For 50 years, governments have failed to act on climate change. No more excuses
Christiana Figueres, Yvo de Boer and Michael Zammit Cutajar
Whadda ya mean governments have done nothing?
Jeez.
In the energy sector, evidence of the zero-carbon transition is all around us. Wind and solar generation shows compound growth of about 20% a year and is cheaper almost everywhere than the alternatives. Electric car sales doubled between 2020 and 2021.
See?
“In the energy sector, evidence of the zero-carbon transition is all around us.”
Evidence of the government wasting trillions on technology that doesn’t work you mean.
“Wind and solar generation shows compound growth of about 20% a year…”
The intermittent nature of wind and solar means that we still need the existing power sources, so an actual transition is impossible to achieve in reality.
“…and is cheaper almost everywhere than the alternatives.”
No it isn’t, that is simply a lie.
“Electric car sales doubled between 2020 and 2021.”
They still represent a miniscule proportion of vehicles on the roads and in any case are far more harmful to the environment than ICE vehicles.
Since climate change is a non problem, the government doing absolutely nothing about it would be a good thing.
$635 billion (global spend on climate 2020) is nothing? I’d settle for a small part of that nothing.
I seriously wish they had done nothing about it! Unilateral implementation of Net Zero is the third biggest contributor to the current inflation in the UK. It is an unmitigated disaster on every conceivable level. These authors are clinically insane.
Why we should never, ever have started debating with these people. In a couple of years the argument will have ratcheted even further. That position is already middle-of-the-road accepted fact so they’ll be off capturing new territory.
This is all happening the wrong way round. Normally, a need is identified. Then. First, the science makes a discovery. Second, the engineers make it work. Third, the salesmen publicise it. Last the consumer buys it because it’s better, cheaper and more useful.
With CLIMATE CHANGE (formerly known as GLOBAL WARMING) we’ve started at 4 and are working our way back to 1. Because talking about virtue is so much easier than being virtuous.
@VP We are where we are because people like Tim insisted on debating with them. That’s as effective as trying to debate with a small child. You just go round in circles back to “Why not Daddy?”
Also it’s necessary to understand what motivates people. Everybody seeks to maximise they’re what they perceive as their own personal advantage. So you’re not debating climate change or solutions to it. You’re debating who gets to buy a new car next year.
I’ve got a funny feeling that as these climate chickens start to come home to roost some of their proponents are going to find themselves having the shit properly kicked out of them.
That articles in the Graun because the writers got paid for it. And they see it as furthering their aim to obtain revenue from other sources. The Graun commissions it because they think it will sell chip wrappers & click-throughs.
‘That position is already middle-of-the-road accepted fact so they’ll be off capturing new territory.’
Yes BiS. Since the Libs lost the election here, they’re already cringing and grovelling to the climate crackpots.
Of course electricity prices are rising here. I naturally think the way to solve this is to go straight back to good old coal.
“These People Are Deluded Fuckwits, Aren’t They?”
In the case of Yvo de Boer… Not deluded, but a prime example of a career civil servant/diplomat who took an up Issue and made a Career out of it.
He’s very good at maxing out his Influence while staying just away from the actual frontline where heads will roll.
Peeps like Frans Timmer are deluded, but at least, like any religious fanatic, he believes.
Yvo de Boer is outright dangerous, and he’s been one of the Powers behind all the Eco Idiocy we’ve been growling at over the past decade or two.
From WikiP:
De Boer was born in Vienna on 12 June 1954. He holds a technical degree in social work from the Netherlands.
Just the chap to force non-working technology onto the world. I’d love to see the syllabus for a “technical degree in social work”, maybe Grikath can enlighten us?
Fifty years? As I recall, the big panic back then, even into the early ’80s, was an imminent ice age. Just as well they didn’t try to do anything about that, eh?
If a tree falls in the forest, but the government didn’t chop it down, did it ever fall in the first place?
I would much prefer that the government hadn’t done anything!
Remember folks, because of the influence of people such as Mark Carnage, capital has been hard to come by for miners and drillers for 15 years. To get a mine or gas-oil well explored and drilled, companies other than the supermajors have had to enter onerous agreements with Chinese “companies” – eg Atalaya who have spent 20 years reopening the former mine at Río Tinto. So much money spent on enviro safeguards and checks. So much time wasted. So much Danegeld for the enviro-safety industry.
The next “shock” for the Eurozone will be the cost of China’s belt and road initiative. For the poor Southern States, China was willing to finance infrastructure when the ECB was doing whatever it does. The bills have to be paid.
And schadenfreude for Germany. If you base your economy on exports and then find yourself dependent on China.
This war in Ukraine is a useful distraction factor
@Chris Miller That’s easy, he got his degree before the Millennial Revamp to equalise dutch academic titles with “international” standards.
He’s graduated from a HBO (higher vocational education) in Sociology. Roughly equates to college level.
Which makes him an engineer, given that HBO grads do not have any academic titles or accreditation. They all graduated as “engineer” or “master engineer”.
Even for the subjects/studies that weren’t technical at all. Like Sociology, Business/Management, and, of all things, primary school teachers ( as a group the single most technically inept of the bunch…).
So yes.. A “technical degree” in Sociology is an accurate description to dodge the fact that he does not have any academic credentials at all.
Well… other than an honorary doctorate he got from a Uni sucking up, but…
Sort of the same why I only hold a mere MSc and three BSc instead of two MSc-and-change. ….Things got Translated… ( and “downgraded” ….Bastards…)
Tx Grikath, I knew I could rely on you 🙂
That explanation is amusing, if in a rather sad way.
I don’t have a list of impressive sounding credentials. I do have over four decades of experience in the art of building and fixing machinery so that it works and keeps working. If I got something wrong I tended to find out fairly quickly.