Net Zero Watch: German village to be razed for coal mine

 

In this newsletter:

1) German village to be razed for coal mine
Associated Press, 2 January 2023
 
2) German finance minister calls for lifting fracking ban
Clean Energy Wire, 2 January 2023
 
3) Germany considers €1 billion in support for 10 fossil fuel projects overseas
Climate Home News, 9 December 2022
 
4) Global coal consumption rises to all-time high amidst energy crisis
Mining Review Africa, 2 January 2023
  
5) Despite bold climate pledges global coal demand to remain high for years to come
OilPrice.com, 2 January 2023
 

6) Big coal miners’ profits triple as global demand surges
Financial Times, 28 December 2022
  
7) Benny Peiser: The UK and Europe are destroying their own economies with green policies... without reducing CO2 emissions
The Scottish Daily Express, 20 December 2022 
 
8) Scientists thought CO2 emissions had peaked. They were wrong
The Washington Post, 5 December 2022
  

9) Roger Pielke Jr: Five things everyone in reinsurance should know
The Honest Broker, 2 January 2023

10) Syd Lucas: In murder mystery film ‘Glass Onion,’ the left’s green energy narrative is a welcomed casualty
The Federalist, 5 December 2022

11) Reliance on hi-tech solutions to climate crisis perpetuates racism, says UN official
The College Fix, 28 December 2022
  
12) And finally: ‘60 Minutes’ exhumes enviro cult leader for a new round of scaremongering
The Federalist, 2 January 2023

Full details:

1) German village to be razed for coal mine
Associated Press, 2 January 2023

Scuffles broke out on Monday outside a village in western Germany that is to be razed to allow the expansion of a coal mine, a plan that is drawing resistance from climate activists.
 
 
Activists built barricades and set them on fire while the police prepared for the planned eviction of the village Luetzerath.(AP: Henning Kaiser/dpa )

Activists threw fireworks, bottles and stones at police outside the village of Luetzerath before the situation calmed down and officers pulled back, German news agency dpa reported.

Protesters previously had set up a burning barricade, and one person glued his hand to the access road.

The hamlet is to be demolished to expand the Garzweiler lignite mine, despite protests from environmentalists who fear millions more tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will be released into the atmosphere.

Activists have been living in houses abandoned by former residents.

The Heinsberg county administration has issued an order barring people from Luetzerath and, if they fail to leave, authorizing police to clear the village from January 10 onward. Officials have called for a non-violent end to the activists’ occupation.

In October, the federal and regional governments — both of which include the environmentalist Green party — and energy company RWE agreed to bring forward the exit from coal use in the region by eight years to 2030.

But, amid concerns about Germany's energy security following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the agreement also foresees the life of two power plant units that were supposed to be switched off earlier being extended until at least 2024 and Luetzerath being razed to enable further mining.
 
see also: Germany revives coal as energy security trumps climate goals

2) German finance minister calls for lifting fracking ban
Clean Energy Wire, 2 January 2023
 
Germany’s finance minister Christian Lindner has renewed his call for allowing the controversial fracking technology to increase gas supplies. “The ban should be lifted,” the head of the Free Democrats (FDP) told tabloid Bild am Sonntag.

 

“Then private investors can decide whether extraction is economical. Compared to gas from other regions of the world, I expect competitive advantages.” Lindner said that liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports are more expensive than Russian pipeline gas for logistical reasons, adding the price level will remain higher. Lindner’s position is in marked contrast to that of his coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD)  and the Greens.
 
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Green economy minister Robert Habeck have repeatedly rejected the technology.
Scholz said in December it was not worth exploiting domestic natural gas reserves using fracking technology because it would take too long to start production, and because gas demand is expected to fall. He also said there was “no support whatsoever in society for exploiting these reserves in Germany.” Scholz compared fracking to a mirage: “If you get close to it, it vanishes into thin air.” Habeck reiterated his rejection in late 2022. “This does not lead to a sensible answer,” Habeck said in November, adding the technology would lead to all sort of problems.
 
