Tag: saving the planet

Miliband’s Favourite Economist Doesn’t Understand How Markets Work

Ed Miliband, as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero in the Labour government, spoke at a Good Growth Foundation event. He praised Mariana Mazzucato (UCL professor, often called the “godmother of missions”) for shaping Labour’s approach. Miliband framed the transition away from fossil fuels as delivering both energy security and cheaper energy long-term, positioning government-led “missions” (directed investment, industrial strategy, and public direction of innovation) as the solution to climate and growth challenges.

From Tilak´s Substack

By Tilak Doshi

When Ed Miliband took the podium at the Good Growth Foundation’s National Growth Debate in Westminster last week, he did not disappoint his audience of the converted. Flanked by the economist he has long revered, Miliband delivered a speech that could serve as a textbook case of what I have elsewhere called the “economic illiteracy of UK energy policy”.

Yet to dismiss it as mere stupidity would be a mistake. There is a method to Miliband’s madness—one honed over years in the cloistered halls of “woke” Oxford and the Fabian-inspired London School of Economics and now supercharged by the “mission”-obsessed theories of Professor Mariana Mazzucato of University College London.

In that speech—republished by the New Statesman—Miliband declared that “the era of fossil fuel security is over, and the era of clean energy security must come of age.” He credited “the godmother of missions, Marianna Mazzucato, who’s with us,” for the intellectual scaffolding of Labour’s clean energy push.

The mission, he said, established in opposition and now in government, has “two parts—driving to a clean electricity system but also electrifying as much as we can, as we decarbonise the wider economy.” Informed by the “lessons” of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the latest crisis over the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Miliband insists Britain must “double down” on net zero, tax North Sea oil and gas investments punitively, and “electrify everything” while rejecting any new exploration and development of domestic hydrocarbons.

Pernicious Political Elite

This is not ignorance born of inexperience. Miliband has been a central figure in Britain’s—and the world’s—climate movement for nearly two decades. As Climate Change Secretary under Gordon Brown, he helped shepherd the 2008 Climate Change Act, the legislative foundation for the UK’s self-proclaimed folly of “international climate leadership”. He has since served as Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and, since July 2024, as the government’s Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary.

His fingerprints are on every major escalation: the legally binding net zero target by 2050, the push for “clean, homegrown” renewables, and the deliberate throttling of North Sea production through windfall taxes and regulatory hurdles. Far from a novice, Miliband is a seasoned operator who has consistently placed climate ideology above economic realism. The roots of this approach lie in his education. Miliband read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, before earning an MSc in Economics at the LSE.

PPE, that notorious Oxbridge conveyor belt of generalist debaters and policy wonks, has long been criticised for producing slick operators fluent in debating abstractions and civil service procedures but often shallow on real world trade-offs and incentives. The degree is seen as a “sure ticket to the top,” having regularly produced numerous UK Prime Ministers (including Cameron, Truss, and Sunak), cabinet ministers and top civil servants.

Add the Fabian socialist ethos of the LSE—long a cradle of central planning and state-directed “progress”—and you have the perfect incubator for learned economic illiteracy. This is not a failure to learn economics; it is the active absorption of a peculiar strain of it, one in which “saving the planet” by a self-appointed expert class from the apocalypse of “global boiling” trumps every mundane consideration of reliability or opportunity cost.

Enter Mariana Mazzucato, the UCL professor whose 2021 book Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism has become the bible for Starmer’s five-mission Labour platform. Miliband’s praise of her as the “godmother of missions” was no throwaway line. Mazzucato’s framework—bold state “missions” to shape markets, “directionality,” “intersectoral collaboration,” and “public value”—has been adopted wholesale. Starmer’s missions on net zero, health, education, and the rest echo her call for government to move from “fixing market failures” to actively creating markets through “moonshot” ambition.

