The logic doesn’t work here

Just to be clear about our basic stance here - we don’t care about fossil fuels. If renewables turn out to be the better solution then renewables are the better solution. Or nuclear, or fossil, or tidal or whatever.

What we do care about is the method used to test this - reality. This means that we try all the different things, look at what the results of the different things are then do more of those that work and less of those that don’t. That is, subject everything to the market - reality - test and see which wins.

At which point we’re told this:

Last week, the United Kingdom did something all too rare: it chose leadership by backing science and prioritizing public safety. The Labour government announced it would ban new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, strengthen a windfall tax and accelerate phasing out of fossil-fuel subsidies.

These are not symbolic gestures. They are an acknowledgment that the global energy system is shifting and that mature economies must shift with it.

That doesn’t work. It doesn’t work as a simple piece of logic.

If the global energy system is shifting then all well and good. Fine by us. But if the global energy system is shifting on its own to this newer and better system then there’s no need to ban the old nor tax it into non-existence. Because the global system is shifting already, see?

If it is necessary to ban the old - or tax it into non-existence - then the global system is not shifting, is it?

That is, the very fact that the ban - or the taxation - is deemed to be required is proof perfect that the system isn’t shifting.

As with, say, bans on supermarkets to save the High St. The only reason a supermarket could damage the High St is if people went and shopped in the supermarket thus reducing trade on the High St. Which means that shoppers do desire the supermarket and should not be denied one in order to save that High St they do not prefer.

The ban itself is the proof that the contention is incorrect. Because if the contention were correct - the desire for the High St, the dying of fossil fuels - then the ban would not be required.

You’re right and yes we do know this. Our desires are rather different from those of many others. Which is rather the point being made here too, the only method we’ve got of working out desires is to allow that consumer preference to play itself out. But logic is logic and we don’t each get our own form of it. If fossil fuels are dying out then we don’t need to ban them - that the ban is being suggested is proof they’re not dying out. Therefore, of course, we shouldn’t ban them.

Tim Worstall