{"id":465270,"date":"2026-08-24T03:33:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T10:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=465270"},"modified":"2026-08-24T03:33:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T10:33:49","slug":"kathleen-stock-is-right-about-climate-but-wrong-about-whats-making-things-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=465270","title":{"rendered":"Kathleen Stock is Right About Climate \u2013 But Wrong About What\u2019s Making Things Worse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"723\" height=\"482\" data-attachment-id=\"465271\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?attachment_id=465271\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0-ChatGPT-Kathleen-Stock-is-Right-About-Climate-%E2%80%93-But-Wrong-About-Whats-Making-Things-Worse.png?fit=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1536,1024\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-title=\"0 ChatGPT Kathleen Stock is Right About Climate \u2013 But Wrong About What\u2019s Making Things Worse\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0-ChatGPT-Kathleen-Stock-is-Right-About-Climate-%E2%80%93-But-Wrong-About-Whats-Making-Things-Worse.png?fit=723%2C482&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0-ChatGPT-Kathleen-Stock-is-Right-About-Climate-%E2%80%93-But-Wrong-About-Whats-Making-Things-Worse.png?resize=723%2C482&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-465271\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0-ChatGPT-Kathleen-Stock-is-Right-About-Climate-%E2%80%93-But-Wrong-About-Whats-Making-Things-Worse.png?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0-ChatGPT-Kathleen-Stock-is-Right-About-Climate-%E2%80%93-But-Wrong-About-Whats-Making-Things-Worse.png?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0-ChatGPT-Kathleen-Stock-is-Right-About-Climate-%E2%80%93-But-Wrong-About-Whats-Making-Things-Worse.png?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0-ChatGPT-Kathleen-Stock-is-Right-About-Climate-%E2%80%93-But-Wrong-About-Whats-Making-Things-Worse.png?resize=640%2C427&amp;ssl=1 640w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0-ChatGPT-Kathleen-Stock-is-Right-About-Climate-%E2%80%93-But-Wrong-About-Whats-Making-Things-Worse.png?resize=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0-ChatGPT-Kathleen-Stock-is-Right-About-Climate-%E2%80%93-But-Wrong-About-Whats-Making-Things-Worse.png?w=1536&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0-ChatGPT-Kathleen-Stock-is-Right-About-Climate-%E2%80%93-But-Wrong-About-Whats-Making-Things-Worse.png?w=1446&amp;ssl=1 1446w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 723px) 100vw, 723px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/dailysceptic.org\/2026\/08\/23\/kathleen-stock-is-right-about-climate-but-wrong-about-whats-making-things-worse\/\">The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/dailysceptic.org\/author\/tilak-doshi\/\"><strong>Tilak Doshi<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In her&nbsp;<em>UnHerd<\/em>&nbsp;column last week, Kathleen Stock&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/unherd.com\/2026\/08\/why-ive-got-the-hots-for-localism\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">writes<\/a>&nbsp;from a \u201chorrifically well-insulated sweatbox\u201d, the fan beside her registering 29\u00b0C while the air outside hits 33. Every day is the same: clear blue, suffocatingly hot, uncannily still. The parks are brown, gardens turning to dust. Stressed trees drop huge boughs. At night, foxes prowl, thirstily searching for water. Brambles appear far too early; the pond at the end of the road is silting up. She feels discombobulated \u2013 sweaty, exhausted, her mind as vacant as the cloudless sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This opening of her&nbsp;<em>UnHerd<\/em>&nbsp;essay, \u2018Why I\u2019ve got the hots for localism\u2019, is an existential register of fatigue, rendered through direct observation and an aesthetic sensibility rather than charts or organised empirical data. Ms Stock has absorbed the idea of a \u201cnew kind of summer\u201d as lived experience. The cider-apple harvest is failing, harebells and wasps are disappearing, parts of the New Forest are blackened, elderly neighbours wilt in oven-like flats and local farmers watch stunted wheat and barley. She asks how we feel about this \u201cnew normal\u201d and answers with sadness and \u201cdiscombobulation\u201d that require no grand theoretical defence \u2013 much as grief for people or pets needs none.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dr Stock OBE,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kathleen_Stock\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a gender-critical feminist and philosopher<\/a>, is right about the larger strategic point that follows. Whatever the causes and consequences of global warming, a small country like Britain cannot do anything about it alone. Provisional&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/statistics\/provisional-uk-greenhouse-gas-emissions-statistics-2025\/2025-uk-greenhouse-gas-emissions-provisional-figures-statistical-release\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">UK territorial greenhouse-gas emissions<\/a>&nbsp;for 2025 stand at 367 MtCO\u2082e, less than 1% of the global total according to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Any