Critics of Prof. Mazzucato, including economists like Alberto Mingardi in City Journal and Michael D. Thomas in The Independent Review, refer to her work as an example of the “nirvana fallacy”: comparing imperfect real-world markets to an idealised, omniscient state free of rent-seeking, bureaucratic capture, or coordination failures. Her evidence is selective—she overstates the state’s role in innovations like the mobile phone while downplaying government waste, political short-termism, and the knowledge problem that Friedrich Hayek warned against in his critique of central planning’s “fatal conceit.”

Mazzucato’s jargon—“missions,” “moonshots,” “collective intelligence”—is not neutral rhetoric. It is the linguistic scaffolding of a worldview in which experts in white papers and government institutes know better than price signals, consumer choice, or entrepreneurial discovery. Miliband and Starmer quote her not as an economist offering testable hypotheses but as an influencer whose narrative fits the climate zeitgeist.

Since 2023, Prof. Mazzucato has served as a key technical adviser to Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley and co-authored with the prime minister two major reports on inclusive and sustainable development for Barbados. A central plank of the government is the Bridgetown Initiative which Mottley launched and invited Mazzucato to join as a founding member in 2022. The Initiative calls on the UN to give climate-vulnerable small island developing states (SIDS) which allegedly face existential threats from sea-level rise expanded access to loss-and-damage funding and climate finance mechanisms.

The Climate Imperative Above All

Economics is the science of ranking alternatives under scarcity, aka “opportunity costs” and trade-offs among various public policy choices by government. When climate change is elevated to existential imperative, trade-offs disappear by fiat. There is only one opportunity (“decarbonize”) and only one cost (“decarbonization”) that matters. The only permissible policies are those that accelerate decarbonisation, no matter the cost to bills, jobs, or growth. Nowhere is this clearer than in UK energy policy. Miliband insists that renewables are “homegrown” and “clean,” and “cheaper” to boot, insulating Britain from volatile global fossil fuel prices.

Yet none of these claims survive scrutiny. Solar and wind components are overwhelmingly manufactured in China, whose coal-fired power underpins the entire global supply chain from mining rare earths to refining polysilicon. The “clean energy superpower” vision depends on Beijing’s dirty energy. The UK has various “on shoring” initiatives to bring about a “manufacturing renaissance” in clean energy. Most are far-fetched to say the least (remember Boris Johnson’s boast about making the UK the “Saudi Arabia of wind energy”?) There are no UK-owned major OEM (original equipment manufacturers). Turbines are still designed and largely supplied by foreign companies (Vestas, Siemens Gamesa, GE Vernova). A “British wind turbine” from scratch would require enormous R&D, capital, and scale that doesn’t currently exist.

In any full-cycle analysis of renewable energy manufacturing, the mining and refining of minerals and rare earths required to produce components in solar, wind and battery technologies is anything but clean. And the myth of “cheap” renewables has been debunked countless times though interminable debates on system costs and intermittency keep being repeated across the energy policy literature. But the real test for all countries embarked on the Net Zero campaign remains as to how long can government subsidies for renewables on the one hand and high taxes on fossil fuels on the other, last before voters revolt over high energy bills and before the bond vigilantes come calling as the country tests its creditworthiness in international credit markets.

Meanwhile, punitive taxes on North Sea investments have accelerated decline in a sector that still provides Britain energy security and tax revenues. IEA’s Executive Director Fatih Birol — who had sounded contrite previously regarding his anti-fossil fuel posture in public meetings with US Energy Secretary Chris Wright — once again echoes Miliband. Since no new oil and gas investments are needed because demand will fall and investments will be stranded, Mr. Birol advises that the UK should forgo much of its potential North Sea expansion “despite the pressure”.

In the energy crises brought on by the Russian invasion of the Ukraine in 2022 and now in the face of the Hormuz crisis, Fatih opined in an “exclusive with the Guardian” interview:

“There will be a significant boost to renewables and nuclear power and a further shift towards a more electrified future…And this will cut into the main markets for oil…The vase is broken, the damage is done – it will be very difficult to put the pieces back together. This will have permanent consequences for the global energy markets for years to come.”