Full story
 
3) Germany considers €1 billion in support for 10 fossil fuel projects overseas
Climate Home News, 9 December 2022
 
Germany is considering support for at least 10 foreign fossil fuel projects worth over €1 billion ($1bn), despite its pledge to end international funding for coal, oil and gas.  
 
In response to a parliamentary question from a left-wing German lawmaker, the state secretary at the ministry of economic affairs and climate action Udo Philipp said the government is considering 10 applications for export credit guarantees for fossil energy projects in Brazil, Iraq, Uzbekistan, the Dominican Republic and Cuba.
 
A breakdown of the projects accompanying the response shows that €419 million ($442m) or around 40% of the funding, could go to a single project in Brazil. Three of the projects totalling €340m ($359m) are located in Iraq and four are in Cuba.
 
Other fossil fuel projects could be under consideration by the German state-owned investment and development bank KfW. The bank does not disclose projects it hasn’t decided to support.
 
Germany was among 16 countries to sign a pledge at Cop26 in Glasgow last year to end international funding for fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022.
 
Ten have published policies showing how they will restrict funding to coal, oil and gas. But Germany has not adopted a policy because of internal divisions over exemptions for gas.
 
Full story
 
4) Global coal consumption rises to all-time high amidst energy crisis
Mining Review Africa, 2 January 2023

 

Even though global coal demand is set to increase only marginally this year, it is enough to push it to an all-time high, amidst the global energy crises, says the International Energy Agency (IEA).
 
The IEA’s latest Coal 2022 report forecasts that the world’s coal consumption will remain at similar levels in the next few years in the absence of strong efforts to accelerate the transition to clean energy use.
 
The use of coal around the world is set to rise by 1.2% in 2022, surpassing 8 billion tonnes in a single year for the first time. This would eclipse the previous record set in 2022, says the IEA.
 
Coal usage will eventually decline, but not yet
Based on current market trends, the Coal 2022 report forecasts that coal consumption will then remain flat until around 2025. Declines in mature markets will be offset by continued robust demand in emerging Asian economies.
 
This means coal will continue to be the global energy system’s largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions by far.
 
Expected coal demand for 2022 is very close to what the IEA forecast in their Coal 2021 report a year ago, even if coal markets have been shaken up by a range of conflicting forces since then.
 
The global energy crisis has led to high natural gas prices and an increased reliance on coal to generate power. At the same time, slowing economic growth has reduced electricity demand and industrial output. Also, power generation from renewable sources has risen to a new record.
 
The world’s largest coal consumer China has experienced a heat wave and drought, pushing up coal power generation during summer. This happened even as strict COVID-19 restrictions slowed demand.
 
Keisuke Sadamori, IEA Director of Energy Markets and Security says the world is close to a peak in fossil fuel use, with coal set to be the first to decline, “but we are not there yet.
 
“Coal demand is stubborn and will likely reach an all-time high this year, pushing up global emissions. At the same time, there are many signs that today’s crisis is accelerating the deployment of renewables, energy efficiency and heat pumps – and this will moderate coal demand in the coming years. Government policies will be key to ensuring a secure and sustainable path forward.”
 
Supply and demand of global coal consumption
 
The international coal market will remain tight in 2022, as coal demand for power generation hits a new record. Coal prices rose to unprecedented levels in March, and then again in June. The price went up thanks to the global energy crises, spikes in natural gas prices, adverse weather conditions in key international supplier Australia.
 
Europe has been heavily affected by Russia’s reduction in natural gas glow and is now on course to increase coal consumption for a second year in a row. Still, by 2025 European coal demand is expected to decline below 2020 levels.
 
China, India and Indonesia, the world’s three largest coal producers, will all hit production records in 2022. The world’s third largest coal exporter in the World Russia has been banned and sanctioned in many countries because it invaded Ukraine. This has resulted in a reshuffling of global trade as buyers seek alternative supplies. The gap left by Russian coal supplies in Europe has been largely filled by South Africa, Colombia, Tanzania, Botswana and other smaller producers.
 
