One of Britain’s leading climate “experts,” Professor Kevin Anderson, has provided a valuable insight into the increasingly bizarre demands that surround the promotion of the collectivist Net Zero political project.
Writing in the Conversation, he argues for Net Zero within 12 years, complete with a refit of U.K. housing stock, a withdrawal of all combustion engine cars in favour of expanded public transport, electrification of industry, the roll out of “zero-carbon” energy, and the banning of all fossil fuel production. To achieve his aims, Anderson suggests mobilization on the scale of the post-war European reconstruction Marshall Plan. Others might suggest his crackpot schemes will leave the country facing a similar scale of destruction, ruin, and poverty to that caused by the Luftwaffe.
Anderson is currently a Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester and he has plenty of form when it comes to extremist claims and calls for widespread rationing. As early as 2010, he was calling on politicians to consider a rationing system “similar to the one introduced during the last time of crisis in the 1930s and 40s.” He also suggested a limit on electricity “so people are forced to turn the heating down,” and a limit on goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.
On a practical level, Anderson’s latest calls for radical societal restructuring under the guise of a “climate emergency” are plainly ridiculous. Retrofitting Britain’s well-ventilated housing and industrial stock along with installing heat pumps would cost around £3 trillion ($3.71 trillion), according to a paper published last year by the technology professor Michael Kelly – equivalent, it should be noted, to Britain’s annual GDP.
That, of course, is before we’ve factored in the cost of Anderson’s other plans such as retrofitting the entire industrial and transport infrastructure, all within the next 12 years. In its more sane moments, even Extinction Rebellion might be proud of such an ambitious plan.
The Conversation is obligatory reading for those aiming to keep fully up to speed with the latest climate, Net Zero, and woke fantasies. It purports to be an independent source of news analysis, written by academic experts working with professional journalists.
To the mainstream media, it offers “media-ready” experts and “free” content. It is funded by academic institutions and receives money from a number of billionaire foundations. Media partners include Reuters, PA Media, Reach (owner of the Mirror, Express, Daily Star and multiple local U.K. newspapers), and Apple News.
Collectivist economic solutions alongside the ubiquitous woke dogma are increasingly dominating debate around climate change. This blatantly political agenda is said to be dictated by “the Science” which its advocates then refuse to discuss, a ruse used to disguise the paucity of evidence that humans control the climate thermostat.