What Net Zero Has Wrought for Britain

Britain’s cumulative GDP growth since 2008 lags the US and even much of the EU, as Jon Moynihan meticulously documents in his two-volume Return to Growth: How to Fix the Economy. While the US boomed on the shale revolution and market-led innovation, the UK has presided over deindustrialisation, energy poverty, and policy-induced stagnation.

Massive government R&D spending on green innovation — as per Prof. Mazzucato’s call for “moonshot missions”—falls short when subjected to economic scrutiny. Miliband’s £22 billion bet on carbon capture and storage (CCS)—an unproven, outrageously expensive technology—exemplifies the conceit. It is the very industrial policy Mazzucato champions: government “picking winners” while socialising risks and privatising rewards for cronies.

Private firms like Google and SpaceX often lead where government lags. Government R&D subsidies invite cronyism—firms find it easier to lobby for handouts rather than compete in a competitive marketplace. Bureaucratic committees cannot replicate the dispersed knowledge of markets with skin in the game. Nuclear fusion, for instance, always remains “50 years away,” and history is littered with white elephants from state-directed innovation. Miliband’s approach reflects this planner’s hubris writ large.

Lenin’s Useful Idiots

The deeper problem is emotional, not intellectual. As one perceptive X post claims, Ed Miliband suffers from a “saviour complex”. Advisers who understand economics are sidelined because the mission is messianic: Britain must lead the world in “climate leadership,” consequences be damned. This learned illiteracy is shared across the Anglosphere’s progressive governments—from Ottawa to Canberra to Brussels. They double down on net zero dogma even as energy prices soar, industries flee, and voters revolt at the ballot box.

Mazzucato’s ideas provide the perfect intellectual cover. Her missions promise purposeful capitalism without the messy realities of perverse incentives, bureaucratic failure or unintended policy consequences. They elevate “public purpose” above profit and loss, allowing politicians to pose as visionaries while entrenching bureaucratic power and corporate welfare. In this, they serve a larger agenda: using climate as the Trojan horse for expanded state control over the economy.

Lenin famously found “useful idiots” among Western intellectuals sympathetic to the Bolshevik cause—naïve fellow travellers who lent credibility to revolutionary violence. The Greens, it seems, have found their own cadre in the Mazzucato mould: well-credentialed, jargon-fluent economists whose learned illiteracy provides intellectual respectability to policies that immiserate the working class, hobble growth, and enrich cronies.

Call them Mazzucato’s idiots. They are indispensable to the Net Zero agenda precisely because they cloak ideological zeal in the language of economic sophistication. Britain deserves better. Until policymakers rediscover the humility of classical political economy—acknowledging trade-offs, the limits of state knowledge and state action, and the superior information-processing power of competitive markets—the method to Miliband’s madness will continue to deliver higher bills, lower growth, and energy insecurity dressed up as climate virtue and moral triumph.

The mission, it turns out, is not to save the planet. It is to remake capitalism in the image of the administrative state. And the bill, as always, will be paid by ordinary Britons.

A version of this article was first published in the Daily Sceptic https://dailysceptic.org/2026/04/29/milibands-favourite-economist-doesnt-understand-how-markets-work/

Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former contributor (cancelled) to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.

Tide Turns Against Climatists’ Agenda

For nearly two decades, Britain’s climate lobby has held an iron grip on policy, discourse, and public imagination, promising a utopian future of cheap energy, green jobs, and global leadership. From Westminster’s corridors to the BBC’s airwaves, the mantra was clear: Net Zero would make us richer, healthier, and safer, all while saving the planet. But the cracks in this narrative are now gaping wounds. Soaring energy bills, crumbling industries, and a public fed up with unfulfilled promises signal a seismic shift. The tide is turning against the climate change agenda, and it’s about time.

