Climate Doomsday Is Nigh—Again And the U.N. says it’s your fault for eating meat, among other sins.
Human beings, the wretches, continue to disappoint the savants at the United Nations, and never more than on climate change. The global body announced last week that despite all of the world’s climate sacrifices and trillions of dollars in renewable spending, we’re all still doomed unless mankind makes radical changes in lifestyles and standards of living.
The 2015 Paris climate agreement required countries to commit to reducing their emissions to keep the world from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. It’s already warmed about 1.1 degrees. Not that the alms offered up by President Biden and European leaders will do much good.
According to the U.N. report, all climate policies currently in place will result in warming of 2.8 degrees. Most countries haven’t implemented policies to meet their emissions targets. But even if they did, temperatures would still rise by 2.6 degrees. And if Western countries meet their “net-zero” goals? The world would warm 1.8 degrees.
Ponder that. Even if Europe and the U.S. banish fossil fuels from the electric grid, ban gas-powered vehicles, and find a way to capture CO2 from factories, the world still wouldn’t avoid the U.N.’s climate doomsday. One reason is that China, which emits two-thirds more CO2 than Europe and the U.S. combined, has only committed to peaking its emissions by 2030.
Thus, the U.N. report says drastic changes in human behavior are needed. To take one example, about a third of emissions come from the global food system. According to the report, about seven gigatons in CO2 reductions—roughly equal to those from today’s global natural gas production—by 2050 will need to come from people eating less meat.
The U.N. report suggests taxing foods based on their carbon emissions so that meat becomes so expensive people have no choice but to go vegan. Don’t discount the possibility that the U.S. and European climate left will eventually embrace this idea. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently announced that New Zealand farmers will soon pay a tax on their methane-emitting sheep and cow burps.
But even government-compelled diets won’t make a difference if China keeps building coal plants. This is one reason the $3.8 trillion of renewable investment over the last decade has resulted in fossil fuels declining only to 81% from 82% in energy consumption. The U.N. now says more than $4 trillion must be spent annually to meet the Paris climate goals. Nice of them to be so free with other people’s money.
The climate lobby has spent more than 30 years preaching apocalypse to goad countries to purge fossil fuels. Most Western elites have joined the lobby. But publics around the world simply aren’t willing to make the sacrifices in standards of living that extreme climate advocates insist on.
Our sincere advice would to be drop the doomsday act, which people don’t believe, and focus instead on policies to adapt to a warmer planet and mitigate any damage if the worst happens. It beats standing in the public square with a sign saying “the end is near.”
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