We are on our way to Net Zero by 2050. It must be true because everybody says so.

The entire $6+ trillion per year federal government is committed to the project, which obviously would not be the case if the whole thing were impossible. Equally fully committed are essentially all of the colleges and universities, where all of the smartest people are to be found. As well as every other elite institution of every kind and sort.

Take the World Economic Forum. If there is a number one elitest among all elite institutions, this has to be it. At their annual confab in Davos, Switzerland, they gather the greatest of geniuses to instruct the very top government and business leaders how to run the world. Would you like to go? It will cost you $52,000 to join the organization, and then an additional $19,000 to attend the conference. Chartering a private jet to get you there will cost a few more thousand. Once there, you can hear the very smartest people imparting their thoughts on the most important topics of the day, like “The Great Reset,” “Emerging Technologies,” “Diversity and Inclusions,” and, of course, “The Net Zero Transition.”

Is it possible that these people are completely incompetent and have no idea what they are doing?

As recently as a year ago, the UK appeared to have unstoppable momentum on the march to “net zero” CO2 emissions.

By the Climate Change Act of 2008, adopted under Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the country legally committed itself to reduce carbon emissions by 80% (from the 1990 level) by 2050. In 2019, during a Conservative government headed by Prime Minister Theresa May, Parliament amended the Act (by unanimous vote!) to make the emissions reduction/net zero mandate 100%. The next Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, also a Tory, proved to be unequalled in his zealotry for the climate campaign. The net zero mandate had both energetic support at the top of government, and the backing of an all-party consensus in Parliament.

Today, Net Zero Watch issued a press release describing the UK government as “hopelessly divided” over climate issues. (Full disclosure: Net Zero Watch is an affiliate of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, where I am a board member of the sister affiliate American Friends of the GWPF.).

What has happened?

On the march to Net Zero carbon emissions from usage of energy, the key first step is to eliminate fossil fuels from the generation of electricity, replacing them with the magical “renewables.” Or so we are told. Once electricity generation is fossil fuel-free, then all energy use can be switched to electricity, without any of the evil emissions. Voilà — Net Zero!

But somehow, in the places that have tried to go this route with wind turbines and solar panels, the push to get more electricity generation from “renewables” has seemed to stall out at around 40 - 45%. (Some small countries with lots of hydropower get higher percentages by counting the hydropower as “renewable.”). Countries may build more and more solar panels and wind turbines, but somewhere in the 40s the percentage that those things contribute to electricity generation just doesn’t seem to budge very much any more.

And that’s why it’s so exciting that in the first half of 2023 Germany finally crashed through the 50% barrier, becoming the first significant country with little hydropower to achieve more than half of its electricity generation from “renewables.”

I have long said that when the costs of fossil fuel suppression policies start to hit home to average consumers, the whole climate alarm movement will become politically toxic, and will fade away.

So far in the U.S. we haven’t seen much movement in this direction.

The red states are mostly alert to the issue of the costs of Net Zero, and want no part of fossil fuel suppression. The blue states have inflicted some substantial early costs on themselves (up to about doubling the cost of electricity in the case of California) without the voters having yet gotten too upset. At the federal level, the misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” passes out hundreds of billions of dollars worth of handouts and subsidies to hide the cost of fossil fuel suppression from the public. It could be several more years before blue state voters figure out how they are getting fleeced.

But in Europe, and particularly in the UK, there are serious signs of shifting political winds.

Having read Bill Ponton’s very clear “reality check” on the UK’s Net Zero project, you are probably wondering, what are the counter-arguments advanced by the supporters of Net Zero?

After all, the Net Zero thing appears to have near-unanimous support in the UK. There is no significant political party in that country that advocates policies dissenting from the Net Zero program, unless you count the UK Independence Party, which at the moment holds zero seats in a House of Commons of 650 members. The currently-governing Conservative Party is fully on board with the Net Zero program, with the partial exception of a small group of about 50 MPs (out of 355 Tories in the Commons) claiming to be “studying” the issue; and all the various parties to the left of the Conservatives advocate even more extreme, immediate and forceful measures to reduce carbon emissions than those that the Conservatives are pursuing.

So surely there must exist somewhere a lucid explanation of how this Net Zero thing makes sense and how it can work.