Full story
 
5) Despite bold climate pledges global coal demand to remain high for years to come
OilPrice.com, 2 January 2023

 

Despite bold climate pledges from a plethora of major world powers, it seems that many are unable to break their addiction to coal, as consumption is set to hit an all-time high (once again).
 
Several countries have launched climate strategies that include the phasing out of coal production and use over the coming decades, however with gas shortages and a long road to getting enough renewable energy operations running to meet global demand, many continue to rely on coal for power and industry. While coal use is expected to decrease in the long term, to be replaced by natural gas and renewable alternatives, demand is set to remain strong in 2023.

This month, an International Energy Agency (IEA) report suggested that coal consumption is expected to hit an all-time high and remain stable between 2022 and 2025 unless the transition to cleaner alternatives speeds up.
 
Coal consumption was forecast to increase by 1.2 percent in 2022, the highest level ever recorded. In its Coal 2022 report, the IEA highlighted the shortage and costliness of gas as a major reason for the ongoing reliance on coal in Europe. Coal use is increasing despite the drop in iron and steel production, by around 1 percent, as the global economic crisis has meant lower output levels. But without the wind or solar power capacity needed to meet demand, Europe has switched back to coal to meet its needs, with an expected rise of 2 percent in coal used for electricity production this year. 
 
The IEA’s expectation for a plateau in coal demand for the next three years is based on an anticipated movement away from coal to cleaner energy options, as well as the expected increase in coal use in emerging economies in Asia. As several countries worldwide release ambitious climate pledges and invest heavily in renewable energy, while also attempting to decarbonize their economies, coal is expected to remain the largest single source of CO2 emissions by far, according to the IEA. Keisuke Sadamori, the IEA’s Director of Energy Markets and Security, stated: “The world is close to a peak in fossil fuel use, with coal set to be the first to decline, but we are not there yet.” 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February this year has altered predictions on energy use in Europe and other parts of the world as a major oil and gas supply suddenly went offline, with several countries imposing sanctions on Russian energy. Many European states that were hoping to make progress in their shift away from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives suddenly found themselves fighting for their energy security and turning to unlikely sources – like coal and nuclear power.
 
The IEA’s report stated, “Coal markets have been shaken severely in 2022, with traditional trade flows disrupted, prices soaring and demand set to grow by 1.2%, reaching an all-time high and surpassing 8 billion metric tons for the first time.” 

Environmentalists are deeply concerned about this ongoing reliance on coal, which releases not only carbon dioxide into the atmosphere but also sulfur dioxide, particulates, and nitrogen oxides. Scientists see coal as a significant barrier to limiting global warming, as a major contributor to climate change. 
 
The U.K., which said it would no longer use coal to generate electricity starting in 2024, one year earlier than originally planned, approved a new coal mine this month in a surprise shift in its approach to the fossil fuel. The Woodhouse Colliery in the northwest of England will be the country’s first new coal mine in 30 years and will provide coal mainly for export to Europe. The U.K. government expects the plant to be in operation until 2049, a year before the country plans to achieve net-zero carbon emissions. 
 
Meanwhile, Asia’s coal market is expected to continue expanding rapidly for several years to come. Although China pledged to stop constructing new coal plants overseas, halting existing coal plans in its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), it continues to pump funds into its national coal developments. However, China insists that it is still on target to stop its coal market expansion in the coming years, with strict controls on coal included in the country’s 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021–2025).
 
Coal demand also remains high in other parts of Asia, such as India and Indonesia. One Indonesia-based miner stated “Overall [coal] demand is expected to remain strong due to the robust economic outlook of countries like China, Indonesia, and India. The impact of war will gradually ease as countries are adapting to new trade flows... India and China may continue to buy Russian coal, while also expanding their domestic production.”
 
This is concerning for several reasons, firstly, as coal demand is set to remain high in Asia; secondly, because many of these countries are continuing to rely on Russia for their coal supply; and thirdly, as many Asian states have plans to construct more coal plants and boost national production. This suggests that even if Europe can rein in its coal addiction, this work will largely be counterbalanced by the increasing reliance on coal across Asia for years to come.
 

