Is Net Zero Ideology Dying?

hotair.com

Net Zero was always a fantasy, of course. The only living thing on earth with a net-zero or better carbon dioxide output in its life cycle uses chlorophyll.  

Advertisement

But as with most things in life, the weak-minded follow the crowd, and the crowd follows the propagandists. So Net Zero was a thing, and distorted our economy for years. 

Everybody was made poorer by the ideology, and will be for decades to come, both because of foregone economic growth and because plenty of governments and companies are holding out. 

Still, progress is being made, mainly because it is impossible to bang your head up against reality without getting a major headache. Net Zero is so costly that only governments will remain committed to it soon enough; anyone responsible to shareholders will have to drop it like a hot potato. 

Some of the first corporations to drop their Net Zero ambitions were financial firms, because they are most sensitive to the numbers and least able to ignore how their pledges impact the bottom line. The Net Zero banking alliance has been losing members at a steady rate, and Lloyds of London is just the latest financial firm to ditch the dumb. 

Advertisement

Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Citibank, and even BlackRock have given up the idiocy. 

Few companies have explicitly stated that they have given up on Net Zero, but an increasing number of them are "pushing back" their deadlines. 

The tech giants--Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and others are quietly pushing back deadlines, and other corporations have done the same--sometimes quietly erasing promises made in the past. 

All was fun and games when the deadlines were a decade or more away, but now that 2030 is just around the corner, efforts to meet deadlines that are inherently impossible to meet are hurting the bottom line too much. Net Zero nonsense may have made sense as part of a "greenwashing" campaign--essentially just another advertising expense--but can you imagine Amazon getting to a zero carbon footprint? 

AI development will inevitably mean that carbon emissions will skyrocket for the tech companies, at least until nuclear power comes online sometime in the mid-term future. Microsoft is even paying to restart Three Mile Island to get access to power. 

What we need is a whole new generation of plants to be built, and I hope that small modular reactors will proliferate. 

Advertisement

In the meantime, Net Zero--at least in the corporate world and in the United States--is on the way out. European countries remain committed--so much so that they are closing down farms--and that is one of the many reasons their economies are stuck in neutral or worse. 

While there is still a vibrant, destructive movement to kill off energy production, Gaza has been sucking up a lot of the moralistic energy. Witness Greta Thunberg's new obsession. 

Idiots will do what idiots do. Unfortunately, the rest of us wind up paying the price. 

Help us continue to report on President Trump's successes. Join Hot Air VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.