This is not just an absurdity, it’s wrong:
NHS to ban ‘useful’ anaesthetic to hit net zero targets
But this is what we end up with when we’ve a societal frenzy - as with religious epidemics, to the extent that worshipping Gaia isn’t in fact a religion.
The NHS is banning an anaesthetic gas to meet net zero targets in a move that a leading climate expert has warned lacks any scientific basis.
The health service has said it is “decommissioning” desflurane by early next year in order to help reduce “harmful emissions”.
The first error is to even dream that the NHS itself should be net zero. For that’s not what net zero means.
We don’t even agree with the idea itself - we think that human utility will be maximised over time, the aim of the entire game, by having more climate change and emissions than the net zero target allows. But put that aside for the sake of the argument here.
Net zero means that society as a whole is net zero in emissions. Not that each sector, subsector and detail of society is zero in emissions. That’s the very meaning of the word “net” in there. We cannot all be zero emittive after all - CO2 emissions are an inevitable result of breathing. So, some emissions are to be allowed even if the aim is for the system to be that net zero. And those that are to be allowed are going to be those with the highest value, of course. Like, say, taking away the extreme pain of surgery by providing anaesthesia.
This extends further too of course. People value flying - the average British summer causes that. OK, so that 2% of total emissions that are from flying are something we value highly, quite possibly more than the less climate change that would result from its absence. We can even test this - Air Passenger Duty is at or at least around the levels of a Stern compliant carbon tax and yet the flying still happens. People value flying more than they do the lesser amount of climate change. Therefore - that maximising of utility over time - we should keep the flying at the expense of the extra climate change.
Which does bring us to an interesting result. When we actually examine human preferences properly, by revelation not expression, then we find that net zero isn’t a target that everyone wants. And that before we get to the logical truth that the entire point of net zero is that not every activity needs to be non-emittive.
Or as we can put it, carry on gassing the people in pain and put up with the extra millimetre of water upon Bangladesh.