6) Big coal miners’ profits triple as global demand surges
Financial Times, 28 December 2022

Many countries that once pledged to quit coal have turned back to it as a reliable source of heat and power as energy security concerns became a priority after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The world’s largest coal mining companies tripled their profits in 2022 to reach a total of more than $97bn, defying expectations for an industry that was thought to be in terminal decline.

As global demand for the fuel rose to record levels, total earnings from coal operations at the world’s 20 largest coal miners reached $97.7bn during the most recent 12-month period for which financial information is available, compared with $28.2bn during the same period a year earlier, according to Financial Times research and data from S&P Capital IQ.

Many countries that once pledged to quit coal have turned back to it as a reliable source of heat and power as energy security concerns became a top priority following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The biggest money makers were Glencore, whose coal earnings were $13.2bn in the 12 months ending on June 30; China Shenhua, which made $12.2bn during that time; and BHP, which brought in $9.5bn, mainly from production of metallurgical coal.

Just a year after the UN COP26 climate summit pledged to “phase down” coal, demand for the fossil fuel has instead grown, boosted by high gas prices and the European energy crisis. Global coal demand rose 1.2 per cent to reach a record high in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency.

Full story
 
7) Benny Peiser: The UK and Europe are destroying their own economies with green policies... without reducing CO2 emissions
The Scottish Daily Express, 20 December 2022 

Americans are being warned not to follow the 'green energy disaster' of the UK and Europe – with Scotland at the forefront – that has led to soaring bills this winter and devastated the industrial base


Dr Benny Peiser at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC 

A British think tank director has warned Americans that they must avoid Europe's "green energy disaster" by imposing unilateral climate policies.
 
Dr Benny Peiser, director of Net Zero Watch, said the rest of the world was not following the EU and the UK's lead and therefore CO2 emissions were simply being "exported".

Addressing the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, he said:
 
"And the rest of the world will definitely not follow Europe's green experiment which is going so badly. No one wants to do what the Europeans are doing, because they can see the damage we are doing to ourselves.
 
"Unless – and this is the whole point – unless you can come up with an energy policy that is attractive to other countries, in particular to poorer countries, they will not follow your lead.
 
"And that's the real problem: In Europe, we are degrading our own economies and degrading our nations, in the name of saving the planet without doing anything about CO2 emissions because we are just shifting them abroad, we're just exporting them.
 
"That is at the core of all these 27 COPs we've seen over the last 30 years. It's always the same outcome. The developing world, China, India, are not going to risk their own economies, the well-being of their people, their energy security, their national security. We're doing it and we're paying the price for it.
 
"And this is the biggest warning to Americans: If you want to avoid your energy bills going up fourfold, don't do what we are doing."

'Biggest wealth transfer from poor to rich in history'
 
Although some dismiss him and his think tank as climate change deniers, Dr Peiser's opinion are considered at the highest levels – especially in the USA.

In December 2013, he gave evidence to a US Senate Committee on energy policy and described how the EU had attempted to set an example with "radical policy making".
 

Dr. Benny Peiser testimony at the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

He said: "As a result, European governments have advanced the most expensive forms of energy at the expense of the least expensive forms of energy."
 
He added: "Even though Europe has managed to reduce CO2 emissions domestically, this has only happened because it has shifted energy intensive industries and their emissions overseas to nations where there are no similar emission limits, where energy and labour is cheap and which are now growing much faster than the EU.
 
"As a result Europe's manufacturers are rapidly losing ground to international competition. The EU's unilateral climate policies pose an existential threat to Europe's industrial base and this threat is real."

Dr Peiser went on to describe to the Committee how ordinary families and small and medium sized businesses the hardest were being asked to pay for wind turbines and solar panels "in what is undoubtedly one of the biggest wealth transfers from poor to rich in modern European history".
 
In his warning from almost a decade ago – which carries even greater weight during the current energy crisis – he said: "This winter millions of poor families will have to choose between heating and eating and many can no longer afford to pay so the utilities are cutting off their power."