meaningful reduction is swamped by emissions growth in China, India and other large developing economies. The coordination and free-rider problems among major emitters in any proposed global deal are near-impossible. Gathering the world\u2019s nations at the UN annual climate summits \u2013 the next one, COP31, to be held in Antalya, T\u00fcrkiye, from November 9th to 20th 2026 \u2013 has made little difference to global emissions over the past three decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"723\" height=\"530\" data-attachment-id=\"465274\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?attachment_id=465274\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-154.png?fit=930%2C682&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"930,682\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-title=\"image\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-154.png?fit=723%2C530&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-154.png?resize=723%2C530&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-465274\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-154.png?w=930&amp;ssl=1 930w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-154.png?resize=300%2C220&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-154.png?resize=768%2C563&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-154.png?resize=640%2C469&amp;ssl=1 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 723px) 100vw, 723px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead of clashing endlessly over the global warming narrative, she proposes detaching the local from the global. Chasing impossible global solutions hampers useful consensus-building on urgent local and regional problems to save vanishing landscapes and help the elderly in oven-like flats, manage failing harvests and buckling rails and form practical adaptation plans \u201cwithout any grand theory about carbon dioxide.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>An unprecedented hot summer, raging wildfires, failing agriculture: not by the numbers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Start with the weather itself. Stock treats the current summer as a novel meteorological regime \u2013 \u201cthe new kind of summer\u201d, a heat so unfamiliar that \u201cno one can remember what rain feels like\u201d. The parks are brown, trees drop boughs, foxes search for water. Yet British summers have been hot and dry before, and worse. The&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.metoffice.gov.uk\/about-us\/news-and-media\/media-centre\/weather-and-climate-news\/2026\/met-office-marks-50-years-since-the-legendary-summer-of-1976\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">1976 heatwave and drought<\/a>&nbsp;produced 16 consecutive days above 30\u00b0C at Heathrow, a peak of 35.9\u00b0C at Cheltenham and a drought so severe that a Cabinet minister was appointed specifically to manage it; some parts of southern England received under 55% of average rainfall over more than a year. The&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/1995_British_Isles_heatwave\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">1995 drought<\/a>&nbsp;is now regarded by meteorologists as drier still. Neither event required elevated atmospheric CO\u2082 to be explained; both were driven by persistent blocking high-pressure systems, the same phenomenon operating today. The insistence that 2026 is meteorologically unprecedented functions less as observation than as mood music for the argument that follows. Note that the UK Met Office itself, relying on junk weather stations and purveying \u201chomogenised\u201d \u2013 read massaged \u2013 temperature trends, has lost credibility as a reliable organisation, as my colleague Paul Homewood has&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.climateskeptic.org\/p\/the-met-office-is-no-longer-a-serious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">documented<\/a>&nbsp;rigorously over the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The same selective framing appears in Stock\u2019s treatment of local crises. She notes a nearby&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/live\/cly5252xqdvt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">train derailment<\/a>&nbsp;that observers speculate was caused by heat-buckled rails. Stock\u2019s catalogue of local issues includes early brambles, a silting pond, New Forest fires, a failing cider-apple harvest, disappearing harebells and wasps and stunted wheat and barley. Some of these can cause real hardships. But the causal story she tells is incomplete, and conveniently so. The \u201cheat buckling\u201d of rail tracks is being&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2026\/08\/19\/rail-officials-investigate-role-heatwave-train-derailment\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">investigated<\/a>&nbsp;by rail officials but, until it is confirmed, the likely culprits are poor maintenance of tracks and other infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wildfire investigators have long found that the overwhelming majority of UK wildfires are started by people, not lightning \u2013 the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/lordslibrary.parliament.uk\/wildfires-reducing-the-risks-and-mitigating-the-effects\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">House of Lords Library<\/a>&nbsp;concludes that almost all UK wildfires result from accidental or deliberate human acts, while Natural Wales estimates&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.cyfoethnaturiol.cymru\/5zgdxtll\/information-note-investigating-the-causes-of-wildfire.