In this newsletter:
1) UK government cuts emission costs in latest anti-Net Zero move
Energy Live News, 1 August 2023
2) Labour won't revoke new oil and gas licences - despite opposing them
The Daily Telegraph, 1 August 2023
3) Give us a break! Five point plan to protect drivers from a rush to Net Zero
The Sun, 1 August 2023
4) The beginning of the end of Britain’s net zero consensus
Financial Times, 1 August 2023
The Daily Telegraph, 1 August 2023
3) Give us a break! Five point plan to protect drivers from a rush to Net Zero
The Sun, 1 August 2023
4) The beginning of the end of Britain’s net zero consensus
Financial Times, 1 August 2023
5) Sherelle Jacobs: Starmer is about to be humiliated by the global retreat from Net Zero
The Daily Telegraph, 31 July 2023
6) Net Zero roll-back: EU waters down corporate ESG disclosures to cut costs
Reuters, 1 August 2023
The Daily Telegraph, 31 July 2023
6) Net Zero roll-back: EU waters down corporate ESG disclosures to cut costs
Reuters, 1 August 2023
7) The UK once vowed to be a global climate leader. Now Rishi Sunak is stoking a culture war on green policies
CNN, 1 August 2023
CNN, 1 August 2023
8) David Whitehouse: The Guardian’s (ocean) circulation problem
Net Zero Watch, 1 August 2023
Net Zero Watch, 1 August 2023
9) Bjorn Lomborg: Climate change hasn’t set the world on fire
The Wall Street Journal, 31 July 2023
10) Climate change obsession is a real mental disorder
The Wall Street Journal, 30 July 2023
The Wall Street Journal, 31 July 2023
10) Climate change obsession is a real mental disorder
The Wall Street Journal, 30 July 2023
Full details:
1) UK government cuts emission costs in latest anti-Net Zero move
Energy Live News, 1 August 2023
Energy Live News, 1 August 2023
The government’s recent changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme have been met with criticism from analysts
The government‘s decision to reduce the “cap” in the UK Emission Trading Scheme (UK ETS) has drawn criticism from experts who said that the move makes it cheaper for businesses to pollute.
The UK ETS replaced the UK’s participation in the EU ETS on 1st January 2021.
Participating in the scheme, companies, including airlines, energy companies and heavy industries have to purchase one allowance per tone of carbon dioxide emitted.
The scheme puts a limit on overall carbon production and provides allowances to industries to emit a specific amount of carbon.
In contrast to the EU’s stable carbon prices due to strict regulations, the UK’s post-Brexit climate policies have led to a drop in the cost of carbon emissions for industries.
In contrast to the EU’s stable carbon prices due to strict regulations, the UK’s post-Brexit climate policies have led to a drop in the cost of carbon emissions for industries.
Analysts have criticised the most recent UK ETS change, as reported by the Financial Times.
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson told Energy Live News: “This government is committed to getting to net zero in a way that grows the economy and protects people’s livelihoods...."
Full story
The government‘s decision to reduce the “cap” in the UK Emission Trading Scheme (UK ETS) has drawn criticism from experts who said that the move makes it cheaper for businesses to pollute.
The UK ETS replaced the UK’s participation in the EU ETS on 1st January 2021.
Participating in the scheme, companies, including airlines, energy companies and heavy industries have to purchase one allowance per tone of carbon dioxide emitted.
The scheme puts a limit on overall carbon production and provides allowances to industries to emit a specific amount of carbon.
In contrast to the EU’s stable carbon prices due to strict regulations, the UK’s post-Brexit climate policies have led to a drop in the cost of carbon emissions for industries.
In contrast to the EU’s stable carbon prices due to strict regulations, the UK’s post-Brexit climate policies have led to a drop in the cost of carbon emissions for industries.
Analysts have criticised the most recent UK ETS change, as reported by the Financial Times.
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson told Energy Live News: “This government is committed to getting to net zero in a way that grows the economy and protects people’s livelihoods...."
Full story
2) Labour won't revoke new oil and gas licences - despite opposing them
The Daily Telegraph, 1 August 2023
The Daily Telegraph, 1 August 2023
Labour has indicated it would not revoke Rishi Sunak’s new wave of North Sea oil and gas exploration licences - despite opposing them.
Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow leader of the House of Commons, was asked if her party would revoke the hundreds of new licences announced by the Prime Minister.
She signalled that a Labour government would not take the licences away as she repeated the party’s existing pledge that they would “grant no new licences” if they won power at the next general election.
Mr Sunak announced on Monday morning that hundreds of new oil and gas licences would be granted in the UK in a bid to make the nation more energy independent.
The Prime Minister insisted the move was consistent with the Government’s 2050 net zero emissions drive because even under the green blueprint a quarter of the UK’s energy demand is still expected to be met by oil and gas by the middle of the century.
‘The world is on fire’
Ed Miliband, the shadow climate and net zero secretary, said in response to Mr Sunak’s announcement that it would “drive a coach and horses through our climate commitments”.
Asked if Labour would revoke the new licences if it wins the next election, Ms Debbonaire told BBC Newsnight: “Well, we will grant no new licences. Obviously oil and gas is going to play a part in our transition to a fully clean, green energy market.
“But we need to make sure that we are not going to grant any more. It is not okay. The world is on fire.
Full story
3) Give us a break! Five point plan to protect drivers from a rush to Net Zero
The Sun, 1 August 2023
Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow leader of the House of Commons, was asked if her party would revoke the hundreds of new licences announced by the Prime Minister.
She signalled that a Labour government would not take the licences away as she repeated the party’s existing pledge that they would “grant no new licences” if they won power at the next general election.
Mr Sunak announced on Monday morning that hundreds of new oil and gas licences would be granted in the UK in a bid to make the nation more energy independent.
