• There’s something fishy going on in offshore wind energy
  • Have politicians realised their green dream needs your nightmare?
  • The people will revolt against the real energy transition

Why are energy transition advocates so busy imposing extraordinarily unpopular policies on us?

I don’t mean building windmills and solar farms in scenic places, nor the vast transmission lines needed across people’s land. I’m talking about things that arbitrarily constrain our lives in the name of reducing our carbon footprint.

If 15-minute cities are about convenience, why have fines for leaving them and why constrain movement between them?

If electric vehicles (EVs) will be better, why subsidise them and why ban combustion engine cars?

If there are enough minerals and resources to produce enough EVs, why propose rationing the ownership of EVs?

If batteries and hydrogen will fuel our future air travel, why ban short-haul flights and propose limiting people’s air travel to once every three years?

If weather-dependent power sources are needed due to climate change and are suitable for powering a grid, why pay people to use less electricity at certain times?

If the intermittency of renewables won’t be an issue, why ask people to avoid charging their cars at certain times?

If the electrification of heating is a good idea, why is the Climate Change Committee requesting that people refrain from heating their homes in the evening (when it gets cold)?

If heat pumps are great, why ban the alternatives that are only needed when heat pumps fail?

If lab-grown meat and insects will become mainstream foods, why propose eating human cadavers to reduce climate change? The New York Post has the details, for those who don’t believe me:

A Swedish scientist speaking at Stockholm summit last week offered an unusual possible tactic in combating global climate change: eating human flesh.

Stockholm School of Economics professor and researcher Magnus Soderlund reportedly said he believes eating human meat, derived from dead bodies, might be able to help save the human race if only a world society were to “awaken the idea.”

Soderlund’s argument for human cannibalism was front and center during a panel talk called “Can You Imagine Eating Human Flesh?” at the Gastro Summit, reports the Epoch Times. “Conservative” taboos against cannibalism, he said, can change over time if people simply tried eating human flesh.

Some of the talking points at the seminar included whether humans were too selfish to “live sustainably” and if cannibalism is the solution to food sustainability in the future.

Where are the protesters when you need them?

Reports from more moderate groups, such as C40, which is chaired by the Ultra Low Emission Zone’s Sadiq Khan, propose “consumption interventions” such as, as the Wall Street Journal put it, “no meat, no dairy and no private vehicles”.

If you’re hoping to chuck your rations in the bin in disgust over this outrage, note that food waste must be 0% per household. (I’ve already notified my two toddlers.)

Although we should make clear that C40’s hope of “0 private vehicles” by 2030 is described as an “ambitious target”… so, going by its track record, it won’t happen anyway.

If wind energy is so cheap, why did nobody show up to the government’s wind energy auction? The Guardian has the answer:

Ministers revealed last week that no additional offshore windfarms will go ahead in the UK after the latest government auction. No bids were made in the auction, after the government ignored warnings that offshore schemes were no longer economically viable under the current system.

I thought the wind was supposed to be free!? How can your costs go up when energy is free?

If electricity will be cheaper than gas under renewables, why ban gas stoves? Why are our power bills going up as renewables grow as a share of our power source?

If renewables are better than fossil fuels, why do fossil fuels need to be phased out by government policies?

If energy storage will solve the intermittency of renewables, why do we need smart appliances that can be controlled to determine when they are usable and when they are not?

To sum up, if renewables are as cheap, abundant and efficient as claimed, why must we radically overhaul our lives in ways that make them worse? Why must governments ask us to cut our standard of living if the energy transition they promised us is going to work?

If the mad schemes of the energy transition were going to work, we wouldn’t need such dystopian policies. But they’re being imposed and proposed nonetheless…

I mean, if we’re seriously entertaining eating cadavers, we must be pretty desperate.

Perhaps it’s because even the energy transition advocates have now realised that they cannot deliver the green utopia they’ve been promising us. So now they must turn to other means to save the planet.

They’ve discovered that the wind may be free and renewable… but wind turbines are neither. They’ve discovered that energy storage technology isn’t yet viable to make up for solar’s intermittency. They’ve discovered that electrification and transitioning to renewables are a… combustible mix. They’ve discovered that carbon offsets are dodgy and that physics is hard to thwart.

Instead of providing you with cheap, clean and reliable energy, they will have to cut you down to size. Saving the planet, after all, justifies anything. We already accepted that premise when we strove for net zero in the first place, back when it promised us a green utopia.

It all reminds me of the evolution of states that embrace communism and Marxism. They promise utopia and deliver dystopia, because the underlying system doesn’t work, but the machinery of the state must go on because of its noble cause.

What has me mystified is that it’s patently obvious that people won’t put up with these policies. The energy transition behind the curtain is looking too ugly for a democracy to swallow. (I’m sure you can imagine what many environmentalists therefore conclude about democracy, but let’s not go there.)

Net zero just isn’t going to fly if it means artificially imposing drastic cuts to our quality of life. How it fails will, however, be fascinating to watch.

Until next time,


Nick Hubble
Editor, Fortune & Freedom