 
 

8) Scientists thought CO2 emissions had peaked. They were wrong
The Washington Post, 5 December 2022
 
Near the end of 2020, as the covid-19 pandemic continued to rage, a few climate scientists and energy experts made a prediction. They estimated that emissions from fossil fuels — which had just plummeted thanks to the global pandemic — might never again reach the heights of 2019. Perhaps, they speculated, after over a century of ever more carbon dioxide flowing into the atmosphere, the world had finally reached “peak” emissions.

They were wrong.

According to a report released last month by the Global Carbon Project, carbon emissions from fossil fuels in 2022 are expected to reach 37.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide, the highest ever recorded. That means that despite the continued fallout from the coronavirus pandemic — which caused emissions to drop by over 5 percent in 2020 — CO2 emissions are back and stronger than ever.

Scientists have reacted with dismay. For years before the pandemic, emissions appeared to be leveling off — sparking hope that the world was finally reaching the moment when emissions would start to come down. Then in 2020, “Covid came, there was a huge drop in emissions — and I guess we got a little overexcited,” said Glen Peters, a climate scientist at the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo.

Here’s why researchers were wrong about emissions peaking — and what it means for the future — in three charts:

1. History repeats itself

For the past century, carbon emissions have only ever fallen in one circumstance: crisis. When the 2008-2009 global financial crisis rocked the world’s economic system, carbon emissions dropped by 1.4 percent. When the oil crises of 1973 and 1979 destabilized economies and caused people to wait in long lines for gasoline, emissions — previously on a steep upward climb — sputtered to a halt. And when the coronavirus pandemic locked billions of people indoors, the CO2 spilling into the atmosphere dropped by 5.2 percent — a record only matched by the aftermath of World War II.

Economic crisis, of course, is not the way that nations want to cut their carbon emissions. And in all of these historical examples, the temporary drop in emissions didn’t last long. After the financial crisis, emissions rebounded, growing by approximately 1.65 billion tons in a single year.

In the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, some experts thought the world would take a different tack. Countries vowed to “build back better” and inject clean energy spending into their stimulus packages. But the result was not as green as might have been hoped. According to one analysis, only 6 percent of the stimulus money spent by G-20 nations went to areas that could cut emissions. And as people returned to flying, driving and making stuff, emissions bounced back.

2. Coal, coal, coal

For most of this century, the story of climate change has also been a story of coal. Coal is the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel, releasing 820 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions for every gigawatt of electricity produced. (Solar power, in contrast, releases about five metric tons for every gigawatt of electricity produced.)

Before the pandemic, coal looked set for a long decline — which was part of why scientists and experts thought emissions might have reached their peak. But in the past couple of years, coal has made a resurgence. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has raised natural gas prices around the world, causing some European countries to lean more heavily on coal to keep energy prices low.

Thanks to China’s continued pandemic lockdowns, the world’s largest economy hasn’t accelerated its coal use quite as much as it could have — but India’s use of the world’s dirtiest fuel has skyrocketed. India’s coal use is set to increase by 5 percent in 2022, on top of a 15 percent increase the year before. All of that means that in the past two years, emissions from burning coal have increased by almost a gigaton.

3. Developed versus developing countries

Part of the issue is that, while developed countries have seen their emissions decline over the past decades, that decline hasn’t happened nearly fast enough to counterbalance the growth in emissions from developing countries. China’s emissions have skyrocketed over the past 20 years, as the country has developed and lifted millions out of poverty. (Despite its high overall emissions, though, China still has lower per capita carbon emissions than the United States.) India’s emissions are growing more slowly, but still growing.
 
Full story
 

9) Roger Pielke Jr.: Five things everyone in reinsurance should know
The Honest Broker, 2 January 2023
 
Understanding and managing risk is not just about numbers
 
It is renewal season in the catastrophe reinsurance industry, which is seeing demands for pricing increases based on sub-par performance for investors. According to S&P Global:
 
"Even before [Hurricane] Ian, it was doubtful that the reinsurance industry would earn its cost of capital in 2022, largely because of a heavy year for natural catastrophe losses. Now, the industry is on track to deliver its sixth-consecutive set of sub-par annual results to investors, who were already doubting reinsurers' ability to price catastrophe risk."