The Prime Minister insisted the move was consistent with the Government’s 2050 net zero emissions drive because even under the green blueprint a quarter of the UK’s energy demand is still expected to be met by oil and gas by the middle of the century.
‘The world is on fire’
Ed Miliband, the shadow climate and net zero secretary, said in response to Mr Sunak’s announcement that it would “drive a coach and horses through our climate commitments”.
Asked if Labour would revoke the new licences if it wins the next election, Ms Debbonaire told BBC Newsnight: “Well, we will grant no new licences. Obviously oil and gas is going to play a part in our transition to a fully clean, green energy market.
“But we need to make sure that we are not going to grant any more. It is not okay. The world is on fire.
Full story
3) Give us a break! Five point plan to protect drivers from a rush to Net Zero
The Sun, 1 August 2023
MPs, peers and motoring campaigners last night backed The Sun’s five-point manifesto calling for drivers to be protected from a rush to net zero before the country is ready.
Our Give Us A Brake plan calls for politicians to stop imposing pricey Ulez charging schemes and disruptive Low Traffic Neighbourhood zones.
Last night leading Tory Lord Frost said current net zero targets are “unachievable”.
And we want the 2030 ban on new diesel and petrol cars delayed until the nation is prepared and drivers can afford the switch to electric vehicles.
The manifesto also demands ministers scrap the edict that 22 per cent of car sales must be electric by 2024.
Finally, we call for no new green motoring stealth taxes — along with a continuation of the existing fuel duty freeze.
The Government has announced a welcome review of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.
But campaigners and some MPs want PM Rishi Sunak to go further — warning that the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles may not be viable.
Our Give Us A Brake plan calls for politicians to stop imposing pricey Ulez charging schemes and disruptive Low Traffic Neighbourhood zones.
Last night leading Tory Lord Frost said current net zero targets are “unachievable”.
And we want the 2030 ban on new diesel and petrol cars delayed until the nation is prepared and drivers can afford the switch to electric vehicles.
The manifesto also demands ministers scrap the edict that 22 per cent of car sales must be electric by 2024.
Finally, we call for no new green motoring stealth taxes — along with a continuation of the existing fuel duty freeze.
The Government has announced a welcome review of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.
But campaigners and some MPs want PM Rishi Sunak to go further — warning that the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles may not be viable.
Ex-Cabinet minister David Frost said it was “unnecessarily restrictive and probably unachievable, and will need to be reconsidered”.
Former Home Secretary Priti Patel said: “We need to pause the aggressive net zero ban on diesel and petrol cars, freeze fuel duty and end the corrosive culture of stealth taxes being dumped on motorists.”
Full story
4) The beginning of the end of Britain’s net zero consensus
Financial Times, 1 August 2023
Former Home Secretary Priti Patel said: “We need to pause the aggressive net zero ban on diesel and petrol cars, freeze fuel duty and end the corrosive culture of stealth taxes being dumped on motorists.”
Full story
4) The beginning of the end of Britain’s net zero consensus
Financial Times, 1 August 2023
[...] Let us dispose of the idea that net zero is popular.... Last month, a YouGov poll found that around 70 per cent of adults support net zero. If this entailed “some additional costs for ordinary people”, however, that share falls to just over a quarter. The wonder isn’t the political faltering of net zero. The wonder is that it took until Uxbridge.
This, I think, is the argument that a future Tory leader will make, and to great electoral effect: “Human-induced climate change is real and terrible. Don’t mistake us for denialists. But this is a medium-sized, post-industrial nation that accounts for around 1 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. The ecological future of the Earth rests on giant middle-income countries, not on us.
“We should decarbonise. It would be weird to abstain from a technological crusade that America and the EU are going to make sure happens regardless. Britain has already committed a fortune in sunk costs. But a rush to net zero? That will cost you, dear voter, in ways that we politicians have obfuscated in the past. And what will that cost achieve? Not a material dent in the climate problem, but the setting of a moral example, as though India and China set their watches by us. Liberals forever accuse us on the right of overrating Britain’s sway in the world. Well, look who is grandstanding now.”
Faced with this message, what does Labour do? Allow itself to contest election after election as the expensive but righteous party? It is beyond imagining. And so the net zero consensus will break down from both sides. ...
Full post
This, I think, is the argument that a future Tory leader will make, and to great electoral effect: “Human-induced climate change is real and terrible. Don’t mistake us for denialists. But this is a medium-sized, post-industrial nation that accounts for around 1 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. The ecological future of the Earth rests on giant middle-income countries, not on us.
“We should decarbonise. It would be weird to abstain from a technological crusade that America and the EU are going to make sure happens regardless. Britain has already committed a fortune in sunk costs. But a rush to net zero? That will cost you, dear voter, in ways that we politicians have obfuscated in the past. And what will that cost achieve? Not a material dent in the climate problem, but the setting of a moral example, as though India and China set their watches by us. Liberals forever accuse us on the right of overrating Britain’s sway in the world. Well, look who is grandstanding now.”
Faced with this message, what does Labour do? Allow itself to contest election after election as the expensive but righteous party? It is beyond imagining. And so the net zero consensus will break down from both sides. ...
Full post
5) Sherelle Jacobs: Starmer is about to be humiliated by the global retreat from Net Zero
The Daily Telegraph, 31 July 2023
The Daily Telegraph, 31 July 2023
Tories aren’t just playing politics. The geopolitical ground is shifting beneath the eco fanatics’ feet
This could be the beginning of the end of net zero. Eight years ago, it burst into our lives, a rapturous crusade of ambitious legislation, geopolitical grandstanding and share-boosting green PR. Today, what so many have exalted as an era of rapid, momentous change looks set to go down as the biggest damp squib in Western history.