An illustration depicting a sinking ship labeled 'NET ZERO' with several rats jumping off into the water, symbolizing fleeing from failing policies.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

A man with a beard and sunglasses stands in front of a stranded boat with 'Climate Crisis Inc.' written on its side, set against a clear blue sky.

Richard Miller points to growing distrust of climate ideology and to receding support for impractical energy and social policies aimed at fighting global warming/climate change, but serving only to inflict energy poverty. His article is The Tide Turns Against the Climate Change Agenda: A Long-Overdue Reckoning.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Close-up of vintage train wheels with text overlay reading 'Climate Crisis Inc.', 'Catastrophic', and 'Irreversible'.

For nearly two decades, Britain’s climate lobby has held an iron grip on policy, discourse, and public imagination, promising a utopian future of cheap energy, green jobs, and global leadership. From Westminster’s corridors to the BBC’s airwaves, the mantra was clear: Net Zero would make us richer, healthier, and safer, all while saving the planet. But the cracks in this narrative are now gaping wounds. Soaring energy bills, crumbling industries, and a public fed up with unfulfilled promises signal a seismic shift. The tide is turning against the climate change agenda, and it’s about time.

A cartoon depicting a construction crane with a wrecking ball labeled 'All Right, Is That Zero Emissions Yet?' hovering over a heap of debris, including a sign reading 'WORLD ECONOMY' with 'CANCELED' written on it, symbolizing critique of zero-emission goals and their impact on the economy.

The climate establishment’s dominance rested on a seductive pitch: green policies would deliver prosperity without pain. Wind turbines and solar panels would slash energy costs, insulate us from petrostates, and create a jobs bonanza. As Maurice Cousins noted in his August 2025 Artillery Row piece, this vision transformed environmentalism from a middle-class indulgence into a technocratic consensus, backed by state funding, Big Philanthropy, and celebrity endorsements.

Graphic showing a circular arrow design with the words 'ZERO CO2 SUICIDE' in bold yellow font on a gray background.

Yet, the reality is starkly different. Britain now faces some of the highest industrial energy costs in the developed world, with electricity prices for businesses nearly double those in the U.S. Heavy industry is in retreat, steelworks and manufacturing plants are shuttering, while the UK’s reliance on energy imports has surged, exposing vulnerabilities during crises like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A cartoon depicting a man in athletic gear leaping in surprise from electric wires after receiving a high electricity bill, with the caption 'New Olympic Sports: Electricity Bill Jump.'

The public isn’t blind to this failure. Polls reflect a growing backlash. While abstract support for Net Zero lingers, a 2025 YouGov survey found 47% of Britons want climate policies scaled back when faced with their costs, high bills, job losses, and lifestyle constraints. Reform UK voters, with 32% endorsing reduced green measures, are leading the charge, but even mainstream figures like Tony Blair and trade unions like Unite are breaking ranks, questioning the feasibility of the green agenda. This isn’t just scepticism; it’s a revolt against a narrative that promised abundance but delivered austerity.

Bar graph showing the increase in electricity prices per kWh for UK households from 2010 to projected prices in April 2023.

The climate lobby’s response? Double down and deflect. Take the recent video by Simon Clark and Carbon Brief’s Dr. Simon Evans, which Cousins critiques as a desperate attempt to “manage” dissent rather than engage with it. Acknowledging rising bills and Britain’s mere 1% of global emissions, it dismisses public concerns as misinformation fuelled by fossil-fuel propaganda. This patronising tone, epitomised by praising the “independent” Climate Change Committee, a body of unelected technocrats, only deepens distrust. It’s a tired playbook, seen in Brexit and migration debates: label critics as ignorant, pathologise their concerns, and cling to elite authority.

But the public’s lived experience, bills they can’t pay, industries they’ve lost,
trumps rhetorical window-dressing.