Artemis, which covers the industry, asks how an industry based entirely on risk assessment and management finds itself in such a situation:
 
"Reinsurers and insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds feel pricing has not kept up with loss costs, let alone inflation (economic or social), and has not accounted for the frequency seen, or the effects of secondary peril events, while climate change expectations have also not been factored in."

There is a question that needs asking as to how or why the industry has got itself into a position where, market-wide, the baseline price needs raising, so significantly in some regions?
 
The figure below helps us to start answering this question. It shows global trends in insured catastrophe losses (excluding human-caused disasters) from 1990 to 2022.

 

There is no trend in insured catastrophe losses as a percent of global GDP, which suggests that over decades, the industry does an excellent job of managing its exposure and losses. However, if you focus in on just the past 15 years, since 2006, you’ll see that 9 of the 11 years from 2006 to 2016 were well below the long-term trend. That was due in large part to the great U.S. major hurricane “drought” which spanned exactly that period. Since 2017, insured losses have been above-trend in 5 of 6 years, including 2022. Regression to the mean can come as a shock.
 
I’ve conducted research on catastrophes for decades and based on that work and occasional interaction with those in the industry, I suggest the following five lessons that everyone in the reinsurance industry should know. For some, these five lessons many not be anything new, but in my experience, for others they are often underappreciated.
 
U.S. Major Hurricanes are the Biggest and Best-Known Risk, But Make Sure You Actually Understand that Risk

In a detailed decomposition of the Munich Re catastrophe loss database in 2014, Shali Mohleji and I calculated that U.S. hurricanes were not only the largest component of “global” insured losses, but also represented the majority (~60%) of the increase in “global” insured losses from 1980 to 2008. That means that U.S. hurricane losses have become even more important over time as a driver of losses for the global industry.
 
During the major hurricane drought of 2006-2016, this growth in losses resulting from U.S. hurricanes slowed down due to the lack of major losses, but picked right back up again in 2017. What the reinsurance industry has experienced over the past 6 years is much closer to “normal” than the previous decade. People who have been in the industry for many decades will likely appreciate this longer-term perspective.
 
Full post

 
10) Syd Lucas: In murder mystery film ‘Glass Onion,’ the left’s green energy narrative is a welcomed casualty
The Federalist, 5 December 2022
 


‘Glass Onion’ shows us what happens when a corrupt, powerful few try to make decisions for the rest of the world.

When a renewable energy source is exposed to be fully funded by a billionaire and its only supporters are influential people who happen to be funded by the same person, what is the only natural conclusion? The agenda to “protect the planet” might be more about consolidating power than ensuring a greener tomorrow. 

“Glass Onion,” the sequel to 2019’s hit film “Knives Out,” answers that question as an underlying subplot separate from the film’s main premise. Renewable energy is introduced in the first 10 minutes of the film as a headline for one of the main characters, Claire Debella, governor of Connecticut, as she appears as a guest on CNN. 

While campaigning to become a U.S. senator, she lavishes praise upon renewable energy sources and says her biggest issue is climate change, an unsurprising message delivered by an obviously Democratic candidate in May 2020, during the throes of the pandemic. The use of the headline, however, is a clue to which the audience should pay attention. 

The plot line is as follows: A friend group whose members call themselves “The Disrupters” are invited by their ringleader, Miles Bron, to his resort island in Greece to play a murder mystery game. He is the epitome of the modern billionaire in satirical form: “He’s not just a rich guy: He’s a visionary, a genius, an author of the amazing human future.”

This “amazing human future” is a brand-new renewable energy source. The idea behind the energy source starts years before on a napkin in a bar called the Glass Onion. Cassandra “Andy” Brown and Bron become business partners, investing in different ideas and endeavors. One day, Bron decides he wants to back a new renewable energy source based on hydrogen. Andy says she will leave the company and take her half because the idea is too dangerous and will not work. Brown, however, cheats her out of her shares, leaving her without wealth and taking away her credibility. Any sign of dissent, and Bron tries to silence it. 