Naturally, the broadcast media’s focus is firmly fixed on Rishi Sunak, most recently on his pledges on North Sea oil and gas. But it is not just our Prime Minister who is being forced to commit sacrilege against the green cause. While Germany – the world leader in combustion engine technology – is busy trying to kill an EU bid to ban conventional cars, Macron has told Brussels to “pause” the growth of its investment-deterring green regulations which he seemingly fears is deterring investment. Meanwhile, Sweden – the country that triggered the stampede towards enshrining net zero into law back in 2017 – has quietly abandoned its pledge to be 100 per cent renewable by 2045.
Unsurprisingly, many in the Labour Party are determined not to face up to this. They prefer to pretend that what we are witnessing is not the international implosion of net zero, but the self-immolation of Sunak. Centre-Left pundits have been quick to reassure their tribe that the PM has read too much into Uxbridge’s Ulez revolt, and that his bid to shore up the Tories’ suburban vote by professing his new-found solidarity with motorists reeks of desperation. There has been much sniggering over Sunak’s clunky bid to reinvent himself as a man of the people. The PM’s opponents have lapped up a viral radio recording of him losing his cool upon being grilled by a Scottish journalist about travelling by private jet to greenlight North Sea oil exploration.
But sooner rather than later, Keir Starmer will himself have to face up to the reality that the tide is turning on net zero. As prime minister, the likelihood is that he will be condemned to follow through on what Sunak has controversially started.
His mentor, Tony Blair, has already turned up the pressure. In an interview last week, the former PM started to lay the groundwork for a net-zero row-back on the centre-Left, warning that the public should not be asked to do a “huge amount” on climate change when China is emitting so much. The intervention is unlikely to have gone down well in the Starmer camp. The current Labour leader seems to want to go down in history as the politician who delivered Britain to the net-zero promised land. He has long fancied himself as Britain’s answer to Franklin Roosevelt, delivering a shot in the arm to a zombie economy with a green jobs bonanza.
And many net zero defenders remain adamant that politicians and companies have invested so much time and money into the campaign that there can be no going back. As evidence, they point to the PM’s refusal to scrap the ban on the purchase of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 – a pledge that manufacturers that work to seven-year development cycles are, like it or not, locked into. What this fails to grasp is that the electric car industry – which, unlike so many green technology endeavours, may be tantalisingly close to a breakthrough – could end up the exception rather than the rule, as green subsidies dry up and drastic lifestyle-altering efforts in other areas – such as to ban gas boilers – fall by the wayside.
And the geopolitics of net zero are shifting beneath the UK’s feet. Indeed, the whole project may have been fatally derailed by a series of global earthquakes. One is the Ukraine war. Russia’s rebellion against the liberal order has made energy security the immediate priority of Western states, however much green campaigners might like to pretend that intermittent wind power is Britain’s route to ending reliance on imported energy. As the US enjoys a bumper coal revival, the EU has become bogged down in a spat over the prolongation of coal subsidies – with cash-strapped Eastern countries set to get their way against Germany.
The pandemic delivered another devastating blow. Many predicted that lockdowns would usher in a new era of paradisiacal eco-living. Professionals would trade in the morning train scrum for home working, in turn boosting the sales of artisan delis in their leafy low traffic neighbourhoods. In reality, the post-Covid cost of living crisis has scuppered the ruling class’s great gamble on voters absorbing the costs of net zero. If before the question was whether people would put up with tax hikes and new boiler costs, today the question is whether they can financially sustain them at all.
Meanwhile, some of the companies that were supposed to be leading the charge through game-changing green technology are being compelled to prioritise clearing their debts and delivering a profit to shareholders. Starmer – who has endeavoured to model himself as a friend of business – may also soon find himself uncomfortably at odds with a dramatic corporate U-turn.
Companies embraced net zero as a way to boost their ESG credentials, and thus their feel-good shareholder value. Big Tech led the charge, which served as a convenient distraction from the industry’s other ethical headaches around user privacy as well as its forays into electricity-guzzling endeavours like cloud computing. But with the deadline looming, CEOs now find themselves haunted by the prospect of looming PR fiascos and being personally dragged by environmental campaigners through the courts.
But the real killer blow to net zero is the new Cold War with China. When Obama pushed for the Paris Agreement in 2015, the West still imagined that it could treat China as a diplomatic partner, balancing icy exchanges over trade with smiling solidarity on climate change. Today, though, Western elites are finally accepting that Beijing is a strategic enemy – and that the West would be taking an intolerable risk if it were to blindly plough ahead with net zero as China carries on with its pursuit of relentless growth. And from Washington to Westminster, it is at last dawning on politicians that Beijing has seized on net zero to gain a foothold in energy infrastructure, dominating the manufacture of everything from wind turbines to EV battery software.
The bottom line is the West’s almost biblical belief that climate change is the greatest threat facing humanity has been tested by a series of plagues – and finally crumbled. Starmer can either dig his heels in and store up trouble for himself or, in solidarity with Sunak, start softening his net-zero stance now.
This could be the beginning of the end of net zero. Eight years ago, it burst into our lives, a rapturous crusade of ambitious legislation, geopolitical grandstanding and share-boosting green PR. Today, what so many have exalted as an era of rapid, momentous change looks set to go down as the biggest damp squib in Western history.
Naturally, the broadcast media’s focus is firmly fixed on Rishi Sunak, most recently on his pledges on North Sea oil and gas. But it is not just our Prime Minister who is being forced to commit sacrilege against the green cause. While Germany – the world leader in combustion engine technology – is busy trying to kill an EU bid to ban conventional cars, Macron has told Brussels to “pause” the growth of its investment-deterring green regulations which he seemingly fears is deterring investment. Meanwhile, Sweden – the country that triggered the stampede towards enshrining net zero into law back in 2017 – has quietly abandoned its pledge to be 100 per cent renewable by 2045.
