The Net Zero Scandal

Amid the murky world of climate politics is a constellation of organisations vying for influence, awash with cash, all pushing on the green juggernaut, regardless of what the broader public wants or needs. The public’s views, interests and wishes count very little in any corridors of power, where only the alignment of academia, global agencies, and NGOs is required. Behind the interventions of every fake charity, dodgy academic outfit, and mysterious think tank, are the same-old-same-old weirdo billionaire philanthropists. But is this unique to climate? This week’s guests has revealed that it surely is not. Charlotte Gill, whose investigations can be found in The Sunday Telegraph, The Critic, the Daily Sceptic, and elsewhere has begun to audit what she calls Woke Waste — the frivolous frittering away of vast amounts of public money on some very odd ‘academic research’. And she has also charted the flows of cash to countless organisations that dominate the public sphere with very particular views on climate change, so-called ‘assisted dying’, Britain’s membership of the EU, and transgender ideology. You can find Charlotte on Twitter @CharlotteCGill and her websites at charlottecgill.co.uk and Woke Waste.

It takes a lot of patience, hard work, and a determined mindset to get to the bottom of claims about how much the UK’s climate and green energy policies are already costing us, and how much they are likely to cost us in the future. There is the physics of energy generation, and there are the relative merits and demerits of conventional verses green tech. And there are the constraints of the power grid itself. And then there is a bewildering energy wholesale energy market, the complexity of which is magnified by different subsidy regimes, attempts to fix policy failures, and a constant addition of expensive new green generators. Then there is the retail market, from which you and I buy the energy we use, at ever increasing prices. Buried beneath the green politicians', wonks', academics' and companies claims about the benefits of renewable energy is the inconvenient data. In this week's episode, David Turver of the Eigen Values Substack sheds some light on the eco-darkness.  

Climate science has many problems. But rather than confronting these issues in open and transparent debate, advocates of climate policies seek to shut down and slander their critics. In this episode, we hear from Marcel Crok, founder of Clintel — Climate Intelligence — a global movement of scientists and others who “aim to be the voice of reason in the often overheated climate debate”. And for many years, Marcel has been urging the Dutch government and others to understand the importance of debate to seemingly science-based policy.

In 2005, the UN EP predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010. But as 2010 came and went, climate sleuths observed that the areas from which the UNEP had predicted people would flee now had increased populations. The climate refugees were nowhere to be found, and the UNEP had quietly deleted their webpages, rather than reflected on their failed predictions. In 2022, the Zurich Insurance Group claimed that “There could be 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050”. But what is a climate refugee? Is there any such thing? And what does the rush to claim that climate change is creating so many victims, without regard for evidence, tell us about how we understand both climate and society? In this episode, we hear from Dr Calum Nicholson, who is Director of research at the Danube Institute, and former director and currently associate research fellow, at the Climate Policy Institute in Budapest. Dr Nicholson is also the co-editor and author of a number of chapters in Climate Migration; critical perspectives for law, policy, and research.

A number of weeks into the Labour government, the inevitable cracks are starting to appear in the pre-election promises. According to The Telegraph, the new Secretary of State for Energy Security & Net Zero refused to repeat his elections pledges in the House of Commons, and admitted that it may be some time before the bill payer sees the benefits of the tens, perhaps hundreds of £billions that are required to meet the government’s unilateral policy targets, such as clean energy by 2030. Meanwhile, new chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, plans to save £5.5 billion by scrapping winter fuel payments for ten million pensioners. In this podcast, we are joined by director of Net Zero Watch, Andrew Montford, and David Turver, whose Substack has shone much needed light on the Net Zero agenda’s economics and technical failures.

The appointment of the new government sees the return of Ed Miliband, who last held the energy brief in 2010. Then Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, now Energy Security and Net Zero, Miliband has made climate and energy, the beginning, midden and end fs his political narrative. This week we learned a little more about the new government’s plans, but not much. It is a shame that Miliband didn’t spend the last 14 years reading this week’s podcast guest. In 2009 Professor James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky’s Energise! was published — which argues for a radical re-think of energy… “…consuming more energy isn’t a problem if the right kind of supply can be arranged. With the right supply, climate won’t run out of control. But so long as the state’s ineffective, moralistic policy on energy is left unchallenged, it’s the state’s interventions in our everyday lives that look set to run out of control.” We caught up with James for some of his reflections on the book, and how well it has stood up over the fifteen years that have passed.

The new Labour government has wasted no time in launching three new vehicles it hope will reanimate the corpse of the green agenda. The National Wealth Fund, GB Energy and the Clean Energy Mission Control. All staffed and supported by the same-old-same-old wonks, banks and blobs, can this new configuration of deckchairs stop the Net Zero Titanic from sinking beneath the waves? And what is green economics anyway? Host and Climate Debate UK co-founder Ben Pile is joined by David Paton -- Professor of Industrial Economics, Nottingham University Business School. Catherine McBride OBE – Independent economist, often seen on screens and social media heroically defending Brexit.

In the aftermath of the UK General Election, we discuss the results, and the implications of the new Labour Government, with its massive majority of seats, with its historically tiny vote share — the smallest ever won by a government. Will the likes of Ed Miliband defy all reason and reality, to double down on Net Zero, or will his party stop him?  Host and Climate Debate UK co-founder Ben Pile is joined by David Rose - currently politics and investigations editor at the Jewish Chronicle, who will be shortly joining Unherd as investigations editor. Martin Durkin - director of many excellent and highly provocative films, including his latest, Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth). Andy Shaw - co-founder of Comedy Unleashed — the last bastion of free-thinking, unconstrained comedy, where free speech is allowed and loudly defended.