin argues that misinformation in the service of persuasion is not at the behest of “some secret cabal but rather a self-reinforcing alignment of perspectives and interests”. Turning to politicians who come out with simple messages such as “eliminate the use of fossil fuel to save the planet”, Koonin cites the great American essayist H. L. Mencken who wrote that “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary”. Of the media, Koonin observes that if reporters don’t have a narrative of gloom, they won’t have a story that makes it into the papers since “if it bleeds, it leads”. Scientific institutions seem “overwilling to persuade rather than inform”, and the entire raison d’etre of environmental NGOs is to keep alive the “climate crisis”.
The public faces on a daily basis mounting hysteria and calls for drastic policies adversely affecting the livelihoods of ordinary people and trillions of dollars to “fight climate change”. The “climate emergency” is now pronounced as fact by US President Joe Biden, UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson who plays host to this year’s UN climate conference in Glasgow, and the EU leadership which plans to impose a carbon border adjustment tax on developing countries that refuse to impose draconian climate regulations on their own much poorer citizens.
It would be too much to hope that Steve Koonin’s book can do much to fight the global climate change juggernaut that has gained momentum over the past three decades. Nevertheless, he has written a brave and convincing book on the weak case of an impending human-induced climate apocalypse. It would be a sorry indicator of our times if he were subject to the obscene charge of “climate denier”, as many of his sceptical colleagues have been.
8) Matthew Crawford: How science has been corrupted
Unherd, 3 May 2021
Like other forms of demagogy, scientism presents stylised facts and a curated picture of reality. In doing so, it may generate fears strong enough to render democratic principles moot.
[...] Science as authority
In 1633, Galileo was brought before the Inquisition for his demonstration that the earth is not fixed but revolves around the sun. This was a problem, obviously, because the ecclesiastical authorities believed their legitimacy rested on a claim to have an adequate grasp of reality, as indeed it did. Galileo had no interest in being a martyr, and recanted to save his skin. But in the lore of Enlightenment, he is said to have muttered under his breath, “but it does move!”
This anecdote has a prominent place in the story we tell about what it means to be modern. On one side, science with its devotion to truth. On the other side, authority, whether ecclesiastical or political. In this tale, “science” stands for a freedom of the mind that is inherently at odds with the idea of authority.
The pandemic has brought into relief a dissonance between our idealised image of science, on the one hand, and the work “science” is called upon to do in our society, on the other. I think the dissonance can be traced to this mismatch between science as an activity of the solitary mind, and the institutional reality of it. Big science is fundamentally social in its practice, and with this comes certain entailments.
As a practical matter, “politicised science” is the only kind there is (or rather, the only kind you are likely to hear about). But it is precisely the apolitical image of science, as disinterested arbiter of reality, that makes it such a powerful instrument of politics. This contradiction is now out in the open. The “anti-science” tendencies of populism are in significant measure a response to the gap that has opened up between the practice of science and the ideal that underwrites its authority. As a way of generating knowledge, it is the pride of science to be falsifiable (unlike religion).
Yet what sort of authority would it be that insists its own grasp of reality is merely provisional? Presumably, the whole point of authority is to explain reality and provide certainty in an uncertain world, for the sake of social coordination, even at the price of simplification. To serve the role assigned it, science must become something more like religion.
The chorus of complaints about a declining “faith in science” states the problem almost too frankly. The most reprobate among us are climate sceptics, unless those be the Covid deniers, who are charged with not obeying the science. If all this has a medieval sound, it ought to give us pause.
We live in a mixed regime, an unstable hybrid of democratic and technocratic forms of authority. Science and popular opinion must be made to speak with one voice as far as possible, or there is conflict. According to the official story, we try to harmonise scientific knowledge and opinion through education. But in reality, science is hard, and there is a lot of it. We have to take it mostly on faith. That goes for most journalists and professors, as well as plumbers. The work of reconciling science and public opinion is carried out, not through education, but through a kind of distributed demagogy, or Scientism. We are learning that this is not a stable solution to the perennial problem of authority that every society must solve.
The phrase “follow the science” has a false ring to it. That is because science doesn’t lead anywhere. It can illuminate various courses of action, by quantifying the risks and specifying the tradeoffs. But it can’t make the necessary choices for us. By pretending otherwise, decision-makers can avoid taking responsibility for the choices they make on our behalf.
Increasingly, science is pressed into duty as authority. It is invoked to legitimise the transfer of sovereignty from democratic to technocratic bodies, and as a device for insulating such moves from the realm of political contest….
The bigness of big science — both the corporate form of the activity, and its need for large resources generated otherwise than by science itself — places science squarely in the world of extra-scientific concerns, then. Including those concerns taken up by political lobbies. If the concern has a high profile, any dissent from the official consensus may be hazardous to an investigator’s career.