Unsurprisingly, many in the Labour Party are determined not to face up to this. They prefer to pretend that what we are witnessing is not the international implosion of net zero, but the self-immolation of Sunak. Centre-Left pundits have been quick to reassure their tribe that the PM has read too much into Uxbridge’s Ulez revolt, and that his bid to shore up the Tories’ suburban vote by professing his new-found solidarity with motorists reeks of desperation. There has been much sniggering over Sunak’s clunky bid to reinvent himself as a man of the people. The PM’s opponents have lapped up a viral radio recording of him losing his cool upon being grilled by a Scottish journalist about travelling by private jet to greenlight North Sea oil exploration.
But sooner rather than later, Keir Starmer will himself have to face up to the reality that the tide is turning on net zero. As prime minister, the likelihood is that he will be condemned to follow through on what Sunak has controversially started.
His mentor, Tony Blair, has already turned up the pressure. In an interview last week, the former PM started to lay the groundwork for a net-zero row-back on the centre-Left, warning that the public should not be asked to do a “huge amount” on climate change when China is emitting so much. The intervention is unlikely to have gone down well in the Starmer camp. The current Labour leader seems to want to go down in history as the politician who delivered Britain to the net-zero promised land. He has long fancied himself as Britain’s answer to Franklin Roosevelt, delivering a shot in the arm to a zombie economy with a green jobs bonanza.
And many net zero defenders remain adamant that politicians and companies have invested so much time and money into the campaign that there can be no going back. As evidence, they point to the PM’s refusal to scrap the ban on the purchase of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 – a pledge that manufacturers that work to seven-year development cycles are, like it or not, locked into. What this fails to grasp is that the electric car industry – which, unlike so many green technology endeavours, may be tantalisingly close to a breakthrough – could end up the exception rather than the rule, as green subsidies dry up and drastic lifestyle-altering efforts in other areas – such as to ban gas boilers – fall by the wayside.
And the geopolitics of net zero are shifting beneath the UK’s feet. Indeed, the whole project may have been fatally derailed by a series of global earthquakes. One is the Ukraine war. Russia’s rebellion against the liberal order has made energy security the immediate priority of Western states, however much green campaigners might like to pretend that intermittent wind power is Britain’s route to ending reliance on imported energy. As the US enjoys a bumper coal revival, the EU has become bogged down in a spat over the prolongation of coal subsidies – with cash-strapped Eastern countries set to get their way against Germany.
The pandemic delivered another devastating blow. Many predicted that lockdowns would usher in a new era of paradisiacal eco-living. Professionals would trade in the morning train scrum for home working, in turn boosting the sales of artisan delis in their leafy low traffic neighbourhoods. In reality, the post-Covid cost of living crisis has scuppered the ruling class’s great gamble on voters absorbing the costs of net zero. If before the question was whether people would put up with tax hikes and new boiler costs, today the question is whether they can financially sustain them at all.
Meanwhile, some of the companies that were supposed to be leading the charge through game-changing green technology are being compelled to prioritise clearing their debts and delivering a profit to shareholders. Starmer – who has endeavoured to model himself as a friend of business – may also soon find himself uncomfortably at odds with a dramatic corporate U-turn.
Companies embraced net zero as a way to boost their ESG credentials, and thus their feel-good shareholder value. Big Tech led the charge, which served as a convenient distraction from the industry’s other ethical headaches around user privacy as well as its forays into electricity-guzzling endeavours like cloud computing. But with the deadline looming, CEOs now find themselves haunted by the prospect of looming PR fiascos and being personally dragged by environmental campaigners through the courts.
But the real killer blow to net zero is the new Cold War with China. When Obama pushed for the Paris Agreement in 2015, the West still imagined that it could treat China as a diplomatic partner, balancing icy exchanges over trade with smiling solidarity on climate change. Today, though, Western elites are finally accepting that Beijing is a strategic enemy – and that the West would be taking an intolerable risk if it were to blindly plough ahead with net zero as China carries on with its pursuit of relentless growth. And from Washington to Westminster, it is at last dawning on politicians that Beijing has seized on net zero to gain a foothold in energy infrastructure, dominating the manufacture of everything from wind turbines to EV battery software.
The bottom line is the West’s almost biblical belief that climate change is the greatest threat facing humanity has been tested by a series of plagues – and finally crumbled. Starmer can either dig his heels in and store up trouble for himself or, in solidarity with Sunak, start softening his net-zero stance now.
6) The UK once vowed to be a global climate leader. Now Rishi Sunak is stoking a culture war on green policies
CNN, 1 August 2023
“What you are seeing is a much more populist way of handling the climate.”
Less than two years ago, Britain was championing itself as a global leader in the fight against the climate crisis.
At the pivotal COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson rallied world leaders to find agreement on a historic resolution acknowledging the role of fossil fuels in the climate crisis, and the late Queen Elizabeth II said in a landmark speech that “time for words has now moved to the time for action.”
Things feel very different now. As Rishi Sunak’s beleaguered government limps towards an election it is widely expected to lose, determination has seemingly been swapped for division.
And after a decade of cross-party consensus on tackling the climate crisis, experts fear that Sunak has identified green policies as a new wedge issue that could help reverse his party’s sagging fortunes.
Sunak said Monday he wants to “max out” oil and gas developments in Britain’s North Sea, announcing an expansion in drilling for the fossil fuels that environmental groups have condemned.
The move followed a proclamation from Sunak to Britain’s drivers, in the Telegraph newspaper, that he was “on their side,” as he ordered a review of “anti-motorist” low-traffic neighborhoods created to improve urban air quality.
Jibes towards climate activists have meanwhile become a common feature at the despatch box in parliament. And in combative interview exchanges on Monday, Sunak defended his frequent use of a jet or helicopter to attend events around the UK – a habit that opposition politicians have often criticized.