The folly of the climate agenda lies in its defiance of economic and physical realities. Low-density, intermittent renewables like wind and solar cannot power a modern industrial economy without massive subsidies and grid instability. The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that Net Zero’s costs, projected at £1.4 trillion by 2050, far outstrip promised savings. Meanwhile, global competitors like China and India, responsible for over 40% of emissions, continue burning coal with little regard for Western virtue-signalling. Britain’s “lead by example” approach is not just naïve, it’s self-destructive, hamstringing its economy while others race ahead.

Bar graph showing greenhouse gas emissions by country for 2021 and trends from 2000 to 2021, highlighting China as the largest emitter.

This reckoning is long overdue. The climate lobby’s promises were always more faith than fact, rooted in a utopian vision that ignored trade-offs. Green jobs? The UK’s renewable sector employs fewer than 75,000 people, a fraction of the 500,000 jobs lost in manufacturing since 2000. Cheaper energy? Households face bills 60% higher than a decade ago. Energy independence? The UK imports 40% of its electricity on peak days, often from fossil-heavy grids abroad.

A cartoon depicting workers on a large green jobs sign, expressing frustration about a generator running out of gas and commenting on quitting time.

The climate agenda’s failures are not a messaging problem,
they’re a policy disaster, colliding with
the hard limits of physics and economics.

The tide is turning because the public sees through the façade. From factory workers to suburban families, people feel the squeeze of policies that prioritise ideology over reality. The green backlash isn’t just about cost, it’s about trust. When elites lecture about “saving the planet” while ordinary citizens struggle to heat their homes, resentment festers. Reform UK’s rise and the growing chorus of mainstream dissent signal a broader awakening: the climate agenda, as it stands, is unsustainable.

Graphic showing the phrase 'NET ZERO' crossed out in red, surrounded by symbols representing renewable energy sources and sustainable practices.

It’s time to pivot. Instead of doubling down on unworkable targets, Britain needs pragmatic policies, investment in nuclear energy, which provides reliable, low-carbon power; deregulation to revive industry; and a frank acknowledgment that global emissions won’t bend to Western sacrifices alone. The climate lobby’s grip is slipping, and no amount of technocratic spin can stop the public’s demand for change. The reckoning is here, and it’s about time we embraced it.

A woman is struggling to light a fire in a fireplace, with a graphic showing a map of fuel poverty levels across the UK, indicating that 69% of surveyed people are in fuel poverty.

COP30 (50,000 participants for what?)

The transparent failure last month of COP30 has been acknowledged by the realists and downplayed by the hangers-on and funding-needy NGOs. Despite the futile, wasteful cause, plans for COP31 have begun.

Graphic depiction of the COP30 conference venue, showcasing hundreds of delegates gathered outdoors surrounded by lush greenery, with the event name 'COP30' prominently displayed.

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“… has the entire ‘Climate Change’ and Net Zero agendas now moved far away from true environmentalism? And has it forgotten the true sustainability principles of ‘People, Planet and Profit’ to become primarily focussed on one ‘P’ (profit)?” (– Adrian Hayes, below)

The transparent failure last month of COP30 has been acknowledged by the realists and downplayed by the hangers-on and funding-needy NGOs. Despite the futile, wasteful cause, plans for COP31 have begun.

But realism has become mainstream. And hard questions are being asked. Consider this from Adrian Hayes:

Trigger warning! I’ve spoken at a COP conference two years ago (COP28) and know there’s a lot of good stuff, and developing technology, that takes place on the fringes. But as COP30 finished last week in Brazil, it yet again caused an accusation of hypocrisy.

Over 50,000 delegates travelled to a conference facility built by flattening an area of Amazon rain forest, destroying many farmers’ livelihoods in the process, to hear speakers preach about ‘saving the planet’. Over 400 flew there by private jet – some journalists comparing it to a Cannes Film Festival. And indigenous Amazon tribes even stormed the conference on 11 Nov to protest against exploitation of the rain forests!

The critical thinking questions are: has the entire ‘Climate Change’ and Net Zero agendas now moved far away from true environmentalism? And has it forgotten the true sustainability principles of ‘People, Planet and Profit’ to become primarily focussed on one ‘P’ (profit)?