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">roughly 30% are arson and 70% accidental or careless<\/a>. Ignition, in other words, is a human-behaviour problem before it is a climate problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What has changed is fuel load. The fashion for \u2018wilding\u2019, and the accompanying retreat from controlled winter burning, has left England\u2019s uplands carrying more combustible vegetation than at any point in living memory. Labour\u2019s extension of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newshub.co.uk\/automotive\/2026\/08\/13\/labours-rewilding-drive-linked-to-record-wildfires-in-england-and-wales\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">restrictions on controlled heather burning across 1.6 million acres of peatland<\/a>&nbsp;has removed one of the oldest and most effective tools for breaking up continuous fuel and creating firebreaks; gamekeepers, moorland managers and land-owning bodies have warned for years that the policy was building toward exactly the kind of record wildfire season Britain has now had. The fashion for \u2018rewilding\u2019 and the abandonment of controlled burns are not neutral acts of nature; they are policy choices, promoted under green banners, made by identifiable people in Whitehall and Cardiff. When Stock attributes the blackened New Forest simply to \u201cthe heat\u201d of \u201ca new kind of summer\u201d, she erases the agency of those who decided that traditional land management was environmentally incorrect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Water stress and agricultural shortfalls raise similar questions. Reservoir capacity, leakage rates and abstraction rules \u2013 rules for extracting water from natural resources \u2013 are not dictated by atmospheric CO<sub>2<\/sub>. They are set by decades of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.com\/uk\/environment\/article\/lack-of-money-for-new-reservoirs-could-lead-to-water-shortages-dtwjkk3qp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">underinvestment<\/a>&nbsp;and regulatory choices. Fertiliser costs inflated by energy taxes and carbon-pricing on natural gas pass through to farmers agonising over stunted wheat and barley yields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is remarkable that Ms Stock agonises over elderly people wilting in poorly insulated flats or sweltering in Britain\u2019s many hospitals without once mentioning the glaring lack of air-conditioning \u2013 the one technology already proven, unambiguously, to reduce heat mortality wherever it has been allowed to spread. Yet the Luddite ruling class in the UK and EU would rather have their citizens face the risk of a grisly, painful death from heatstroke than provide cheap electricity and allow them to install a $400 air conditioner. Air conditioning is nearly universal in American and Japanese homes (approximately 90%) but remains the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/data-insights\/air-conditioning-is-almost-universal-in-the-us-and-japan-but-not-elsewhere\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">exception<\/a>&nbsp;rather than the rule across Europe (approximately 23% average) and is especially uncommon in the UK (estimated at low-teens to single-digit percentages).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dr Stock is absolutely right that politicians can address these problems without first settling the precise role of carbon dioxide in the climate system. But she is wrong to imply that practical, local and national policymaking can proceed while bracketing out the overarching policy choices \u2013 Net Zero mandates, land-use dogma and energy-price interventions \u2013 that have already made adaptation more expensive and less effective than it needs to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A caricature of the sceptical position<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ms Stock\u2019s portrait of the wider climate debate is equally skewed. She sees a sterile symmetry: apocalyptic greens on one side, \u201cstubborn scepticism\u201d on the other offering \u201clittle acknowledgment of local social and environmental losses\u201d and \u201cno nuanced plan of action, except to keep buggering on as before\u201d. The renewables discussion, she says, is \u201cabsurdly polarised\u201d, with one side talking only of benefits and the other only of harms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is a caricature. Serious analysts of renewable energy \u2013&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/davidturver.substack.