Voters don’t want the green campaigners’ extreme climate policies–Bjorn Lomborg
By Paul Homewood
From the Telegraph:
The renowned naturalist and climate change campaigner Sir David Attenborough believes governments should face a reckoning for their failure to tackle global warming. Speaking recently about the US and Australia, he expressed a hope that the electorate would vote out governments who are not taking the climate seriously enough. The problem for Sir David and other campaigners is that, far from punishing politicians who pledge to scrap expensive climate policies, voters in Australia just backed them.
The Australian election was dubbed the “climate change election”. Pundits expected the climate-concerned Labor Party to cruise to an easy win, but didn’t count on a voter backlash against their drastic plans. One model estimated that the party’s planned 45 percent slash in carbon emissions would set the economy back by 264 billion Australian dollars (£149 billion) and claim some 167,000 jobs. Voters duly re-elected right-of-centre Coalition parties whose energy policy focused on driving down power prices and beefing up supply.
Australians are far from alone in saying no to expensive green schemes. Americans elected Donald Trump in part because of his promise to boost manufacturing and fossil fuel industries by repealing environmental regulations he blamed for hurting blue-collar jobs. But even in Democrat states, voters dislike the measures being pushed by climate campaigners.
Last September, Colorado voters rejected an effort to sharply limit oil drilling on non federal land, while Arizona citizens rejected an attempt to accelerate the shift to renewable energy. If voted through, the initiative would have amended the state’s constitution to require renewable energy for 50 per cent of power generation by 2035 – a massive jump from 6 per cent today.
Huge amounts of money were poured in, including more than $20 million from climate campaigner and billionaire Tom Steyer, but even that wasn’t enough. In Democrat-dominated Washington, voters rejected a measure to become the first state to tax carbon emissions.
In Brazil, the Philippines and several eastern European nations, voters have embraced populist leaders who reject expensive climate policies. In Paris, the gilets jaunes took to the streets to protest against moves to push up fuel prices.
None of this means that voters don’t want global warming solved. A recent poll shows that two-thirds of Americans, for example, support “aggressive action” on climate change. But if you ask them what they are willing to pay, two-thirds won’t even pay $100 in annual climate taxes.
People are saying that climate change is one of the many problems facing us today, and the solution needs to be appropriate. This sentiment lines up with scientific reality. According to the UN Climate Panel, the impact of global warming by the 2070s will be the equivalent of a 0.2-2 per cent loss in average income.
To solve a problem worth about the same amount as a single recession, some politicians and campaigners have gone far overboard. The New Zealand government’s aim for net zero carbon emissions by 2050 would, according to a government-commissioned report, cost 16 per cent of GDP. The British Government’s own net-zero policy would, the Chancellor warned, cost more than £1 trillion.
What’s more, these policies – which will hit the poorest in society hardest – will have almost no impact on the planet’s climate even in a hundred years unless we can ensure that emerging giants China and India also cut emissions.
As the huge costs and trivial benefits of climate policies are laid bare, there is a risk that more voters will turn toward populists who do not generally offer better climate policies.
A sensible middle-ground has to respect what voters are telling us. Such an approach may include policies such as a low and rising carbon tax. But it must ultimately be focused on the reality that the best way to fix climate change is through innovation that brings the price of zero-CO2 energy below that of fossil fuels. Rather than wishing for an electorate that shares the views of the elite, global warming campaigners need to stop and listen.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
‘Speaking recently about the US and Australia, he expressed a hope that the electorate would vote out governments who are not taking the climate seriously enough.’
So when, Sir David, do you want us to nuke China? Should we take out India, too?
Better to get ’em to nuke each other.
“But it must ultimately be focused on the reality that the best way to fix climate change is through innovation… Yes.. innovative local and regional infrastructure adaptations. Humans cannot control and manipulate the climate with a “CO2 knob”. That’s reality.
Bjorn Lomborg is an interesting person. He is features in The Deniers as he argues sensibly against the ruinous costs of the alarmists’ solutions while still believing in global warming. What we see with him is not uncommon where in his own sphere of knowledge he knows they are talking crap but because he considers those in the climate ‘science’ field have prestige then they must know what they are talking about. He would never consider that they are lying ignorant cash troughers.
CO2etc. may not be the culprits, if there are any. What about cosmic ray induced cloud formation and variable sunspots? The known and also unknown unknown factors?
Certainly no proven climate benefit from curving greenhouse gases.
Best , logical action:wait and see if non natural global warming occurs, after the 2 decades + pause.
Let’s hope that the incoming UK prime minister will read this article and take the findings on board ready for when he takes action to wind down responding to the Green loons, and not in the way in which Mrs May has foolishly committed the country to multi £billions to satisfy the non – existent threat.
Is it too strong to say that the decadent “West” is heading for Civil War, pitting Enemies of the Planet (i.e. us) against Enemies of the People (i.e. them)?
CO2 is not a climate trigger. Look to the sun for what happens, sun spots and lack there of drive temps up and down for cyclical climate changes. All of the things suggested to curb emissions and CO2 are nothing more than disguise to grab power and wealth away from the masses
Jul 18, 2019 Tucker Carlson – Climate Change Wasn’t About the Environment At All
So you thought climate change was about the environment? From Tucker Carlson Tonight, a peek inside the great Green New Deal deception.
We have also known this from statements by the author of the UPCC reports, UN’s Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica’s National Liberation Party. It is about a Marxist financial system supplanting Capitalism.