The stark realities are that ‘climate change’ didn’t cause 99% of the environmental issues we face today. And true environmentalism means reducing the deteriorating pollution in our air – not for ‘climate change’ reasons, but to limit the harms it is causing per se today. It means reducing pollution and waste in our oceans, seas, lakes, rivers and other waters, and protecting our marine life. It means eliminating micro-plastics that are now embedded in our food chain. Reducing pollution and waste on our land. Limiting resource depletion. Protecting all natural habitats, including rain forests, protecting bio-diversity and farmland – not covering it over with resource intensive solar panels. And a lot more.

The COP conferences do address some of these. But much is largely ignored on the altar–-and billions of dollars of subsidies–of ‘Net Zero’ alone…

About the most optimistic statement came from a week-one participant: “Made a few good moves [what?] but we’re yet to tackle the elephant in all the rooms. Fossil fuel phase out.”

Other observations went down from there.

JC Scott (eco designer) pushed back to the rosy view of Kara Hurst, chief sustainability officer at Amazon:

Hurst: Energized. Determined. Hopeful. That’s how I feel leaving COP30 in Belém. Why? Because being in that large gathering of other business leaders, policy makers and advocates made it clear: the climate commitments we’ve made are now translating into action, all around the world.

Scott: People spending well intentioned donations on jet travel producing platitudes that simply proliferate the fossil fuels hegemoney over world governance? I’m glad for you that you feel good but as an environmentalist since 1970, I see COP as an antidote to meaningful change.

Sam Jackson, Director, Climate Science & Impact at Ecologi, wrote:

I saw a disorganised and chaotic conference, with heavy-handed, militarised security. There was broken AC in 34ºC heat, and flooded pavilions when the downpours came. The failure of climate leadership from the US federal government was an elephant in every single room. The COP Presidency calls this the COP of truth, the COP of forests, the cradle of the Global Mutirão – and yet the SBSTA failed to endorse IPCC science, Indigenous Forest guardians are violently excluded, and 1 in every 25 delegates is a fossil fuel lobbyist.

On Sunday the Blue Zone entrance courtyard (where we recorded this video) was lively – full of delegates, selfie-takers and journalists. By Friday the same space had totally changed. It was now tense: full of military police, riot shields and army trucks. And swelteringly hot, with no shade whatsoever.

Amy Westervelt (Drilled) opined:

I’m just back from COP30 in Belém and it is making me feel crazy to watch so many climate advocates and reporters declare the final text coming out of it a victory…. And yet, the text is being declared a win because it reaffirmed commitments to the Paris Agreement, created the Just Transition Mechanism (without operationalizing it), and mentioned financing adaptation…while failing to outline how that will work and leaving out finance for loss and damage altogether.

A Guardian headline declared that the COP30 deal “inches closer” to the end of the fossil era, and I saw post after post from climate advocates in my feed celebrating either the inclusion of information integrity or just transition or both.

Nowhere was there mention of the grotesque displays of racism and homophobia in the closing plenary from the Russia-Saudi-India bloc that succeeded in stripping fossil fuel phaseout from the text and attempted to shame the negotiators from Colombia and Panama for objecting to it. Perhaps more to the point, nowhere was there mentioned that inching forward at a time when great leaps are needed is not a win.

Which left me wondering: what is the point of activism that celebrates hypocrisy? Or of journalism that doesn’t tell the whole truth

Westervelt ended:

The mess of COP highlights once again the importance of both climate litigation and civil disobedience in this moment. If governments are going to continue to dither as the climate crisis worsens and to let fossil fuel executives poison our air, water, and atmosphere with impunity, the only recourse citizens have left is the courts, which are overwhelmingly siding with humanity’s right to live over industry’s right to profit, and the streets. Speaking of which, this week we’ll be bringing you the last two episodes of season 14 on exactly those two topics, with experts who will share what’s working. Keep demanding the actual truth, people!