“What the government seems to be doing is using the climate to divide the public,” Luke Murphy, the associate director for energy, climate, housing and infrastructure at the progressive IPPR think tank, told CNN. “There does seem to be a degree of political opportunism around what they’ve been doing.”
Few expect the new push to be an election-winner. But Murphy, like many climate experts, fears there are wider ramifications for Britain’s global standing.
“For all the faults of the Boris Johnson government, what you can say is there appeared to be a genuine commitment to net zero and to the climate agenda,” he said.
“Since then we’ve gone backwards. We’ve stalled in many policy areas,” Murphy added. “I don’t think many people would actually now consider the UK to be a global leader (on the climate).”
Full story
7) Net Zero roll-back: EU waters down corporate ESG disclosures to cut costs
Reuters, 1 August 2023
CNN, 1 August 2023
“What you are seeing is a much more populist way of handling the climate.”
Less than two years ago, Britain was championing itself as a global leader in the fight against the climate crisis.
At the pivotal COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson rallied world leaders to find agreement on a historic resolution acknowledging the role of fossil fuels in the climate crisis, and the late Queen Elizabeth II said in a landmark speech that “time for words has now moved to the time for action.”
Things feel very different now. As Rishi Sunak’s beleaguered government limps towards an election it is widely expected to lose, determination has seemingly been swapped for division.
And after a decade of cross-party consensus on tackling the climate crisis, experts fear that Sunak has identified green policies as a new wedge issue that could help reverse his party’s sagging fortunes.
Sunak said Monday he wants to “max out” oil and gas developments in Britain’s North Sea, announcing an expansion in drilling for the fossil fuels that environmental groups have condemned.
The move followed a proclamation from Sunak to Britain’s drivers, in the Telegraph newspaper, that he was “on their side,” as he ordered a review of “anti-motorist” low-traffic neighborhoods created to improve urban air quality.
Jibes towards climate activists have meanwhile become a common feature at the despatch box in parliament. And in combative interview exchanges on Monday, Sunak defended his frequent use of a jet or helicopter to attend events around the UK – a habit that opposition politicians have often criticized.
“What the government seems to be doing is using the climate to divide the public,” Luke Murphy, the associate director for energy, climate, housing and infrastructure at the progressive IPPR think tank, told CNN. “There does seem to be a degree of political opportunism around what they’ve been doing.”
Few expect the new push to be an election-winner. But Murphy, like many climate experts, fears there are wider ramifications for Britain’s global standing.
“For all the faults of the Boris Johnson government, what you can say is there appeared to be a genuine commitment to net zero and to the climate agenda,” he said.
“Since then we’ve gone backwards. We’ve stalled in many policy areas,” Murphy added. “I don’t think many people would actually now consider the UK to be a global leader (on the climate).”
Full story
7) Net Zero roll-back: EU waters down corporate ESG disclosures to cut costs
Reuters, 1 August 2023
The European Union's executive body on Monday published final rules for corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures, confirming earlier moves to water down the requirements.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen had pledged to cut red tape across the EU executive's work this year as companies complain about the mounting cost of environmental rules.
Full story
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen had pledged to cut red tape across the EU executive's work this year as companies complain about the mounting cost of environmental rules.
Full story
8) David Whitehouse: The Guardian’s (ocean) circulation problem
Net Zero Watch, 1 August 2023
Net Zero Watch, 1 August 2023
Dr David Whitehouse, Science editor
A review of the Guardian’s habitual Gulf Stream misreporting.
Is there no loyalty among climate extremists? The Guardian makes a mistake about the fundamental difference between the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and suddenly everyone is on its case, some accusing it of sloppy reporting, others demanding a correction of its fake news, (which didn’t come.) To be fair it wasn’t just the Guardian – the BBC, CNN and others also got it wrong.
The slowdown or possible collapse of Atlantic currents was everywhere on the internet. We are heading for a collapse, said CNN, Warming could push the Atlantic past a ‘tipping point’ said the New York Times, ‘near collapse, added the Washington Post. Is a mega ocean current about to close down, asked the Scientific American?
The Gulf Stream – which brings warm water to North West Europe – is not the same as the AMOC. They are two fundamentally different currents. Unless the Earth ceases to be a globe, ceases to have oceans and ceases to turn – something that even the Guardian hasn’t yet alarmed us about – the Gulf Stream will be with us.
The AMOC is important for climate because it is the large-scale overturning motion in the Atlantic. It has demonstrated instabilities in the past, especially during the last Ice Age due to large influxes of fresh water. It has weakened over at least the past 100 years, possibly the last thousand years. Some believe this weakening, or at least its most recent activity, is due to human influence, but that is mostly conjecture as we do not understand the decadal and centennial natural variability of the AMOC, let alone longer-term ocean cycles. Standard climate models maintain that the risk of the AMOC collapsing is small.
It’s not as though the Guardian hasn’t been fighting on the alarmist front using ocean currents many, many time before.
A review of the Guardian’s habitual Gulf Stream misreporting.
Is there no loyalty among climate extremists? The Guardian makes a mistake about the fundamental difference between the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and suddenly everyone is on its case, some accusing it of sloppy reporting, others demanding a correction of its fake news, (which didn’t come.) To be fair it wasn’t just the Guardian – the BBC, CNN and others also got it wrong.
The slowdown or possible collapse of Atlantic currents was everywhere on the internet. We are heading for a collapse, said CNN, Warming could push the Atlantic past a ‘tipping point’ said the New York Times, ‘near collapse, added the Washington Post. Is a mega ocean current about to close down, asked the Scientific American?
The Gulf Stream – which brings warm water to North West Europe – is not the same as the AMOC. They are two fundamentally different currents. Unless the Earth ceases to be a globe, ceases to have oceans and ceases to turn – something that even the Guardian hasn’t yet alarmed us about – the Gulf Stream will be with us.
