More on Gretamania, from Iain Martin in the Times (£):
The “basic problem”, Greta Thunberg told MPs and campaigners in her speech at parliament this week, “is that basically nothing is being done to halt — or even slow — climate and ecological breakdown”.
As Thunberg was explaining to fawning legislators how “basic” the situation supposedly is, Extinction Rebellion campaigners continued to block the streets, glueing themselves to public transport for headlines and demanding that democratically elected British politicians yield to their demands to scrap the existing economic system.
At the peak of Gretamania — and it was like a late 1960s hippie “happening” at Westminster when the 16-year-old campaigner arrived at Portcullis House this week — it is judged heretical to question anything the prophet says. But here goes.
Thunberg may be a well-intentioned and eloquent campaigner, a walking riposte to all those who until recently claimed that the young are apathetic, but that does not make her right. Nor does it imply any duty for policymakers to do exactly what she says: that is, to destroy the western market economy in line with her vision of the Earth being consumed soon by a ball of fire followed by floods.
Her central claim, made repeatedly, that “nothing” is being done is demonstrably false. For several decades, western governments have aimed energy policy at tackling this challenge. In Britain, emissions have fallen by 38 per cent since 1990. Indeed, an encouraging piece of news landed a few days ago that should have introduced some balance into the debate. Over Easter, Britain burnt no coal in its power production for 92 hours — the longest coal-free period since before the First World War. [...]
Thunberg and her allies reject the gradualist analysis, though, in favour of a “black and white” vision of doom unless everything changes in one go. It is mesmerising, alarmist nonsense. “The main reason for this reduction is not a consequence of climate policies,” Thunberg claimed at Westminster. The CO2 reduction was instead down to the EU, she said. “A 2001 EU directive on air quality that essentially forced the UK to close down its very old and extremely dirty coal power plants and replace them with less dirty gas power stations.”
That is bad history, as Edgerton and other academics can show. It is also a misleading statement typical of the absolutism prevalent in Green populism, with its tendency to present complex problems as having simple and immediate answers.
“I don’t like compromising because it’s either this or that,” Thunberg told The Times this week. But compromise is essential in organising society. Instead, the climate radicals demand a purifying revolution. Only the instant destruction of capitalism (and its replacement with something nicer but as yet unspecified) will save the planet, wrote one of Thunberg’s more excitable supporters.
Put to one side for a moment the reality that the destruction of global capitalism and the end of markets is an epically terrible idea. The extension of market mechanisms — private property, free enterprise, price discovery via market competition, the accumulation and deployment of capital — has been a boon for humanity, helping to improve life expectancy and lifting billions out of poverty. In the process, mankind is polluting the planet. Even on the precautionary principle it makes sense to clean up the mess and aim to leave a legacy.
Yet proportion matters. Concern for the environment should not mean we cease to think critically and calmly. Our descendants will not thank us if we wreck the economy and reverse prosperity. The panic recommended by Thunberg — and the kneejerk policy that would follow — is an irresponsible way to approach a complex problem.
Every generation thinks it's the last one. Every generation thinks the the end times are coming. It's because we don't have the wit to see how the future might unfold without us.
Yes, climate change is a problem. Yes, we knew about this before Greta Thunberg came along.