Net Zero Groupthink

‘Net Zero’, we hear these words echoed on the news bulletins, and I am sure you will encounter them on a daily if not hourly basis. This is not just because of the current COP28 in Dubai. The term is used by all and sundry as the reason for ULEZ, LEZ, LTN, veganism, not flying, 15-minute cities, wood stove bans, more wind turbines, and so on.

Though all of the above policies are being deftly put into place the theory behind Net Zero policy is never questioned. Is the burning by man of fossil fuels (stored solar energy) producing CO2, causing the climate to change? Does CO2 actually cause the climate to heat up? Has there actually been real and substantive global warming over the long term? Are CO2 levels not in reality almost at the lowest level to sustain life on earth?

I am all for reducing the amount of muck going into the atmosphere, I also view fossil fuels as being a precious endowment much of which is at present being frittered away on, for example, generating electricity which can be done in ways that do not pollute.

It appears to be forgotten that our climate changes naturally from year to year and decade to decade; we have cool periods and then warm periods, these can be regional or global. Nobody has convinced me that the fairly inconclusive warming we are seeing is not simply a natural phenomenon. In fact, if one sticks to the same method of measuring temperature, average global temperatures have not budged much since the 1990s. Our ancestors lived through much warmer periods; the Romans made wine in Yorkshire, and the fall of the Roman empire is in part attributed to famine on the Steppes, due to a cooling climate. In other words, there is nothing new about climate change.

While I initially believed what we were being told by climate scientists, I have been smelling an ever more pungent rat as time has gone on. Those who dare to question the hypothesis are rarely honoured with reasoned argument, but instead abused as “climate deniers”. Put simply: “argument weak, raise voice “

We were told in the late noughties that within a decade the Arctic would be ice free in the summer which has still not happened, and in fact the Arctic continues to freeze and melt with the seasons – to much the same extent as the long-term average. The same applies to the Antarctic, where ice has been lost from one side, but there is also extra elsewhere. It is worth bearing in mind, although not mentioned by those lamenting the loss of Antarctic ice, that the area which has recently lost ice sits above a number of volcanic vents which, when active, make the water hotter in the region.

Do you remember the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef and how we were witnessing the destruction of a precious global wonder? We don’t hear anything about that now, because inconveniently for the Net Zero brigade the Great Barrier reef is now bigger and better than it was prior to the bleaching event.

The Mayor of London in his eagerness to be greener than thou has signed up London to being a C40 city, which includes the PHD (Planetary Health Diet) committing Londoners to reducing their daily intake of meat to 44p/day by 2030. Why? The Net Zero coalition includes many who believe that eating meat is wrong, despite the fact that humans are designed to eat it and have done ever since we started to roam the earth. They tell us that in order to reduce carbon emissions, we need to reduce the number of bovines due to their burping and farting. We are told that we should eat more grains and vegetables. Again this does not make sense, just look at how the ground level of the vegetable and arable fields of the Fens has dropped over the years, or how little soil is left above the chalk on Downland arable fields. Compare this to fields that have been grazed by bovines, where the soil level has normally risen due to natural manuring and healthy worm activity locking up the digested grass as carbon rich humus. We actually need more bovines and a much more mixed form of Agriculture if we want healthier and richer soils.

Many will say that you can enhance soils by using cover crops or applying composted green waste and human sewage, but for these to be useful they need to break down to form humus and in so doing they release carbon dioxide and methane. With bovines we get a much faster breakdown of organic vegetable matter and also a protein and nutrient rich food source.

Another area of almost complete denial is the discussion about renewables. Many tell us that we could rely entirely on renewable electricity to not only supply our current needs, but also future needs once our economy is fully electrified. In theory this is possible, however it would require a massive amount of energy storage and while this too is achievable we would be bankrupted in the process. With solar the sun only shines during the day, and when demand is highest we only enjoy a few hours of useful sunlight. Solar panels will last a maximum of forty years before becoming so inefficient that they will have to be replaced. Wind turbines have many moving parts, and therefore need ongoing maintenance with an expected life of thirty years at which point they have to be entirely replaced. The more we build now, the greater the replacement cost down the line. At the moment, most are uneconomic without subsidy – will they be any more viable at the time of replacement?   

Another question that applies in particular with wind power, is whether it is really good for the environment to urbanise the countryside and pollute the sea environment with turbines, cables, pylons, earthworks and concrete? The price paid by birds and bats let alone fish drives me to the conclusion that this is a far from an environmentally friendly technology, before one even considers the energy and materials that go into building and installing them. There was a recent report advocating that another 5,000 square miles of countryside should be designated open to wind farm development to meet Net Zero requirements, in addition to a quadrupling of the number of offshore turbines. By comparison, we could generate all of the UK’s electricity requirements from nine square miles of Rolls Royce’s small modular nuclear reactors. These could be built on the sites of existing or defunct coal fired or nuclear power stations where the pylons connecting to the grid are already in situ. No carbon, no bird or bat deaths, no new rows of pylons, no more urbanising of the countryside and an expected life of sixty years. Why are we still not pushing ahead with the blindingly obvious while continuing to pour enormous resources into something as unreliable as wind power?

Electric vehicles are great; I have one, ideal for the short journeys I do and cheap to run until you take into account battery depreciation. Batteries are expensive and lose efficiency with age and temperature, so for example at the moment while it is cold I get considerably less range than during the summer, and even now having done a total of 30,000 miles I can tell that each charge is having to be done more frequently than when the car was new. The materials used are dirty to extract and difficult and dangerous to process, let alone recycle. As we know the batteries are highly flammable, and as a result insurance companies are becoming considerably stickier at insuring them. Would I buy another? I am not sure. Overall a petrol car is probably cheaper to run when one takes into account battery costs and the cost of having to change the tyres more frequently.

I have just touched on a few of the reasons why I believe we have fallen into a very damaging groupthink, based on a lot of conjecture, half truth and half-baked ideas.

Basing such fundamental economic and lifestyle changes on such a poor foundation is dishonest, but it seems that our leaders are keener to be seen to be winning the race to Net Zero than delivering good long term policy that both protects the environment for future generations as well as delivering benefit to current generations at a cost they can afford. I have not even mentioned the headlong rush into noisy, expensive and unreliable heat pumps!

If you too have come to the same conclusions, I wonder if you might help me! I want to produce some car stickers that encourage people to think about the ridiculousness of Net Zero and though I have thought of quite a few from “Net Zero – No Thanks” to “Net Zero – 100% hot air”, I am sure that you will have lots of better ideas. If so, please add to the comments and when I decide on the three or four to have printed I will happily make them available to anyone who wants them.

Alastair MacMillan runs White House Products Ltd, a manufacturer, distributor and exporter of hydraulic components to over 100 countries. He is a supporter of the Jobs Foundation.

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