The AMOC is important for climate because it is the large-scale overturning motion in the Atlantic. It has demonstrated instabilities in the past, especially during the last Ice Age due to large influxes of fresh water. It has weakened over at least the past 100 years, possibly the last thousand years. Some believe this weakening, or at least its most recent activity, is due to human influence, but that is mostly conjecture as we do not understand the decadal and centennial natural variability of the AMOC, let alone longer-term ocean cycles. Standard climate models maintain that the risk of the AMOC collapsing is small.
It’s not as though the Guardian hasn’t been fighting on the alarmist front using ocean currents many, many time before.
Last year it told us that we are on the brink, or may even have passed, five ‘disastrous’ tipping points; the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap, the melting of permafrost, changes to the great northern forests, the loss of mountain glaciers and of course, the collapse of the AMOC.
Two years ago the same journalist told us the same story … that ‘scientists had spotted warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse’ – again confusing the Gulf Stream with the AMOC.
Two years ago the same journalist told us the same story … that ‘scientists had spotted warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse’ – again confusing the Gulf Stream with the AMOC.
The tipping points also make another appearance as they may have been crossed two years previously.
The same journalist got the Gulf Stream and the AMOC mixed up 2018, saying that the Gulf Stream was at its weakest in 1600 years. He added that it threw into question alarmist predictions of a looming catastrophic collapse as it would take centuries to occur. The Guardian claimed that it was now 15% weaker than it was around 400 AD, and humans were responsible for a significant part of that weakening.
The latest surge in the Guardian’s habitual Gulf Stream misreporting was based on two Danish researcher who announced a sharp weakening of ocean currents around the North Atlantic, predicting “a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century under the current scenario of future emissions,” or even as soon as two year time.
This research was not based on climate models but based on so-called instability research in which a system, in this case the AMOC, exhibits instability and more variability just before it reaches a so-called tipping point and transitions to a new state.
Given the lack of understanding of its current dynamics and its past variability, the public would be well advised to take worst case predictions with a pinch of salt.
Feedback: david.whitehouse@netzerowatch.org
The same journalist got the Gulf Stream and the AMOC mixed up 2018, saying that the Gulf Stream was at its weakest in 1600 years. He added that it threw into question alarmist predictions of a looming catastrophic collapse as it would take centuries to occur. The Guardian claimed that it was now 15% weaker than it was around 400 AD, and humans were responsible for a significant part of that weakening.
The latest surge in the Guardian’s habitual Gulf Stream misreporting was based on two Danish researcher who announced a sharp weakening of ocean currents around the North Atlantic, predicting “a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century under the current scenario of future emissions,” or even as soon as two year time.
This research was not based on climate models but based on so-called instability research in which a system, in this case the AMOC, exhibits instability and more variability just before it reaches a so-called tipping point and transitions to a new state.
Given the lack of understanding of its current dynamics and its past variability, the public would be well advised to take worst case predictions with a pinch of salt.
Feedback: david.whitehouse@netzerowatch.org
9) Bjorn Lomborg: Climate change hasn’t set the world on fire
The Wall Street Journal, 31 July 2023
It turns out the percentage of the globe that burns each year has been declining since 2001.
The Wall Street Journal, 31 July 2023
It turns out the percentage of the globe that burns each year has been declining since 2001.
One of the most common tropes in our increasingly alarmist climate debate is that global warming has set the world on fire. But it hasn’t. For more than two decades, satellites have recorded fires across the planet’s surface. The data are unequivocal: Since the early 2000s, when 3% of the world’s land caught fire, the area burned annually has trended downward.
Instead, the media acts as if the world is ablaze. In late 2021, the New York Times employed more than 40 staff on a project called “Postcards from a World on Fire,” headed by a photorealistic animation of the world in flames. Its explicit goal was to convince readers of the climate crisis’ immediacy through a series of stories of climate-change-related devastation across the world, including the 2019-20 wildfires in Australia.
This summer, the focus has been on Canada’s wildfires, the smoke from which covered large parts of the Northeastern U.S. Both the Canadian prime minister and the White House have blamed climate change.
Yet the latest report by the United Nations’ climate panel doesn’t attribute the area burned globally by wildfires to climate change. Instead, it vaguely suggests the weather conditions that promote wildfires are becoming more common in some places. Still, the report finds that the change in these weather conditions won’t be detectable above the natural noise even by the end of the century.
The Biden administration and the Times can paint a convincing picture of a fiery climate apocalypse because they selectively focus on the parts of the world that are on fire, not the much larger area where fires are less prevalent.
Take the Canadian wildfires this summer. While the complete data aren’t in for 2023, global tracking up to July 29 by the Global Wildfire Information System shows that more land has burned in the Americas than usual. But much of the rest of the world has seen lower burning—Africa and especially Europe. Globally, the GWIS shows that burned area is slightly below the average between 2012 and 2022, a period that already saw some of the lowest rates of burned area.
The thick smoke from the Canadian fires that blanketed New York City and elsewhere was serious but only part of the story. Across the world, fewer acres burning each year has led to overall lower levels of smoke, which today likely prevents almost 100,000 infant deaths annually, according to a recent study by researchers at Stanford and Stockholm University.
Likewise, while Australia’s wildfires in 2019-20 earned media headlines such as “Apocalypse Now” and “Australia Burns,” the satellite data shows this was a selective narrative. The burning was extraordinary in two states but extraordinarily small in the rest of the country. Since the early 2000s, when 8% of Australia caught fire, the area of the country torched each year has declined. The 2019-20 fires scorched 4% of Australian land, and this year the burned area will likely be even less.
That didn’t stop the media from cherry-picking. They ran with a study from the World Wildlife Fund that found the 2019-20 fires impacted—meaning took habitat or food from, subjected to heat stress, killed, or injured, among other things—three billion animals. But this study looked mostly at the two states with the highest burning, not the rest of Australia. Nationally, wildfires likely killed or harmed six billion animals in 2019-20. That’s near a record low; in the early 2000s fires harmed or killed 13 billion animals annually.