Public opinion polls generally indicate that what “everybody knows” about some scientific matter, and its bearing on public interests, will be identical to the well-institutionalized view. This is unsurprising, given the role the media plays in creating consensus. Journalists, rarely competent to assess scientific statements critically, cooperate in propagating the pronouncements of self-protecting “research cartels” as science.
Bauer’s concept of a research cartel came into public awareness in an episode that occurred five years after his article appeared. In 2009, someone hacked the emails of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain and released them, prompting the “climategate” scandal in which the scientists who sat atop the climate bureaucracy were revealed to be stonewalling against requests for their data from outsiders. This was at a time when many fields, in response to their own replication crises, were adopting data sharing as a norm in their research communities, as well as other practices such as reporting null findings and the pre-registration of hypotheses in shared forums.
The climate research cartel staked its authority on the peer review process of journals deemed legitimate, which meddling challengers had not undergone. But, as Gurri notes in his treatment of climategate, “since the group largely controlled peer review for their field, and a consuming subject of the emails was how to keep dissenting voices out of the journals and the media, the claim rested on a circular logic”.
One can be fully convinced of the reality and dire consequences of climate change while also permitting oneself some curiosity about the political pressures that bear on the science, I hope. Try to imagine the larger setting when the IPPC convenes.
Powerful organisations are staffed up, with resolutions prepared, communications strategies in place, corporate “global partners” secured, interagency task forces standing by and diplomatic channels open, waiting to receive the good word from an empaneled group of scientists working in committee.
This is not a setting conducive to reservations, qualifications, or second thoughts. The function of the body is to produce a product: political legitimacy.
Full essay
9) And finally: Does Britain really wants to go to war for the climate?
Ben Pile, Spiked, 4 May 2021
The British defence establishment is spoiling to become the global climate police.
Britain’s green army on making contact with the enemy
Senior politicians and officials seem to be carving out a new green role for Britain’s armed forces and so-called ‘intelligence’ agencies. According to these reports, troops and spies could soon be doing Gaia’s work… protecting the Amazon from loggers, and covertly monitoring emissions from China’s factories and power stations.
The first stirrings of Greta’s Army came in the form of the Integrated Review – titled Global Britain in a Competitive Age – back in March. It set out to describe ‘the government’s vision for the UK’s role in the world’. The review makes a number of bland promises, such as ‘a more robust position on security and resilience’, ‘a renewed commitment to the UK as a force for good in the world’, and ‘an increased determination to seek multilateral solutions to challenges like climate change’. The full text of the review mentions ‘climate’ 90 times across 112 pages, and puts the environment at the centre of foreign policy.
Following this, the Ministry of Defence published its own report, Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach. In it, Lieutenant General Richard Nugee sets out his plan to make killing people and blowing things up more easy on Mother Nature. However, despite making lots of statements about intent, and how great the world will be when these intentions are realised, Nugee gives Net Zero explanation as to how this woke, green army will achieve Net Zero carbon emissions. Nugee fails to explain how a nuclear bomb can be used with minimal environmental impact or how an army, navy and air force (and shiny new Space Command) can be built from recycled materials, and powered by wind and sunlight.
Then, this month, the new head of MI6, Richard Moore, described climate change as the ‘foremost international foreign-policy item for this country and for the planet’. The ‘climate emergency’, said Moore, gave MI6 a role in keeping tabs on Chinese manufacturing. ‘It is perhaps our job to make sure that what they are really doing reflects what they have signed up to.’
Failed Conservative Party leader William Hauge also riffed on the scenarios created by the Integrated Review. ‘In the past, the UK has been willing to use all of our firepower, both military and diplomatic, to secure and extract fossil fuels’, he wrote for the Policy Exchange think-tank. ‘But in the future, the UK will need to use all of its diplomatic capacity to ensure that these resources are not used and that natural environments are protected.’ Citing the apocryphal destruction of a ‘football pitch-sized area of the Amazon rainforest every minute’ (which has been widely debunked), Hague claimed that ‘realpolitik will leave the UK with a dilemma: ease up the pressure on climate-change delinquents like Brazil or forget about your trade deal’. […]
The most striking thing is the message of utter bad faith all this sends out to the world. The government is currently hoping to broker a global agreement at the COP26 later this year. Listening to the green interventionist you would think this was supposed to embody Britain’s status as a ‘global leader’ – as though Britain had conceived and convened the meeting rather than merely being the 26th host country of the tortured annual ritual. Yet what our establishment is essentially saying is that the reward for signing the deal is that Britain’s spies will be watching, and our armed forces will be standing ready to make sure you comply. Stay in your lane, emerging economies! If an agreement is not premised on trust, but will instead be policed by a fading global power, why would any self-respecting, sovereign government sign up to it?
So what can we expect from this new era of ecological interventionism? It seems unlikely that green espionage will do anything other than lead to a faster termination of any global climate agreement than, perhaps, Trump suddenly being remade president of the US.
Full post
The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.
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