This part of the plot satirizes the reality that dissenters of left-wing ideology are ridiculed. Credibility is supposed to be based on science and research, but political leaders often base it on ideological litmus tests. Thus, you are not credible if you push against the popular narrative. In this case, that narrative is that renewables are reliable and necessary.

When Bron reveals at the first dinner on the island that he has invited world leaders to come at the end of the week to witness the reveal of the mysterious energy source, Lionel Toussaint, the scientist, says it is not ready, and Debella, the governor, says, “This whole island could go up like the Hindenburg!” But Bron won’t budge.

Bron surrounds himself with people who are too afraid to disagree with him and are even unable to, as he is the reason for their success. Dependent on Bron’s money, they are frenemies, forever indebted to his good graces. Debella not only pushes renewable energy on CNN at the beginning of the film but also reveals later that Bron financed her gubernatorial campaign. She would not have won without him, so she is willing to push his agenda.

The movie explores the question of whether renewable energy is about the planet or about putting more power and money into the hands of already wealthy people? “Glass Onion” suggests the latter, as Bron is rich, wants to be richer, and is willing to back a completely new energy source without enough real-world trials substantiating its practicality. 

This is the same story with wind and solar energy that we see being played out today. Neither source provides the reliability and affordability necessary to provide power to the world’s 8 billion people, yet media outlets and world leaders have bought into the idea of “net zero.” Never mind how flammable or detrimental a new source might be, it just needs to be marketed as “cleaner” while subsidized by the government to mask its costs.

Full post
 

11) Reliance on hi-tech solutions to climate crisis perpetuates racism, says UN official
The College Fix, 28 December 2022

 


 

‘Every action that is taken in relation to ecological crisis […] has racial justice implications’
 
A law professor at UCLA believes “hi-tech capitalist solutions” for the alleged climate-change crisis are “perpetuating racism.”
 
Tendayi Achiume, who’s finishing up her tenure as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, told The Guardian that “green solutions […] are being implemented at the expense of racially and ethnically marginalised groups and Indigenous peoples.”
 
These include electric vehicles, renewable energy and “the rewilding of vast tracts of land.”
 
The Zambia native said “You can’t think that you solve the climate crisis and then attend to racial justice or racial  discrimination. What you have to realise is that every action that is taken in relation to ecological crisis – environmental, climate and otherwise – has racial justice implications, and so every action becomes a site of undoing racial subordination.”
 
This may not sit well with the very pro-green Biden administration which invited Achiume last year to “lead an assessment ‘racial justice and equality'” in the United States. Part of that assessment was recommending an “international investigation” into racist police conduct as the “domestic regime” has proven unable to protect black people.
 
From the Guardian story:
 
In her final report to the UN general assembly in October, [Achiume] tackled the relationship between racism and the climate and ecological crises. It was, she said, an issue that had been raised from the very beginning of her tenure as one of the most important global factors in racial injustice.
 
“The global ecological crisis is simultaneously a racial justice crisis,” she wrote in the report. “The devastating effects of ecological crisis are disproportionately borne by racially, ethnically and nationally marginalised groups … Across nations, these groups overwhelmingly comprise the residents of the areas hardest hit by pollution, biodiversity loss and climate change.”
 
This climate justice-oriented perspective demands antiracist solutions, Achiume said. But the very same structures that created racial inequalities were now being relied upon to solve the environmental crisis, leading to a “doubling down on racial inequality and injustice”.
 
The rush towards sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels, including electric cars and renewable energy, was creating what Achiume described as “green sacrifice zones”, where already marginalised groups were exposed to environmental harms from the extraction of the very minerals needed for green tech.
 
Achiume added that relying on “the global capitalist framework” for climate solutions doesn’t make sense as it is responsible for the (climate) crisis and “racial injustices” in the first place. “We’re basically again trying to profit our way out of a crisis that is defined by an approach that thinks that profiting out of crisis is sustainable,” she said.
 
