That something need be done is not proof that this is the something that need be done
Will Hutton provides a lovely example of the incorrect logic used by all too many over climate change.
Still visibly shaken by the experience, they showed me their own terrifying photos of raging fire and flames beating their way to their holiday apartment, generating plumes of suffocating smoke to create daytime darkness; replicas of those you’ve seen in the newspapers but all the more authentic on a personal iPhone. A holiday had turned them into witnesses of an inferno.
England seen from the air as we returned is unnerving. Our once green and pleasant land is burned brown. Hardly a surprise, given that half of England is now officially suffering drought; and this after southern England experienced its fourth wettest winter since records began in 1836.
What joy that the evidence is gathered from a flight that emits those nasty, polluting, gases. We’d also point to how a wet winter is exactly what leads to the summer fires. It’s not in spite of, it’s because.
But OK:
Yet the former cross-party consensus, launched by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, and followed through the prime ministership of Theresa May legislating to hit net zero by 2050 – and then Boris Johnson banning new petrol and diesel car sales from 2030 – has been shattered. Up until relatively recently, companies – even those based in the US – made common cause committing to environmental, social and governmental goals to demonstrate their good citizenship. But the Maga base chafed, especially under the environmentally aware presidency of Joe Biden. This was “woke” capitalism that must be resisted.
That something need be done - let us just assume that for the moment - is not proof that this is the thing that need be done. That something need be done about climate change is not proof that every planner with a prejudice gets to gurn over their slide rule at us. Things like airports must - as a condition of their planning permissions - charge drop off fees in order to increase the number arriving by public transport. You know, you must arrive by bus to take your international jet flight? Or insisting that no more ICE cars be sold by 2030. Or maybe 2035. Or whatever year it will be by the time the planners realise their target will not be hit. Or even, the insistence upon fully EV, not hybrid, not hydrogen and so on.
At least one of us is listed as a climate denier (by DeSmog no less) for insisting that in fact this is the something that not be done even if something need be done. An economy planned around dealing with climate change will work as badly as an economy planned around any other target. Planning economies does not work and changing the reasons for the gurn/slide rule interface does not change that fact.
Yes, obviously markets are not perfect, markets do not work for everything all the time. But adapting markets works better than pretty much anything else near all the time. Which is why every non-somnolent economist says have the carbon tax and thus see the problem solved efficiently.
In 2025, for the first time, more editorials in British newspapers urged less action on the climate crisis than more, although, according to analysis by the Carbon Brief website, papers such as the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Daily Express and the Times were careful to focus their ire less on the climate crisis (plainly happening) but rather the expense and irrationality of targeting net zero as a means to contain it.
Quite. We’d not call ourselves right wing simply because classical liberalism isn’t. We do call ourselves neoliberals because we are. At which point that the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero is the new name for Gosplan is the mistake. Just because we’ve changed the name of economic planning doesn’t mean that economic planning is going to work. Y’know?
Tim Worstall