Give it a Rest George Monbiot

Decades of hysterical climate and Net Zero fearmongering have clearly left the Guardian columnist terminally confused

Last month, the Guardian’s star climate and Net Zero headbanger George Monbiot was singing the praises of solar power, stating that along with wind it is “the cheapest component of our energy supply”. Alas, Our George, a posher person’s version of the down-market climate comedy clown Jim Dale, has not always been so effusive in promoting sunbeams as the answer to running a modern industrial economy. In June 2013, he noted that solar worked well at lower latitudes where peak electricity demand coincided with peak sunlight, but “less well” in places like the UK where peak winter demand occurs between 5pm to 7pm. After “initial enthusiasm”, he wrote that he was turned away from solar to give “reluctant” endorsement to large-scale wind and nuclear power.

What has changed in the meantime seemingly to alter his view, we may well ask. Nothing much. Solar still requires large and numerous subsidies, currently estimated at up to £4 billion a year, to provide intermittent, unreliable power amounting to a pitiful 6% of UK electricity. To achieve this, vast swathes of productive food-producing land are being turned into unsightly industrial dead zones. But ‘cheap’ wind and solar, along with expensive baseload-only nuclear, are all he has to justify cutting off humanity’s vital supply of hydrocarbons. Battery storage, explosive hydrogen, hydro, tidal power, cold fusion – all have failed various financial hurdles or the laws of physics and chemistry, sometimes both.

The tide of Net Zero fantasy is rapidly retreating, not least because the general public is slowly starting to understand the vital role that hydrocarbon-produced fertiliser plays in keeping world hunger at bay. Plastics, building materials and life-saving medicines can also be added to an extremely lengthy list. Anyone who wants to ‘Just Stop Oil’ needs to explain how life will continue with a 50% reduction in global food supplies resulting in horrendous decreases in populations around the world. The current problems in the Gulf with a potential 20% cut in global oil and gas are a massive wake-up call to push back on the decades-long nonsense peddled by elite, middle-class attention-seekers such as G. Monbiot.

Monbiot hates hydrocarbons with a vengeance and compares Norway’s vital exports to the British 19th century trade in opium – “a curse to be dumped on other countries”. One might wonder if he has ever tried spreading his luxury sneers and beliefs among Africans using natural gas and oil to improve crop yields, produce better drugs to battle tropical disease killers and to power water sanitation plants. Needless to say, Monbiot was a big supporter of last year’s Climate and Nature private member’s bill in the British Parliament. Mercifully, this disgusting anti-human bill did not pass since it would have cut UK hydrocarbon use to just 10% within a decade. That cull of 90% would have included the use of hydrocarbons in everything that was domestically or internationally produced. In addition to Monbiot, 200 MPs were prepared to support this high water mark of utter Net Zero stupidity.