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">David Turver<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/watt-logic.com\/about-watt-logic\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kathryn Porter<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/dieterhelm.co.uk\/about\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dieter Helm<\/a>&nbsp;among them \u2013 have performed the elementary work of cost-benefit analysis that Stock claims is missing. They examine intermittency, system balancing costs, backup requirements, grid reinforcement and the displacement of firm generation. Turver\u2019s own submission to Parliament\u2019s cost-of-energy inquiry laid out, in granular detail, why levelised-cost comparisons that ignore firming and network costs systematically understate the true price of wind and solar. None of these analysts deny that turbines and panels generate electricity when the weather cooperates; they ask whether the full system, backup included, delivers net benefit at the reliability a modern economy actually requires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Global integrated-assessment models, including the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/DICE_model\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">DICE model of Nobel laureate William Nordhaus<\/a>, abstract from local detail precisely because their purpose is aggregate, long-run quantification of costs and benefits under uncertainty; that is methodological necessity, not indifference. Local and regional studies exist alongside them. To accuse sceptics of ignoring local losses is to ignore a literature that has spent years documenting deindustrialisation, the uglification of the countryside by wind turbines, acres of solar farms, and pylons and the household cost of subsidising intermittency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Peterson\u2013Self exchange, and the lean toward Self<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Stock briefly referees a skirmish between&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2026\/07\/31\/climate-change-green-leftists-anti-capitalism-western\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jordan Peterson<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/wself\/status\/2087509869817463292?s=20\">Will Self<\/a>. Peterson notes the Medieval Warm Period and the greening effect of elevated CO<sub>2<\/sub>; Self dismisses the former as unmeasurable and non-global, and the latter as irrelevant because biodiversity is allegedly still collapsing. Stock leans toward Self. This is misplaced on both counts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Proxy reconstructions \u2013 tree rings, ice cores, sediments, documentary records \u2013 have long been used to estimate historical temperatures; the irony is that the same proxy method underpins the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hockey_stick_graph_(global_temperature)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201chockey stick\u201d reconstruction<\/a>&nbsp;that climate campaigners have treated as gospel for a quarter of a century. Evidence of the Medieval Warm Period appears well beyond the North Atlantic, in the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/science\/medieval-warm-period\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sierra Nevada, the Andes, China, Tasmania and New Zealand<\/a>, even as researchers continue to debate its precise global synchrony.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On biodiversity, the crude claim of relentless, undifferentiated decline sits awkwardly with the finding that only a small fraction of assessed species \u2013&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/royalsocietypublishing.org\/rspb\/article\/292\/2057\/20251717\/234788\/Unpacking-the-extinction-crisis-rates-patterns-and\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">roughly 1.5% of birds and 1.4% of mammals<\/a>&nbsp;\u2013 have actually gone extinct since 1500, well below the figures earlier apocalyptic projections implied. Greening, meanwhile, is not a talking point; it is measured from space.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/earth\/climate-change\/co2-is-making-earth-greenerfor-now\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NASA satellite data<\/a>&nbsp;show that a quarter to half of the planet\u2019s vegetated land has significantly greened over the past four decades, with CO<sub>2<\/sub>&nbsp;fertilisation responsible for roughly 70% of the effect \u2013 an area of new leaf growth equivalent to twice the continental United States. One would imagine that the greening of formerly arid and semi-arid areas could only help in enhancing biodiversity.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The deeper error in Stock\u2019s piece is the false equivalence itself. One side has spent decades converting scientific debate and uncertainty into moral certainty and policy absolutism. The other has pointed out that the UK accounts for roughly&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/co2\/country\/united-kingdom\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">0.8% of annual global CO<sub>2<\/sub>&nbsp;emissions<\/a>, that Chinese and Indian emissions growth swamps any conceivable British reduction many times over and that unilateral \u201cclimate leadership\u201d is a luxury belief whose chief practical effect is to export British industry and import the emissions of less efficient overseas producers.