As usual, Tucker is spot on.
“The renowned naturalist and climate change campaigner Sir David Attenborough believes governments should face a reckoning for their failure to tackle global warming.”
Governments will fail when ‘trying’, as they can’t prove any results …
He speaks much common sense but I still gag when, he alludes to the great scam as a reality, it ain’t Bjorn.
Good grief, the alarmists they’ve admitted it themselves, it’s all to do with politics, enforced taxation to fashion world socialism and Shangri la and overtly noted by alarmists/extincitonrebellion FoE, Defra et al, its got BA to do with CO₂ and man made warbling, thus: you must desist.
Stop playing their game by their goal post moving, corporate funded, shape shifting rules.
+1
It’s the long plan for Marxists. By the time the rest of the world has weened itself from fossil fuels China will be running on nuclear energy and become the world’s manufacturing center by default. The UN will have its’ goal realized of a one world government.
Ah, a plan that makes sense. Deffo get the Indians to nuke China.
“But it must ultimately be focused on the reality that the best way to fix climate change is …” is actually to recognize that climate changes at its own pace and we are just along for the ride. If we COULD exercise any control of the Earth’s climate at least 80% of the population would be unhappy at all times since NO ONE knows what the perfect climate is supposed to be.
Did the dinosaurs enjoy it? Is it the one that currently is experienced in tropical Africa? Is it the one currently experienced in the Australian outback? Do the penguins or polar bears experience it in their separated regions? WHO is the genius that can create this perfect climate that everyone, everywhere, and everything on the planet will agree on? And since that person doesn’t exist, why do idiots and eggplants – apologies to the real eggplants – continue to decry “climate change?” I have lived in Maine – it did NOT have the perfect climate, I have lived in Korea – it did NOT have the perfect climate, I live in Arizona now, and though its climate is better – for me – I am sure it is not going to be considered the perfect climate. Since we don’t actually experience the perfect climate now, why wouldn’t everyone want to see climate change? If a few thousand years ago the world was 8 or 9 degrees C warmer than now, and we are here, why won’t out progeny expect to be here if it gets less than a third that much warmer in the future?
What ever happened to critical thinking? Has “smartphones” truly dumbed down the population that much? Has “social networking” really destroyed independent thought? If so, it appears that it is obvious that the world MUST turn into a giant nudist colony because it is grossly unfair that we strip animals of fur, and the cotton plants of their cotton balls and create fibers to weave into clothing, and we cannot have synthetics because they come from petroleum. Let the planet become au naturale instead. Hmmm, as I look at some of the people around me, I’m not sure that is really all that good an idea after all.
There is no way around this – people take their time to get it. But they will get it and once they do the Alarmist folks is done. Because once a fraud has been exposed, you don’t put the genie back in the bottle. People went along with the Alarmist positions as long as they felt that it would not touch them personally. Want et zero-carbon energy – sure, put it on. Just don’t make me pay. Want a Tesla? Yeah man, but for the price of a diesel. But once the cost comes through, the fun is over. Expect more elections where politicians with expensive climate proposals will receive the boot. And the next generation of politicians will learn.
Exactly right, as soon as the old “what’s good for the goose is also good for the gander” reality kicks in the thought process will do a deep review.
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.
The climate change movement recently passed a fatal tipping point although its blinkered proponents have not yet realised it. The movement has collectively “jumped the shark” to put itself on an inexorable downwards path towards irrelevance.
This tipping point happened when the deranged UN IPCC issued its “1.5º Special Report” in October 2018 calling for the utterly impossible, namely that “global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) need to fall by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050”, see https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-policymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governments/.
Since then all manner of climate nutters who unquestioningly believe every pronouncement of the politically-motivated, scientifically duplicitous UN IPCC have jumped on the bandwagon. They are so away with the fairies as to think that this “holy writ” special report from the UN IPCC is a realistic policy. It started with the ludicrous Green New Deal in the USA which if pursued by the Democrats will guarantee President Trump his second term and now the deranged Theresa May has bowed to Green Blob pressure by committing the UK to attempt the UN IPCC’s impossible “net zero emissions” 2050 target.
The inconvenient truth which these nutters ignore is that the world is collectively 85% dependent on fossil fuels for the energy needed to sustain our current civilisation while the global contribution from intermittent wind and solar is little more than negligible at 1.2%. Anyone who believes that these global engineering realities can be utterly transformed to the extent of completely reversing these numbers in a few short decades is living in cloud cuckoo land, see https://tinyurl.com/y2u9vp2m.
Care needs to be taken with estimates of wind and solar, because much of it, especially solar, is not metered. A lot of solar is on domestic rooftops, and it acts to reduce demand, and fails to appear on electricity generation statistics because it doesn’t come from a power station.
The message though does not change, demand from power stations continues to rise, despite the increasing amounts of rooftop solar, even in Australia, which recently set demand records, to the surprise of many, who thought that solar would reduce peak demand.
Besides ER there are also vegan and animal rights activists making fools of themselves, currently a lot in Australia, how long will it be before the UK govt rolls over and makes a fool of itself … again:
https://www.farmersjournal.ie/police-called-after-100-vegan-activists-invade-australian-farm-451050
Because we want to live in a warm house all winter long we don’t want to be forced to live in a grass hut without windows or doors and when we travel we want a car and not have to go around on bicycles hauling all our gear just to appease a bunch of Ecology Freaks
Amen to that !!!