It’s embarrassingly wrong to claim, as climate scientist Michael Mann did recently, that climate policy is the “only way” to reduce fires. Prescribed burning, improved zoning and enhanced land management are much faster, more effective and cheaper solutions for fires than climate policy. Environmental Protection Agency modeling showed that even with a drastic reduction in emissions it would take 50 to 80 years before we’d see a small impact in the area burned in the U.S.
In the case of American fires, most of the problem is bad land management. A century of fire suppression has left more fuel for stronger fires. Even so, last year U.S. fires burned less than one-fifth of the average burn in the 1930s and likely only one-tenth of what caught fire in the early 20th century.
Full post
10) Climate change obsession is a real mental disorder
The Wall Street Journal, 30 July 2023
Instead, the media acts as if the world is ablaze. In late 2021, the New York Times employed more than 40 staff on a project called “Postcards from a World on Fire,” headed by a photorealistic animation of the world in flames. Its explicit goal was to convince readers of the climate crisis’ immediacy through a series of stories of climate-change-related devastation across the world, including the 2019-20 wildfires in Australia.
This summer, the focus has been on Canada’s wildfires, the smoke from which covered large parts of the Northeastern U.S. Both the Canadian prime minister and the White House have blamed climate change.
Yet the latest report by the United Nations’ climate panel doesn’t attribute the area burned globally by wildfires to climate change. Instead, it vaguely suggests the weather conditions that promote wildfires are becoming more common in some places. Still, the report finds that the change in these weather conditions won’t be detectable above the natural noise even by the end of the century.
The Biden administration and the Times can paint a convincing picture of a fiery climate apocalypse because they selectively focus on the parts of the world that are on fire, not the much larger area where fires are less prevalent.
Take the Canadian wildfires this summer. While the complete data aren’t in for 2023, global tracking up to July 29 by the Global Wildfire Information System shows that more land has burned in the Americas than usual. But much of the rest of the world has seen lower burning—Africa and especially Europe. Globally, the GWIS shows that burned area is slightly below the average between 2012 and 2022, a period that already saw some of the lowest rates of burned area.
The thick smoke from the Canadian fires that blanketed New York City and elsewhere was serious but only part of the story. Across the world, fewer acres burning each year has led to overall lower levels of smoke, which today likely prevents almost 100,000 infant deaths annually, according to a recent study by researchers at Stanford and Stockholm University.
Likewise, while Australia’s wildfires in 2019-20 earned media headlines such as “Apocalypse Now” and “Australia Burns,” the satellite data shows this was a selective narrative. The burning was extraordinary in two states but extraordinarily small in the rest of the country. Since the early 2000s, when 8% of Australia caught fire, the area of the country torched each year has declined. The 2019-20 fires scorched 4% of Australian land, and this year the burned area will likely be even less.
That didn’t stop the media from cherry-picking. They ran with a study from the World Wildlife Fund that found the 2019-20 fires impacted—meaning took habitat or food from, subjected to heat stress, killed, or injured, among other things—three billion animals. But this study looked mostly at the two states with the highest burning, not the rest of Australia. Nationally, wildfires likely killed or harmed six billion animals in 2019-20. That’s near a record low; in the early 2000s fires harmed or killed 13 billion animals annually.
It’s embarrassingly wrong to claim, as climate scientist Michael Mann did recently, that climate policy is the “only way” to reduce fires. Prescribed burning, improved zoning and enhanced land management are much faster, more effective and cheaper solutions for fires than climate policy. Environmental Protection Agency modeling showed that even with a drastic reduction in emissions it would take 50 to 80 years before we’d see a small impact in the area burned in the U.S.
In the case of American fires, most of the problem is bad land management. A century of fire suppression has left more fuel for stronger fires. Even so, last year U.S. fires burned less than one-fifth of the average burn in the 1930s and likely only one-tenth of what caught fire in the early 20th century.
Full post
10) Climate change obsession is a real mental disorder
The Wall Street Journal, 30 July 2023
Allysia Finley
Alarmist stories about the weather, not the warm air itself, are behind the left’s anxiety and dread.
The media wants you to know it’s hot outside. “ ‘Heat health emergency’: Nearly half the US at risk,” CNN proclaimed last week as temperatures climbed above 90 degrees in much of the country.
If heat waves were as deadly as the press proclaims, Homo sapiens couldn’t have survived thousands of years without air conditioning. Yet here we are. Humans have shown remarkable resilience and adaptation—at least until modern times, when half of society lost its cool over climate change.
“Extreme Temperatures Are Hurting Our Mental Health,” a recent Bloomberg headline warns. Apparently every social problem under the sun is now attributable to climate change. But it’s alarmist stories about bad weather that are fueling mental derangements worthy of the DSM-5—not the warm summer air itself.
The Bloomberg article cites a July meta-analysis in the medical journal Lancet, which found a tenuous link between higher temperatures and suicides and mental illness. But the study deems the collective evidence of “low certainty” owing to inconsistent study findings, methodologies, measured variables and definitions. The authors also note that “climate change might not necessarily increase mental health issues because people might adapt over time, meaning that higher temperatures could become normal and not be experienced as anomalous or extreme.”
Well, yes. Before the media began reporting on putative temperature records—the scientific evidence for which is also weak—heat waves were treated as a normal part of summer. Uncomfortable, but figuratively nothing to sweat about.
Yet according to a World Health Organization report last year, the very “awareness of climate change and extreme weather events and their impacts” may lead to a host of ills, including strained social relationships, anxiety, depression, intimate-partner violence, helplessness, suicidal behavior and alcohol and substance abuse.