Climate litigation? That’s losing where it matters most: in the producing countries, leaving the politicized countries with energy poverty for the masses. Civil disobedience? Good luck with that–the hammer has already been thrown down on that one.

Martin Grome:

Here’s a concise, fictional description of why COP30 is a failure:
1. Major emitters refused to increase their 2030 targets, leaving global ambitions unchanged.
2. Negotiators failed to agree on a binding fossil-fuel phase-out timeline.
3. Climate finance commitments fell far short of developing countries’ expectations.
4. The Loss and Damage fund remained underfunded and stalled by procedural disputes.
5. Adaptation targets were watered down after intense lobbying.
6. Civil society groups were sidelined, raising concerns about transparency.
7. Forest-related pledges were vague and lacked enforcement mechanisms.
8. The final declaration was perceived as symbolic rather than transformative.

Readers get the point. Failure after failure with climate alarmism in retreat intellectually and politically. When will the climate parishioners question the hand that feeds them? The Climate Industrial Complex … the cronies of political capitalism and the central planners (China).

Biden Climate Rules Onslaught: Coming to a Household Near You – The Climate Realism Show #111

On episode 111 of The Climate Realism Show, we are going to review many of the eco policies that amount to Biden’s war on homeowners and the citizenry for the sake of “saving the planet” from climate change.

The Heartland Institute

On episode 111 of The Climate Realism Show, we are going to review many of the eco policies that amount to Biden’s war on homeowners and the citizenry for the sake of “saving the planet” from climate change.

We’ll be discussing the Biden power plant rule, auto emissions rule, new ESA restrictions in Texas for a lizard, appliance rules, and more. The rules restricting gas stove and light bulbs and others supposedly to prevent so-called climate catastrophes affect our everyday choices and lives.

Joining us will be Marlo Lewis, Jr. who is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Lewis writes on global warming, energy policy, and public policy issues and will comment of the onslaught by Biden which appears geared to meet the 180 day deadline for such things before the November election.

Join host Anthony Watts, the Heartland Institute’s H. Sterling Burnett, and Marlo Lewis for the big list of FAIL. And, as always, we have the Crazy Climate News of the Week. Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET (12 p.m. CT) for the kind of climate realism you can’t find anywhere else, and join the chat to get your questions answered, too.

Follow us on Instagram: @HeartlandInstitute

We’re on Facebook: The Heartland Institute

Follow Linnea on Twitter @LinneaLueken

Support this content Donate – The Heartland Institute

EV, heat pump mandates just the tip of the iceberg

Modern governments are infected with the idea that they are anointed to squelch the desires of ordinary humans. To hold onto power, they force compliance – in even insignificant ways – with their whims. They try to crush anyone who speaks or acts against their power.

From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin

Midsection of businessman stacking coins with electric car at wooden table

“Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” – Lord Acton

Modern governments are infected with the idea that they are anointed to squelch the desires of ordinary humans. To hold onto power, they force compliance – in even insignificant ways – with their whims. They try to crush anyone who speaks or acts against their power.

Here’s an unspoken truth. While it is true that governments have subsidized the rich who buy electric vehicles, heat pumps, solar panels, wind turbines, and other products, their motives are far from the altruistic myth they spread across even kindergarten classrooms. They are rubbing our faces in the mud, saying, “Gimme your lunch money, or you will be sorry!”

And they are not ashamed, even when their pet policies create great harm to their “subjects.”

In the United Kingdom, the very birthplace of the Magna Carta and the modern theory of the “rights of man,” the government has decided to ban tobacco products, phasing it in over time. This comes on top of a myriad of other diktats – electric vehicles, heat pumps, and multi-front assaults on traditional culture.

Elsewhere in Europe, governments are just as smugly arrogant. As part of a putsch to force 40 million Europeans to buy electric vehicles (up from 8 million today), governments offer bribes to auto buyers to force-feed a future EV monopoly. Even in tiny Malta, 50 million euros have been allocated to “help” 5,000 Maltese into total dependency on the electric grid.

