By Paul Homewood
Toby Young wrote:
Izabella Kaminska, formerly Editor of FT’s Alphaville and now Editor of blind spothighlighted an alarming passage in a document published in January 2021 by Deutsche Bank Research titled ‘What must we do to rebuild‘. Eric Heyman wrote a section on the difficult choices the EU faces if it meets its goal of achieving ‘climate neutrality’ by 2050 – in other words Net Zero – and says the following:
The impact of current climate policy on people’s daily lives is still quite abstract and acceptable to many households. Climate policy comes in the form of higher taxes and fees on energy, making heating and moving more expensive. Some countries have set minimum energy performance standards for buildings or similar rules in other areas. However, climate policy does not determine our lives. We make important consumption decisions, such as whether we travel, how much we travel and what means of transport we use, whether we live in a large house or a large house. small apartment and how we heat our house, how many electronic devices we have and how much we use them or how much exotic meat and fruit we eat. These decisions tend to be made on the basis of our income, not on climate considerations.
If we really want to achieve climate neutrality, we need to change our behavior in all these areas of life. This is simply because there is not yet the right cost-effective technology to allow us to maintain our standard of living in a carbon neutral way. That means the price of carbon would have to rise dramatically to motivate people to change their behaviour. Another (or perhaps complementary) option is to significantly tighten the regulatory law. I know that “ecological dictatorship” is a nasty word. But we may have to ask ourselves whether we can be willing to accept some kind of ecological dictatorship (in the form of regulatory laws) and to what extent move towards climate neutrality. .
When he says that we have to “ask ourselves… whether and to what extent can we be willing to accept some kind of ecological dictatorship” I don’t think he meant to suggest Net Zero referendum. Instead, “ourselves” means the EU’s ruling class. It must ask itself whether it is willing to pass legislation forcing EU people to modify its behavior to meet its goal of ‘climate neutrality’ by 2050, regardless of whether it has a democratic right to do so. like that or not.
Read the full article this.
We really shouldn’t be surprised. We’ve had many warnings about what’s coming to us in recent years.
Just a year ago, for example, the German Health Minister himself told us:
“I think we need certain restrictions to stop climate change. That means less travel is also part of it. I can’t even rule out that during the climate crisis we could be in a situation where we have to ban certain things.
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