'Saving' The Planet Or Saving Mankind?

THERE’S a lot of chat about saving the planet and it’s not something many would disagree with.

If it comes to saving the planet or the human race, then, I imagine, the former would feature more prominently than the latter, for many.

It certainly does for leading climate Professor Bill McGuire of University College of London who recently called for a cull of the human population in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ‘save the planet’. 

Created around 70 years ago, The Earth Clock - heralded as a physical representation of man’s disregard of Gaia - is currently set at 90 seconds from midnight!

However, at 4.5bn years old the Earth is still in a sprightly middle age and maybe, just maybe, it's more robust than we give it credit for.

Over its many Epochs it’s been hot and it’s been cold, it’s seen-off the dinosaurs and host of other species and who’s to say the human race is not next?

Hot And Cold

We came out of the last ice age around 10,000 years ago and the current Period we’re in, the Holocene, is viewed as an inter-glacial with the planet expected to freeze again at some point over the coming Millennia.

Over the time it has experienced a series of warm - Minoan, Roman and Medieval (MWP) - and cold periods. 

In the UK, the MWP saw grapes grown in Scotland and, further North, it’s how icy Greenland got its name.

The Little Ice Age - when the Thames froze over - ended around 200 years ago. Since then the planet has warmed gradually.

This period has seen carbon dioxide levels recover from historic lows 270ppm (parts per million) to 430ppm, or, from 0.027% to 0.043% of the total atmosphere.

A Greener Planet

At lower than 270ppm many plants struggle to survive yet over the last 40 years or-so scientists have observed how the planet has greened significantly - by some 15% - a footprint of two times the United States.

This additional C02 has helped deliver bumper crop yields, boosted farm incomes and provided more food for animals, whilst supporting a booming global population, despite dire predictions to the opposite by the climate doomsters.

Over the earth’s many epochs C02 levels have consistently been much higher. Levels of 2,000ppm C02 are common on crowded trains, and on submarines can reach 5,000 ppm, with no ill effect.

Since CO2 was first signalled out as the engine warming the planet, science has achieved a far greater understanding of the primary climate control mechanisms, including the solar and ocean cycles (more on this to follow in the next essay).

Contrary to the consensus, many respected scientists contend that rising CO2 levels are, conversely, a function of temperature increases.

Man-made C02 accounts for less than 5% of all emissions with nature being the primary source, through outgassing of dying vegetation and volcanic activity. 

Anti-Capitalist, Net Zero 

By the 1990s, and the success of the first environmental wave, eco-activists were forced to adopt new positions to maintain their relevance and funding, contends Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore.

Latching on to the science which demonstrated rising C02 levels were the result of man-made emissions Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and other environmentalists targeted the cash-rich, fossil fuel industry. 

As a result, we are now being forced into radically restructuring the way we live our every day lives to achieve  net zero emissions by 2050, or earlier.

In this Net Zero quest the climate change industrial complex - universities, quangos, business, politicians and international bodies - is also looking to strip CO2; the food of plants, out of the atmosphere.

At the forefront of this is deploying Carbon Capture and Storage facilities to existing or new fossil fuel power stations and then secreting the CO2 in rock formations, in depleted oil or gas fields.

In the US, there are plans to use over a dozen jets to inject 100,000 tons of sulphur a year into the lower stratosphere to block solar rays, at an annual cost of some $500m.

There are also plans to seed the ocean with 600m tons of sodium hydroxide to capture CO2, and in the UK the environment agency is considering proposals to add magnesium hydroxide to the sea at St Ives Bay, to sequestrate carbon dioxide.

Earlier this month the taxpayer funded Energy Systems Catapult (ESC) called for a £30bn project to extract CO2 from the air. 

Not So Green

The fossil fuel alternatives being corralled into the Net Zero drive - such as solar power, wind, and battery storage - are anything but ‘green and renewable’.

Solar farms have a huge ecological foot print, - around 200 times as much land required as gas, per unit of energy generated - wind turbines kill thousands of bats and birds and are buried underground at the end of their 20-year life.

A huge, trillion-pound-plus expansion of the electricity network is needed to accommodate the energy transition with the the amount of rare-earth minerals required phenomenal.

These minerals will have to be mined.  With copper, for example, humans have mined 700m tons over the last 5,000 years. The same amount will be needed over the next 22 years to meet energy transition targets. 

Such mining leads deforestation, soil erosion, water contamination, loss of wildlife habitats, changes in landscapes, air pollution and adverse health effects to miners.

These ‘renewable technologies’ are unreliable and expensive, and, with little chance of a technological solution to the storage issue, we will therefore have to rely rely on nuclear power or gas to provide ample base-load power for the foreseeable.

And, a new paper published last month by leading US physicists says achieving Net Zero by 2050 would have next to no impact on temperature levels.

Human Flourishing At Risk

The transformation of mankind’s living standards and life expectancy over the last 200 years has not occurred without huge upheaval.

Human beings have survived and flourished by impacting the planet and will continue to do so on the path to Net Zero. However, if net zero policies are implemented, it's unlikely mankind will continue to flourish. 

The net zero solutions envisaged will rapidly drive up energy bills, the cost of living, will negatively impact mankind, the environment and dangerously limit low-cost energy availability.

Fossil fuels have supported the human flourishing of the last two centuries through their unrivalled ability to provide low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people.

They have helped bring global poverty to an all-time low. The number of people killed by natural disasters has fallen to 97% of previous levels as a richer world is more readily able to adapt to extreme weather.

Rejecting the climate mastery that fossil fuels have allowed will be of little benefit the planet, whilst putting the lives of millions of people at risk.