A study in 2021 of 16- to 25-year-olds in 10 countries including the U.S. reported that 59% were very or extremely worried about climate change, and 84% were at least moderately worried. Forty-five percent claimed they were so worried that they struggled to function on a daily basis, the definition of an anxiety disorder.
“First and foremost, it is imperative that adults understand that youth climate anxiety (also referred to as eco-anxiety, solastalgia, eco-guilt or ecological grief) is an emotionally and cognitively functional response to real existential threats,” a May 10 editorial in the journal Nature explained. “Although feelings of powerlessness, grief and fear can be profoundly disruptive—particularly for young people unaccustomed to the depth and complexity of such feelings—it is important to acknowledge that this response is a rational one.”
These anxieties are no more rational than the threats from climate change are existential. A more apt term for such fear is climate hypochondria.
The New Yorker magazine earlier this month published a 4,400-word piece titled “What to Do With Climate Emotions” by Jia Tolentino, a woman in the throes of such neurosis. “It may be impossible to seriously consider the reality of climate change for longer than ninety seconds without feeling depressed, angry, guilty, grief-stricken, or simply insane,” Ms. Tolentino writes.
“A couple of years ago, reading a climate report on my phone in the early hours of the morning, I went into a standard-issue emotional spiral thinking about it all,” she recalls. “We had also recently had a baby, whose carbon footprint likely already exceeded that of entire villages in Burundi. I was playing whack-a-mole with my consumer desires.”
Ms. Tolentino goes on to describe how climate therapists can help patients cope. “The goal is not to resolve the intrusive feeling and put it away” but, as one therapist advises her, “to aim for a middle ground of sustainable distress.” Even the climate left’s despair must be “sustainable.”
It isn’t difficult to notice that today’s snowflakes consider hot weather aberrant, similar to how they perceive normal feelings such as anxiety or sadness. But there’s nothing normal about climate anxiety, despite the left’s claims to the contrary.
Progressives may even use climate change to displace their other anxieties—for instance, about having children. A mental-health reporter for Vox recently wrote about climate stress, and how “some people even grapple with the existential question of whether to have children because of the human toll on the planet’s resources.”
Full post
Alarmist stories about the weather, not the warm air itself, are behind the left’s anxiety and dread.
The media wants you to know it’s hot outside. “ ‘Heat health emergency’: Nearly half the US at risk,” CNN proclaimed last week as temperatures climbed above 90 degrees in much of the country.
If heat waves were as deadly as the press proclaims, Homo sapiens couldn’t have survived thousands of years without air conditioning. Yet here we are. Humans have shown remarkable resilience and adaptation—at least until modern times, when half of society lost its cool over climate change.
“Extreme Temperatures Are Hurting Our Mental Health,” a recent Bloomberg headline warns. Apparently every social problem under the sun is now attributable to climate change. But it’s alarmist stories about bad weather that are fueling mental derangements worthy of the DSM-5—not the warm summer air itself.
The Bloomberg article cites a July meta-analysis in the medical journal Lancet, which found a tenuous link between higher temperatures and suicides and mental illness. But the study deems the collective evidence of “low certainty” owing to inconsistent study findings, methodologies, measured variables and definitions. The authors also note that “climate change might not necessarily increase mental health issues because people might adapt over time, meaning that higher temperatures could become normal and not be experienced as anomalous or extreme.”
Well, yes. Before the media began reporting on putative temperature records—the scientific evidence for which is also weak—heat waves were treated as a normal part of summer. Uncomfortable, but figuratively nothing to sweat about.
Yet according to a World Health Organization report last year, the very “awareness of climate change and extreme weather events and their impacts” may lead to a host of ills, including strained social relationships, anxiety, depression, intimate-partner violence, helplessness, suicidal behavior and alcohol and substance abuse.
A study in 2021 of 16- to 25-year-olds in 10 countries including the U.S. reported that 59% were very or extremely worried about climate change, and 84% were at least moderately worried. Forty-five percent claimed they were so worried that they struggled to function on a daily basis, the definition of an anxiety disorder.
“First and foremost, it is imperative that adults understand that youth climate anxiety (also referred to as eco-anxiety, solastalgia, eco-guilt or ecological grief) is an emotionally and cognitively functional response to real existential threats,” a May 10 editorial in the journal Nature explained. “Although feelings of powerlessness, grief and fear can be profoundly disruptive—particularly for young people unaccustomed to the depth and complexity of such feelings—it is important to acknowledge that this response is a rational one.”
These anxieties are no more rational than the threats from climate change are existential. A more apt term for such fear is climate hypochondria.
The New Yorker magazine earlier this month published a 4,400-word piece titled “What to Do With Climate Emotions” by Jia Tolentino, a woman in the throes of such neurosis. “It may be impossible to seriously consider the reality of climate change for longer than ninety seconds without feeling depressed, angry, guilty, grief-stricken, or simply insane,” Ms. Tolentino writes.
“A couple of years ago, reading a climate report on my phone in the early hours of the morning, I went into a standard-issue emotional spiral thinking about it all,” she recalls. “We had also recently had a baby, whose carbon footprint likely already exceeded that of entire villages in Burundi. I was playing whack-a-mole with my consumer desires.”
Ms. Tolentino goes on to describe how climate therapists can help patients cope. “The goal is not to resolve the intrusive feeling and put it away” but, as one therapist advises her, “to aim for a middle ground of sustainable distress.” Even the climate left’s despair must be “sustainable.”
It isn’t difficult to notice that today’s snowflakes consider hot weather aberrant, similar to how they perceive normal feelings such as anxiety or sadness. But there’s nothing normal about climate anxiety, despite the left’s claims to the contrary.
Progressives may even use climate change to displace their other anxieties—for instance, about having children. A mental-health reporter for Vox recently wrote about climate stress, and how “some people even grapple with the existential question of whether to have children because of the human toll on the planet’s resources.”
Full post
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.
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