The green movement faces a painful confrontation with reality | The Spectator
Economic growth is the biggest wedge dividing committed greens from their more pragmatic fellow travellers and the vested interests supporting and often financing them. In his recent Net Zero Review, Tory MP Chris Skidmore calls net zero the growth opportunity of the 21st century. Instead of analysing the costs of net zero, the Skidmore report is little more than a wish-list drawn up by rent-seeking renewable energy interests ( the prize on offer to UK industry ).
True believers, on the other hand, don t want growth of any kind. De-growth is what they seek. One of the foremost advocates of renewable energy is Amory Lovins, who in 1982 founded the Rocky Mountain Institute as a renewable energy think tank.
It d be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it, Lovins said in an 1977 interview. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs. Adequacy, not abundancy, is the true green goal. For committed greens, the virtue of renewable energy is that it is neither cheap nor abundant, because replacing fossil fuels with renewables helps push economic growth into reverse.
The net zero target was adopted on the basis of the Committee on Climate Change s fairy tale of ever cheaper renewable costs. The realisation is now dawning that, like everything else, renewables need cheap fossil fuels. With news that Ørsted, the Danish wind energy company, could shelve the Hornsey Three offshore wind project unless the government provides more subsidy, it is becoming clearer each day that this particular fairy tale is shaping up to be one with a dark, unhappy ending.
Malthusians is what they are. Anti-humans. We may not be greatest species we’ll ever meet, but we aren’t bugs.