https://archive.md/IG2sI
"There is a curious idea doing the rounds on the right: that climate change is
real, that it is caused by human activity but that European countries cannot
meaningfully shape whether the world reaches net zero and is thus able to limit
warming. Adding a new fear to flying, Kemi Badenoch opted to use this heatwave
week to travel to Stansted airport and criticise the Labour government’s
“ideological” focus on net zero.
What is unexpected about this line is that there is a good point in there
somewhere. It may well be that despite major advances in solar and renewable
energy, the world is not going to reach net zero by the 21st century’s halfway
mark. It may well be that smaller countries need to accept that the battle
against climate change is being lost at the moment.
It’s also true, as the OBR reiterated last week, that the costs of not reaching
net zero are considerably higher than the costs of reaching it. If you think
that we are going to have to spend those far larger sums
anyway, then it is
not unreasonable to think that we need to prioritise measures that both
decarbonise and adapt for a warmer world at the same time. (For instance, the
fact that the British government currently provides grants to heat pumps, so
long as those pumps cannot also provide air conditioning, is perverse.)
What these critics of net zero actually seem to envisage is not a world in
which states switch from spending money on the climate transition to spending
larger sums on adaptation and resilience, but one in which we and the planet
agree to put all of this unpleasantness behind us and spend money on neither.
The world as viewed by Badenoch seems to be one in which the UK accepts that it
cannot meet its net zero obligations, and also one in which our Victorian
infrastructure, all those buildings designed for moderate temperatures,
manages, through force of will or some other miracle, to hold up just fine even
as the climate changes.
You can have reasonable arguments about what policy mix of adaptation and
mitigation is the right one. If you choose no mitigation, then you are always
chasing your own tail as the costs of climate change go up and up. But with no
adaptation you are accepting more and more summers like this one, in which many
people in Europe will die before their time because of excessive heat."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
