As we’ve been pointing out to George Monbiot for decades now - prices work.

George is getting all excited because people are thinking a bit more about non-fossil fuel powered methods of powering their lives:

The war has triggered a global surge in demand for electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, heat pumps and other fossil-free technologies.

Prices change, human behaviour changes. This does not surprise us but this idea that prices work does seem to surprise George.

That is doesn’t surprise us is precisely why we’ve been insisting, these decades, that whatever the problem is about climate change the best way to deal with it is through prices. As with Nordhaus, Stern, put the costs of fossil fuel use into prices and see human behaviour change. Exactly the effect and outcome George is so praising now.

We are on the cusp of vast, cascading shifts in energy supply and storage.

That could be true.

Rising enthusiasm for green tech coincides with some remarkable breakthroughs.

We’re less certain about some of those changes than many others. We think they’re possibilities at present and the proof will come when they’re actually here, at scale, with a price. People will look at the price and make their decision - prices work, d’ye see?

But having observed that prices work George reverts to his default:

Governments should seek the electrification of everything that can be electrified, and the retirement of much that cannot.

State power must be used to force everyone to do what prices do not - not as yet at least - suggest is the sensible thing to do.

Monbiot’s logic is just so lovely here, isn’t it? Changes in prices are getting people to do what George wants people to do therefore we must stop using prices and substitute state power to get people to do what George wants people to do.

As with Barbie and math, “Logic is hard”.

Tim Worstall