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is not a new argument in these pages: I have set out at length,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/dailysceptic.org\/2025\/08\/14\/the-folly-of-climate-leadership-britains-net-zero-masochism-and-the-china-mirage\/\">here<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/dailysceptic.org\/2026\/07\/30\/britains-collision-course-with-trumps-energy-counter-revolution\/\">here<\/a>, how a deindustrialising island contributing under 1% of world emissions convinced itself it could \u201clead the world\u201d out of fossil fuels. Rupert Darwall has&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/assets.realclear.com\/files\/2023\/12\/2321_2320_realclear-report-rupert-darwall-v7_1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">detailed<\/a>&nbsp;the costs to Britain in its \u201cfolly of climate leadership\u201d.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The costs are not abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Those costs are not abstract. Analysis commissioned for the Conservative Party under Claire Coutinho has put the potential saving from abandoning the current all-renewables pathway, in favour of a system that retains gas alongside nuclear and renewables, at&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gbnews.com\/money\/net-zero-britain-ditch-green-power-targets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u00a3320 billion in electricity system costs over two decades<\/a>. Separate research for the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/iea.org.uk\/media\/net-zero-could-cost-britain-billions-more-than-officials-estimate-warns-new-iea-paper\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Institute of Economic Affairs<\/a>&nbsp;has found that official Net Zero cost estimates have fallen sharply in recent years not because decarbonisation has become cheaper, but because the methodology used to calculate it has changed. Energy-intensive industries have already left Britain or scaled back their operations here. The countryside is being littered with solar arrays, wind farms and the pylons and substations needed to move intermittent power around the grid.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Stock mourns changing landscapes and living conditions yet passes over the most visible recent alteration to the British countryside: the subsidised hardware of the energy transition itself. Deindustrialisation undertaken in the name of decarbonisation does not reduce global emissions; it merely relocates them to China and India, typically to less efficient, more coal-intensive producers. Living standards suffer in the process, for no measurable planetary benefit. Cheaper, more reliable electricity and installation of cheap air-conditioners would do more for elderly people in overheated flats and hospital wards than another round of behavioural exhortation about carbon footprints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Stock\u2019s best sentence, and the one she declines to follow<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Stock\u2019s most valuable sentence is also the one she fails to follow through to its logical conclusion: \u201cIt is obviously possible to worry about such [local, regional and national] problems, and for politicians to form plans to address them, without espousing any grand theory about the role of carbon dioxide.\u201d Precisely so. Adaptation \u2013 better building standards, resilient water infrastructure, intelligent fire and land management, affordable and reliable energy \u2013 does not require prior resolution on equilibrium climate sensitivity parameters or the exact social cost of carbon. It requires competence, and a willingness to abandon the specific policies that have already raised costs and reduced resilience: burn bans that let fuel accumulate, planning rules that block reservoirs and a decarbonisation timetable that prices gas and fertiliser out of reach of the farmers she worries about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She anticipates the rejoinder that local concern without global action is insufficient. Her reply is that the coordination problem among major emitters is practically insoluble, and that Self\u2019s vision of controlled markets, rationing and \u201cparticular forms of restraint for which the established political vocabulary has no adequate name\u201d sounds mad. On that last point she is entirely right. Authoritarian climate policies of the green globalist governments are not a solution to the coordination problem; it is a confession that voluntary coordination has failed, and that coercion is the only instrument the true believers have left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Kathleen Stock\u2019s incomplete localism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet Stock\u2019s localism remains incomplete, for a reason she does not examine. She wants us to notice what is vanishing locally and to mitigate the impacts. Fair enough, as far as it goes. But the vanishing she describes is not solely climatic and the mitigation she wants is obstructed by the very policies whose global efficacy she declines to adjudicate. Reservoirs are not built because green-obsessed planning and environmental rules block them; controlled burns are discouraged because peatland regulation prohibits them; fertiliser is taxed and gas is made artificially expensive in service of a decarbonisation theory she says she cannot be bothered to evaluate. The result is that the local suffering she catalogues so movingly is real, and substantially self-inflicted by policy choices made in the name of a global theory that a country responsible for eight-tenths of 1% of world emissions cannot meaningfully affect either way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Conservatives