Full story

 
12) And finally: ‘60 Minutes’ exhumes enviro cult leader for a new round of scaremongering
The Federalist, 2 January 2023
 
By David Harsanyi


 
It’s not merely that Ehrlich is always spectacularly wrong about the future but that he remains unrepentant.

Earth is headed for a sixth extinction, warned biologist Paul Ehrlich on “60 Minutes” this Sunday. And since Ehrlich has predicted about 20 extinctions over the past 60 years, he’s a leading expert on the issue.
 
Couldn’t “60 Minutes” find a fresh-faced, yet-to-be-discredited neo-Malthusian to hyperventilate about the end of the world? Why didn’t producers invite a single guest to push back against theories that have been reliably debunked by reality? Because the media is staffed by environmental pessimists and doomsayers who need to believe the world is in constant peril due to the excesses of capitalism. And Ehrlich is perhaps our greatest alarmist.

His 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” is among the most destructive of the 20th century. The long screed not only made Ehrlich a celebrity, but gave end-of-day alarmists a patina of scientific legitimacy, popularized alarmism as a political tool, and normalized authoritarian and anti-humanist policies as a cure. Ehrlich’s progeny are other media-favored hysterics by other antihumanists, such as Al Gore or Eric Holthaus or Greta Thunberg, who skipped learning history and science because she also believes we are on the precipice of “mass extinction.” And none of this is to mention the thousands of other Little Ehrlichs nudging you to eat insects, gluing themselves to roads, and demanding you surrender the most basic conveniences and necessities of modernity.
 
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” the opening line of “The Population Bomb” reads. “In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now,” Ehrlich wrote. It was likely, he went on, that the oceans would be without life by 1979 and the United States would see its population plummet to 23 million by 1999 due to pesticides. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years,” he famously told Mademoiselle in 1970.
 
When Julian Simon offered the biologist his famous wager, Ehrlich responded by saying, “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” Instead, Ehrlich picked five natural resources he believed would experience shortages due to human consumption. He lost the bet on all counts, as the composite price index for those commodities, copper and chromium and so on, fell by more than 40 percent, despite there being 800 million new people during that time.
 
It’s not merely that Ehrlich is always spectacularly wrong about the future but that he remains unrepentant. In 2009, Ehrlich argued that “perhaps the most serious flaw” in “The Population Bomb” was that it was “much too optimistic” about the future. “We will soon be asking: is it perfectly okay to eat the bodies of your dead because we’re all so hungry?” Ehrlich warned in 2014. One year later, there were 200 million fewer people suffering from hunger than in 1990, despite there being 2 billion more people inhabiting the Earth.

And much like today’s environmentalist, Ehrlich offered a slew of authoritarian economic prescriptions to salvage the Earth. Though in 1977’s “Ecoscience,” a book he co-authored by Obama’s future “science czar” John Holdren, Ehrlich toyed with the idea of adding “sterilant to drinking water or staple foods” and compelling abortions to save the world from human beings.

How could “60 Minutes” frame this ridiculous man as a foremost expert on the future?
 
It would take a lot of work to point to any tangible factor that’s worsened for humans since the 1970s. There is less war, terrorism, poverty, hunger, child mortality, genocide, death due to weather, illiteracy, etc. By nearly every quantifiable measure the environment is also better now than it was 55 years ago — which is why contemporary alarmists have learned to prophesy “climate” catastrophes 30 or 40 years out. Perhaps Ehrlich’s biggest mistake was living long enough to be proven wrong dozens of times. (Then again, in 1932, the year he was born, a man could expect to live to 61. Today they will likely live to be 77. Dr. Doom is 90.)
 
Fears about “overpopulation” are regularly cited by journalists — who often live in the densest, yet also the wealthiest places— as if it’s one of the world’s most pressing problems, like the threat of war or the election of Republicans. Every hurricane, tornado, and flood is treated as the opening of the Seventh Seal.
 
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The London-based Net Zero Watch is a campaign group set up to highlight and discuss the serious implications of expensive and poorly considered climate change policies. The Net Zero Watch newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.netzerowatch.com.