the answer to the #climatecrisis is more freedom
We are in the middle of an “inevitable and irreversible trend” of destruction of our civilisation, our food supply chain, biodiversity, and water, thanks to human-induced climate change. If it is inevitable and irreversible, then what are we worrying about.
Alas, worry we do. There’s an existential threat, somewhere, out there. Every time I get a coffee or drive a child to school or buy a new phone, I am told that I’m making the threat much worse. It’s not that I suffer as a result of these actions, it’s that someone else, or even something else, might suffer in some far corner of the globe and I really should feel terribly guilty.
It is not enough however to feel personal guilt and to change my actions and even try to persuade my friends and family to follow suit. The Irish government has decided that I would be useless at such an important task. They’ve decided to take the matter out of my hands by introducing their highly invasive “Climate Action Bill”. Nothing says “I am confident that my position is the right one” like making all possible counter positions illegal.
What this represents is a huge transfer of power from individuals to the hands of the state. The free market i.e. any member of the public or entrepreneur, cannot be depended upon to solve the problem, so the government will provide a solution that works not just for us here in Ireland, but for the whole world. If the 5million people living in Ireland faced an existential threat, I trust the ability of a free society to determine practical solutions, that we can support voluntarily, more than coerced government legislators. The government has decided that they should profit first, and any companies they hand colossal infrastructure projects to.
With the best will in the world, I can’t trust this government to save the lives of all those stakeholders, but I do trust their ability to make our lives hell in the process.
The only solution to a problem like this, both from the viewpoint of practicality and overall wellbeing, is to increase freedom to every individual. Like a patient who receives a terminal diagnosis and faced with death, decides to really live; shouldn’t we be allowed the freedom to enjoy our final years on earth free from bureaucracy.
If the sea-levels are to rise and flood parts of Dublin or London, the greatest threat to livelihoods of inner-city dwellers is that they couldn’t afford to move house. High taxes and a lack of cheap alternative housing due 100% to government intervention are the only reasons to be concerned with a rising tide.
Instead, the plan for us is to stay put, your downstairs kitchen might flood every spring, but by 2100 we will hopefully have reversed the effects of all that human industrialisation. By the by, everyone else is going to chip in to pay for it, or be imprisoned.
This year we saw floods, heatwaves, fires, and cold snaps. Not uncommon occurrences, resulting in a lot of death and destruction. Fires occurred on public land in state-owned forests. Why are these forests not managed for fires by clearing brush and having controlled burns at low-risk times? Why do politicians wait until after a devastating fire to go around and fist-bump exhausted firefighters, rather than proactively allocate resources? Why are there no park rangers to monitor activity in forests and supervise any would be arsonists?
Floods occurred in known flood plains, as God intended. It’s unfortunate that people built houses in these floodplains. It’s even more unfortunate for insurance companies who didn’t understand the risks involved and are on the hook for massive liabilities.
Fatal snow storms in Texas and even sustained +30degree weather in Ireland are not insurmountable challenges to overcome. These are easily solved with cheap, reliable energy that can power heaters or air conditioning. The thinking behind the climate action bill says we will reverse engineer the climate so that by 2100 we won’t get unnatural, sustained +30degree temperatures in Ireland and you won’t have to stew in your own sweat at night. It isn’t remotely realistic or agreeable.
The biggest fallacy in the government strategy is that of renewable energy. The plan is for 70% of Ireland’s energy to come from renewable sources, wind and solar. Every country where this is implemented faces unbelievable increases in the cost of energy or electricity. Energy is the fuel for every single other industry, as well as our homes. If energy becomes more expensive, then everything else becomes more expensive.
The fallacy goes that wind and solar will have us living in some ‘green’ utopia, like a rudimentary farm where the wind powers the mill to grind the corn and the sun ripens the fruit in the fields. The plan omits that even for this primitive agriculture, the majority of grunt came from the methane-excreting, grass-eating oxen pulling the yoke.
If carbon dioxide is the planetary poison it is claimed to be, then the free market has already provided a solution. Made illegal in Ireland by the green party, nuclear power represents a carbon free, safe, dependable, and cheap source of energy. It should be rolled out comprehensively and fast. Even when faced with this obvious truth, the government will not allow for the tiniest increase in freedom.