who merely poke holes in the Left\u2019s preferred theories without offering practical alternatives deserve the criticism Stock levels at them. She is right about that much. But the remedy is not symmetrical disengagement from the underlying facts. It is rigorous attention to costs, benefits and adaptation at every scale, grounded in accurate description rather than atmospheric pathos. Geological time has oscillated between ice ages and inter-glaciation for hundreds of millennia; the choice of 1850\u20131900 as the sacred pre-industrial baseline is itself a political convention, not a self-evident natural fact. Feeling sad about a hot, dry summer is entirely human, and understandable. Treating that feeling as a reason to suspend scrutiny of the policies that made the summer harder to bear than it needed to be is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is indeed a great deal of work to be done, as Stock says. It begins with accurate description rather than mood music, with cost-benefit accounting rather than moral symmetry between a rigorous empirical literature and its caricature and with the plain recognition that a country responsible for roughly 1% of global emissions cannot save the planet by impoverishing itself first. Localism without data is just another, more comfortable, form of the same exhaustion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the&nbsp;<\/em>Daily Sceptic<em>\u2018s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO\u2082&nbsp;Coalition and a former contributor to&nbsp;<\/em>Forbes<em>. Follow him on&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/tilakdoshi.substack.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Substack<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/tilakdoshi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">X<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In her UnHerd column last week, Kathleen Stock writes from a \u201chorrifically well-insulated sweatbox\u201d, the fan beside her registering 29\u00b0C while the air outside hits 33.<\/p>\n<p>Ms Stock has absorbed the idea of a \u201cnew kind of summer\u201d as lived experience. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":465271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691844904,691818056,691835903,691819142,691818087,691818236,691844903,691818154,691818913],"class_list":["post-465270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-1976-heatwave-and-drought","tag-climate-change","tag-department-for-energy-security-and-net-zero","tag-energy-policy","tag-global-warming","tag-heatwaves","tag-kathleen-stock","tag-net-zero","tag-wildfires","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1X2m","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":273548,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=273548","url_meta":{"origin":465270,"position":0},"title":"Bj\u00f8rn Lomborg: how rising temperatures will save lives","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"08\/15\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"A spell of extremely hot weather has hit Europe this month, bringing with it a raft of apocalyptic headlines. Named Charon, after the boatman in Greek mythology who navigated the river Styx into Hades, the heatwave has immediately been linked to climate change and, by extension, humanity\u2019s faltering attempts to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Bj\u00f8rn Lomborg\"","block_context":{"text":"Bj\u00f8rn Lomborg","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=bjorn-lomborg-2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/0Screenshot-2023-08-15-113631.png?fit=933%2C528&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/0Screenshot-2023-08-15-113631.png?fit=933%2C528&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/0Screenshot-2023-08-15-113631.png?fit=933%2C528&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/0Screenshot-2023-08-15-113631.png?fit=933%2C528&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":277507,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=277507","url_meta":{"origin":465270,"position":1},"title":"BBC\u2019s Extreme Summer Weather\u00a0Propaganda","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"09\/06\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"As for the hysterical nonsense about flooding, both the El Cordonazo in 1939, and Hurricane Kathleen in 1976, which both followed similar tracks to Hilary, dumped much more rain on Southern California. Every year there are floods, heatwaves, droughts, hurricanes and wildfires. There is no evidence whatsoever that this year\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0heatwave-illo-1.webp?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0heatwave-illo-1.webp?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0heatwave-illo-1.webp?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0heatwave-illo-1.webp?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0heatwave-illo-1.webp?