David Wallace-Wells in the NY Times:
The retreat from climate politics has been widespread, even in the midst of a global green-energy boom. . . .
To our north, the former central banker Mark Carney — whose 2015 warnings about the financial risks from climate change helped set the stage for Paris by alarming the world’s banking elite — became prime minister of Canada in March and as his very first act in office struck down the country’s carbon tax, before storming to a landslide victory in the April election. To our south, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, a former climate scientist, has invoked the principle of “energy sovereignty” and boasted of booming oil and gas production in her country — and enjoys one of the highest approval ratings of any elected leader anywhere in the world. Almost everywhere you look, the spike of climate alarm that followed Paris has given way to something its supporters might describe as climate moderation but which critics would call complacency or indifference. “You can’t walk more than two feet at any global conference today without ‘pragmatism’ and ‘realism’ being thrown around as the order of the day,” says Jason Bordoff, a former Obama energy adviser who now runs Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “But it’s not clear to me that anyone knows what those words mean other than this whole climate thing is just too hard.”
This:
Climate activists were once venerated as moral authorities by heads of state and a broadly liberal mass media; now they are being given jail sentences stretching multiple years for the crime of merely planning protests that might block up commuter traffic or for throwing paint against plexiglass they knew would protect the artwork hung behind it — a victimless publicity stunt if ever there was one.
Wallace-Wells objects to this, but I think it is vital for the promotion of environmental causes. All this paint-throwing crap hurts the cause, and the sooner we end it, the better. People hate attention-seeking, know-it-all jerks. But I would point to something deeper as the real point of conflict: the alliance of climate change activists with people determined to make the world poorer.
To me this has always been the Achilles heal of environmentalism, the nagging, hectoring attitude toward anybody who wants air conditioning or a big truck. This is just never going to work; nobody is signing on to environmental causes if it means giving up materialism.
And it doesn't have to! Solar power is booming worldwide, the price still falling every year. Electric cars are not taking over as quickly as some people predicted, because of issues with their batteries and overall reliability. But they will keep getting better; battery technology is also progressing very fast, and when batteries get as convenient as fuel tanks electric cars will dominate, because electric engines are just far superior to internal combustion or diesel engines. Electric cars already dominate new vehicle sales in China. Here is a nice anecdote:
Consider Pakistan. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it threw the world’s energy markets into crisis, sending already-high prices soaring and redirecting fossil fuels headed to markets in the developing world instead to energy-starved Europe, where each shipment could fetch a still-higher price. In Pakistan as elsewhere in South Asia, the result was rolling blackouts and widespread political discontent. And then, something miraculous happened: Without any coordination or planning, millions of frustrated Pakistanis began buying and importing rooftop solar panels manufactured in China, which had grown so inexpensive that in some global markets they were cheaper to buy than the wood for a fence.
Solar power is also taking off in Africa, for the same reason and in the same populist way, individuals and business buying their own Chinese solar panels. This is what we need: bottom up, demand-driven change. So long as environmental measures are imposed by distant governments on people who don't want them, they will lose politically.
Anyone who worries about climate change needs to stop focusing on Paris-style global plans or government mandates and join in the things already happening around us. The best thing many Americans could do to promote electrification is to go to planning meetings and speak against the NIMBYs trying to keep solar farms out of your county.
Stop railing against humanity and start celebrating our future.
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