THE progressive pathologies of the 21st Century are collapsing around us so could the most economically damaging of the lot be next?
Mass, low-skilled immigration is now acknowledged as a drain on a host nation’s economy, detrimental to social cohesion, and a fuel for criminality.
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has binned arch-liberal Nick Clegg for a Trump supporter Joel Kaplan; prostrating at incoming President Trump’s feet, he acknowledged his culpability in censoring free speech.
America’s leading banks are withdrawing from the Net Zero Banking Alliance which has curtailed investment in hydrocarbons in favour of unreliable renewables.
And, now Trump’s incoming energy secretary Chris Wright, is set to axe the damaging Net Zero fallacy in favour of a global focus on Zero Energy Poverty.
Wright, Founder and CEO of US gas fracking firm Liberty Energy, says Net Zero is a threat to the prosperity of mankind.
Net Zero Lies
Where Wright and Trump’s Net Zero scepticism is starkly relevant is in acknowledging the role energy has played - and will continue to play - in supporting human flourishing.
It is from this position that Wright derives a concise, factual, and philosophical position to counter the death-cult, technocrat Net Zero advocates.
This stance could not be more at odds to the Net Zero pathway being pursued by the Labour Government with its plans to carpet the UK countryside with wind turbines and solar panels whilst shutting down North Sea oil and gas and asking the public and industry to foot the bill.
Wright, like Trump, is no fan of windmills with the latter saying he will bring an end to the subsidised pay-days for developers. He’s also criticised the UK for signalling an end to its oil and gas production.
Wright notes that so-called clean, and renewable energy is anything but, and when left to compete with energy-dense hydrocarbons their lack-lustre, performance leaves them lumbering in the slow lane.
And, the multitude of steel, cement, exotic metals, and other energy-intensive materials required for turbines and solar panels are as finite as the planet’s resources of oil, gas, coal and uranium.
Seven Billion Live In Fuel Poverty
When most people think of energy they immediately confuse it with electricity ignoring the phenomenally life-giving, wealth-delivering role it plays in all aspects of life.
The amount of global electricity currently used is the same as the amount of energy used to support the manufacture of what are termed as the ‘Four Pillars of Civilisation’ namely: cement, steel, plastics, and natural gas-derived fertiliser.
Phasing out use of the later, as envisaged by the Net Zero zealots, would reduce global agricultural production by 50% with disastrous consequences.
Global life expectancy had stagnated at 30 until the fossil fuel era, but the deployment of hydrocarbons and the emergence of the Four Pillars has boosted human flourishing.
Life expectancy has more than doubled in the last 200 years, dire poverty - those living on less than $2 per day - has plummeted from nearly 90% of humanity to less than 10% and the population has risen from one to eight billion.
However, some seven billion people still live with sub-optimal energy which sees many still gather fuel daily to cook on open fires, exposing them to high levels of smoke and fine particulate matter - one of the world’s deadliest pollutants.
Wright contends that parasitic disease could drop nearly 80% if families in Asia and Africa replaced mud flooring with concrete in their homes.
There will also be a focus on domestic energy poverty where Biden’s policy choices of favouring unreliable renewables have driven up costs.
In 2020, 27% of US households had trouble affording their energy needs, and 10% of Americans reported keeping their homes at unhealthy temperatures to balance their budgets.
However, in the developed ‘West’ annual deaths from extreme weather events have declined by over 90%, even as the global population boomed, and as the planet warms, following its exit from the last mini-ice age, the best way to deal with this change is adaptation and mitigation.
Uniquely Cost-Effective Fossil Fuels
Wright’s background in nuclear, battery technology and geothermal energy demonstrate his agnostic approach to delivery.
And it is from this position that he contends fossil fuels are, and will remain uniquely cost-effective, scalable and currently irreplaceable.
A 2024 research paper published by Liberty Energy entitled ‘Bettering Human Lives’ highlights how unreliable energy sources are far more capital-intensive and lower in energy density and reliability.
It says wind and solar can be components of a diverse energy mix but they are ‘mono-purposed, providing only intermittent electricity at high costs and none of the other human life and Pillar Four needs sourced by natural gas and refined products’.
It adds: “It is difficult to replace fossil fuels that are more abundant and possess a higher thermodynamic quality and incredible flexibility in applications.
“Renewables lack those physical advantages and need the support of policies and subsidies to be cost competitive and even then, only at low grid penetration rate.
“Hydrocarbon-dominated energy is not just a sector of the economy, it is the sector that enables every other sector.”
No More Subsidies
Wright and Trump are advocates of a free market to determine energy supply, questioning the need for subsidies on unreliable renewables.
Liberty highlights how the EU has spent over $800bn subsidising unreliable wind and solar projects over the last 15 years, and that excludes grid expansion and system balancing costs.
In Germany, for example, over 100GW of additional solar and wind has been added, but electricity production declined by about 15% and its prices are three times higher than the United States. The impact on greenhouse gas emission has been negligible in the global context.
Wright will work alongside former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum at the newly-formed National Energy Council on a path to US energy dominance.
Whilst Wright is no man-made climate change denier, he is a climate realist arguing that poverty is a more pressing and acute problem, with the ‘hazards of climate change being distant and uncertain’.
On Net Zero he says: “At the very least, we must prevent the globe’s most comfortable and wealthy regions from imposing anti-energy policies that harm or even kill the world’s least fortunate.”
This will not go down well with the wannabe elites. Those wedded to the man-made, anti-capitalist, Malthusian climate change obsession which is based on the laughable premise that the sun, the earth and oceans are in constant equilibrium.
As California burns these so-called progressives point the finger at man-made climate change whilst grounded observers identify the primary issues as the pernicious march of the DEI agenda into everyday life.
The incoming administration has decided enough is enough and Net Zero, like most other progressive pathologies, will soon face its own reckoning.
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