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":454527,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=454527","url_meta":{"origin":465270,"position":2},"title":"Right, Fortune, Europe\u2019s Heat Crisis Is of Its Own Making","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"07\/07\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Fortune magazine published an article explaining that Europe\u2019s own policies have created the overheating problems being faced during the present heatwave, noting that by comparison the United States has dealt with similar heat easily over the decades. Fortune is right.","rel":"","context":"In \"Air Conditioning\"","block_context":{"text":"Air Conditioning","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=air-conditioning"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0-ChatGPT-Right-Fortune-Europes-Heat-Crisis-Is-of-Its-Own-Making.png?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0-ChatGPT-Right-Fortune-Europes-Heat-Crisis-Is-of-Its-Own-Making.png?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0-ChatGPT-Right-Fortune-Europes-Heat-Crisis-Is-of-Its-Own-Making.png?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0-ChatGPT-Right-Fortune-Europes-Heat-Crisis-Is-of-Its-Own-Making.png?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0-ChatGPT-Right-Fortune-Europes-Heat-Crisis-Is-of-Its-Own-Making.png?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":379158,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=379158","url_meta":{"origin":465270,"position":3},"title":"Kathryn Porter: The true affordability of net\u00a0zero","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"05\/21\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"The true affordability of net zero, was launched at an event hosted by The Lord Offord of Garvel, Shadow Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero in the House of Lords. The event was attended by MPs, Peers and members of the energy community as well as the press. It\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"electricity prices\"","block_context":{"text":"electricity prices","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=electricity-prices"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/OIG2-46.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/OIG2-46.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/OIG2-46.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/OIG2-46.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":463559,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=463559","url_meta":{"origin":465270,"position":4},"title":"English oaks \u2018can\u2019t cope with British heat\u2019? They survived 1911\u2019s 100\u00b0F and the great 1976 drought","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"08\/17\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"The 1911 UK heatwave was real, severe, prolonged, and dry, and it produced temperatures that were extreme for the instrumental record of that era. However, modern records (using standardized Stevenson screens and quality-controlled data) show higher peaks, more frequent extremes, and a clear upward trend that goes beyond simple urban\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"1911 UK heatwave\"","block_context":{"text":"1911 UK heatwave","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=1911-uk-heatwave"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/00-English-oaks.jpg?fit=1168%2C784&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/00-English-oaks.jpg?fit=1168%2C784&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/00-English-oaks.jpg?fit=1168%2C784&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/00-English-oaks.jpg?fit=1168%2C784&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/00-English-oaks.jpg?fit=1168%2C784&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":452898,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=452898","url_meta":{"origin":465270,"position":5},"title":"London Heat Adaption Event Cancelled by a Heatwave","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"06\/29\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"An event focused on adapting to extreme heat, part of London Climate Action Week, was cancelled due to a heatwave in late June 2026. Britain has seen increasing heatwaves in recent years, and many structures lack modern cooling infrastructure.","rel":"","context":"In \"energy industry\"","block_context":{"text":"energy industry","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=energy-industry"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/0-London-Heat-Adaption-Event-Cancelled-by-a-Heatwave.jpg?fit=1168%2C784&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/0-London-Heat-Adaption-Event-Cancelled-by-a-Heatwave.jpg?fit=1168%2C784&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/0-London-Heat-Adaption-Event-Cancelled-by-a-Heatwave.jpg?fit=1168%2C784&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/0-London-Heat-Adaption-Event-Cancelled-by-a-Heatwave.jpg?fit=1168%2C784&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/0-London-Heat-Adaption-Event-Cancelled-by-a-Heatwave.jpg?fit=1168%2C784&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0-ChatGPT-Kathleen-Stock-is-Right-About-Climate-%E2%80%93-But-Wrong-About-Whats-Making-Things-Worse.png?fit=1536%2C1024&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=465270"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":465278,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465270\/revisions\/465278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/465271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=465270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=465270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=465270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}