What Has the Industrial Revolution Ever Done for You?

Much talk at CoP27 about paying for ‘loss and damage’, couched in the terms of reparation for the evil done to the current climate by we bastards in the developed world. In particular, Britain, the crucible of modern civilisation, comes in for massive criticism. As Greta Thunderthighs herself might say, “How dare we!?” But must the ‘sins’ of the father always be visited upon the sons? Just like the eternal nagging of the BLM movement, it is always somebody else’s fault, isn’t it?

Well bollocks to that, all of it. If you feel that you have been punished for an accident of your birth, why should it be somehow just for others to be punitively berated for their slightly more advantageous accident? The pursuit of equality – such an outcome being impossible to both describe and to bring about – invariably take the form of handicapping talent or good fortune. Of course life is unfair, it’s a roll of the dice, but if you try to hobble the winners eventually they take their game elsewhere.

It is literally madness if you seek help to come threatening violence (or, as we call it now, invasion by mass immigration). The industrial revolution brought you roads, medicine, industry, a means of escaping agrarian poverty and mere subsistence. It brought you communication and education and reduced your death tolls immeasurably. And, in fact, despite your perceptions and prognostications about extreme weather events, fewer people today, across the entire plant, lose their lives due to the effects of climate.

Life expectancy in what we used to call the third world is greatly increased, and with prolonged better health, as a result of which, your populations grow. And because so many of the supposedly ‘most vulnerable’ live in societies where procreation appears to be a competition, if mankind is the driver of climate change, then it is these countries where the future problem lies.

Just as the movers and shakers of the Industrial Revolution brought solutions to the economies and the health and welfare of the world, it is those same advanced societies which are doing the most to ameliorate the effects of former industrial processes. The solutions do not lie in sub-Saharan Africa, nor in China, Brazil, India or even the appallingly backward provinces of Pakistan, one of those most vocal in their condemnation of Britain's unintended malice.

None of these countries will be in the vanguard of future advances in combatting the effects of climate change. Instead they will play the bigger part of making it all worse, as they demand we reduce our emissions simultaneously with them acquiring all the means by which to increase theirs. It will be Britain and the US and Germany and the Nordic countries which will drive progress, not them. Reparations? They should be paying us.

A Fair COP?

In a world where ignorance and incompetence rule the day it was only natural that the charisma vacuum known as Keir Starmer would want to capitalise on both with this ridiculous article in The Guardian in which he attacks Rishi Sunak’s stance on COP27. The Guardian readership, that well established echo chamber of leftist thought, that self-regarding intelligentsia will likely lap it up, but will they either understand it, or challenge its trite and simple lies?

It is all very well saying that Labour would bring about an economic and energy miracle that has defeated the best minds of the most capable countries in the world, but where is the policy, the detail? In every case where Labour says they would do better, that their solutions are ‘fully costed’, that they would bring peace and prosperity, the solution seems to hinge far more on simple faith than hard science.

Goons like Richard Burgon keep bleating on about wealth taxes, with no real argument as to what they mean by wealth. Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, likewise, has never been quick to publish the means by which Labour would reverse the declines in our fortunes. And Starmer himself is a mere, adenoidal talking head, repeating the mantra of opposition: we will make it better, but we can’t tell you how. ‘We will be better than them’ has never sounded anything other than infantile.

100% ‘green’ energy by 2030 sounds great, but it is not possible without redefining what you mean by ‘green’. The target he is proposing is at best an accounting fraud, but it gets nowhere that good. It would mean off-shoring our CO₂ emissions by a combination of shifting even more industry abroad and by counting some emissions as ‘better’ than others. Drax, for instance, gets away with both and despite it creating more CO₂ than when it burned coal, it counts as zero because it burns wood. (The carbon-neutral cycle it claims to be part of has a cycle time measured not in tens but in hundreds of years.)

To get to where we need to be, we need a better educated population – that’s a timescale of a generation, or more likely two. To get towards zero emissions we need reliable technology at an affordable price and thus we can rule out the contributions made by average families. Those of you luxuriating in your off-grid, low-energy, prosumer (producer and consumer – yes, it’s a real word now) world where you hand knit your own electricity from golden yarn spun from the sun’s rays can pat yourselves on the back all you like – it will probably take the lifetime of the tech to negate the environmental cost of creating it.

The bare facts are that if the world genuinely takes climate change and the role of CO₂ in creating it seriously, then the world needs to work together. Starmer is right about that. But if he thinks that in a mere six years, assuming he takes power in 2024, his motley bunch of angry class warriors are going to bring that about, he is either spectacularly stupid, or fundamentally dishonest. If he wanted to do what he says he wants to do, he would be better to join forces with, rather than attack, the government of the day.

Blaming the Conservatives for the globalist economic mess gets us nowhere. ‘Holding government to account’ is a hollow, meaningless phrase trotted out for the tabloids. The very language of opposition is mere petulant foot stamping. And as for all the supposed green jobs, they are already there, in China, in India, in Korea, in Germany. But they are not coming here and are not likely to come here; the UK's net-zero future is a fairy-tale and all the initiatives have already been taken by others. World leading in green energy, my arse.