In the United States, government has decided to ban the export of natural gas, impose electric vehicle mandates, ignore laws protecting endangered species in the name of “saving the planet,” attack the very foundations of liberty inscribed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and lock up those who resist and ignored their right to a speedy trial. Another mandate requires all new vehicles to have a government-controlled “kill switch.”

New York is now monitoring social media writings, collecting data, and using law enforcement to stifle expression it dubs as “hate speech.” As nearly everything from mathematics to Taylor Swift lyrics is now deemed by somebody as “racist,” it becomes clear that New York intends to suppress any opinion the monarchy does not like.

In Canada, the Prime Minister debanked truckers who fought for their jobs. Now, a new “Online Harms Act” would empower the government to put people in prison for life for “hate speech” (defined by them, of course). Talk about squelching freedom!

It’s not just the monarchy that wants to crush free people. In pre-pandemic 2019, The Atlantic “warned” that “Overtourism is destroying the planet.” Last year, The New Yorker made a new case against travel, asserting that “travel turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best.”

That is, of course, unless you were an Antifa rioter traveling from city to city to burn down buildings and assault the police. Or John Kerry and his merrie men out “saving the planet” on private jets.

Funny how this viewpoint dovetails with globalist demands for “15-minute cities,” which the BBC glowingly describes as a glorious model that “requires minimal travel among housing, offices, restaurants, parks, hospitals, and cultural venues.” Then there’s the push for per-mile highway taxes to further suppress private travel.

More people now see that would-be monarchs and their courtiers are hell-bent on forcing society to bend to their oft-misguided will. No wonder that anyone who challenges government power is tarred as a “right-wing extremist.”

American colonists rebelled against a 4 percent tea tax because the revenues were being sent to the monarchy. Today, much higher taxes are being extracted for earmarks, foreign “aid” that never helps ordinary people, and subsidies to the rich and powerful that harm average taxpayers.

The 2024 U.S. elections could be a referendum on the abuses of government power against the people – a vote up or down on the elitist control. Rest assured that the powerful will do all in their power to distract, obfuscate, and even encourage street violence to prevent any serious challenge to their rule. Consider how quickly House Speaker Mike Johnson became a mouse.

There is a budding revolt, even in once-free Britain. Evidence includes the fact that £173 million of a £300 million subsidy program for heat pumps to replace gas boilers remains unused after 2 years of the bribery scheme (only the rich took the money). Even new electric vehicle sales to private individuals fell by 14 percent last year despite government bribes and threats.

Eschewing Biden’s mandates, consumers cite marathon charging times, higher insurance rates, and benefits to China among their objections to being forced to abandon their 300 million cars and trucks just so their “leaders” can earn brownie points in Davos.

In what might be deemed a shocking development (a betrayal of her class), Rebecca Grynspan, secretary-general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, admitted that “rich countries are using the green transition as an excuse to boost their own economies at the expense of developing ones, exploiting outdated WTO rules.”

Grynspan said developing countries see Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” and its European Union counterparts that subsidize domestic production of silicon chips, critical minerals, and green technology as “protectionist.”

She may as well have said “racist.” Developing nations are pressed to comply with EU- and UN-imposed “net zero” mandates via restrictions to trade, duties, and new taxes – all of which work against development of indigenous economies.

The massive wealth transfers to largely unregulated tech giants, the Big Three hedge funds (Black Rock, State Street, and Vanguard), and well-protected Big Pharma reveal just how much influence government has today over who wins and loses — and how the rich skew the game to their own advantage.

At the same time, leaders have brought the entire world to the brink of nuclear war.

A reckoning is coming.

Freedom that comes via oppression is only for the few.

The world today is crying out for freedom despite all the efforts of the monarchies and their courts to suppress and control the freedoms earned over centuries by those we once revered.

The battle is just now heating up.

As Coriolanus Snow might say, “Let the games begin.”