The Green Road to Serfdom, by ANDREW STUTTAFORD

The campaign to reach net zero by 2050 is best seen as a giant exercise in central planning, bolstered by apocalypticism, puritanism, and, lurking there somewhere, distaste for the achievements….

The Green Road to Serfdom

Protesters hold placards criticizing government policy on net zero and farming during a demonstration in Parliament Square in London, March 25, 2024.(Martin Pope/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

By ANDREW STUTTAFORD

March 28, 2024 3:22 PM

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Voters will rebel against ‘net zero’ when the costs hit

Deciding who has been the worst British prime minister of the 21st century (so far) is tough, but Theresa May (2016–19) strengthened her strong claim to this title shortly ahead of her ignominious departure from office. Desperate to secure a “legacy,” she saw to it that Britain became the first major country to legally bind itself to reaching net-zero greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. That is, the nation committed itself to releasing no more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than it removes. Quite how this ambition could be fulfilled or what fulfilling it would cost was unclear, but no matter: This potentially enormous commitment passed into law with support across the political spectrum, astonishingly little scrutiny, and a great deal of self-congratulation. The 2050 target date reflected a widely held view that this is what it would take to contain the increase in the average global temperature since pre-industrial times to a more or less bearable 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Lemmings, so the myth goes, don’t leap alone. Other countries from Japan to Switzerland to Canada have followed the U.K.’s example, including its neglect of critical thinking. Cost–benefit analysis is for “deniers.” All EU member states are obliged to hit net zero by 2050. Germany, undaunted by its disastrous Energiewende (an appallingly expensive switch to renewables, combined with a phaseout of nuclear power, and — what could go wrong — reliance on Russian natural gas), has opted for 2045 instead. The U.S. has (following the procedures set out in the Paris climate accords) committed to achieving net zero by 2050. Although this commitment has not been incorporated into domestic law, the Biden administration is behaving as though it had, whether through its promotion of legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act or through regulatory changes that have the advantage of avoiding too much democratic supervision. A growing number of U.S. states and cities have joined in, looking for dramatic reductions in their GHG emissions by mid century or before. And the U.S. is not the only country where such efforts are occurring below the national level. Thus the U.N.’s Race to Net Zero is targeted at non-state “stakeholders.” Participants include businesses, cities, regions, and investors, all expected to take “rigorous and immediate action” to get to net zero by 2050, “at the latest.”

The list of today’s net-zero nations — Bhutan, Suriname, Panama, Guyana, Comoros, Gabon, Madagascar, and Niue — is a deterrent, not an inspiration. Before agreeing to any binding obligation to arrive at net zero, many less-prosperous countries, including four of the six largest GHG emitters (Brazil, India, Russia, and China, the GHG champ) are saying to the West, “After you,” if that. Indeed, the Russian, Indian, and Chinese commitments, whatever they are worth, are to get to net zero one or two decades after 2050. All three countries are capable of assessing climate risk and have come to the reasonable conclusion that an increase of a touch under 3 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels by the end of this century (the current best estimate) is not an existential threat. This means that the climate weighs less heavily in their broader policy mix. That said, Beijing realizes that the Western world’s climate fixation offers excellent geopolitical and commercial opportunities. It will try to exploit both to the fullest, and the West’s other rivals will do their best to follow suit. The key position — discussed below, that China has established in the market for solar panels, and may achieve in wind turbines and, to no small degree, electric vehicles (EVs) — is, with the West set on retreating from oil and gas, of strategic as well as commercial value.

The campaign to reach net zero by 2050 is best seen as a giant exercise in central planning, bolstered by apocalypticism, puritanism, and, lurking there somewhere, distaste for the achievements of the West. Speed (it’s a “race,” remember) is essential, deadlines are pulled out of thin air, orders are barked from above, dissent is heresy, targets bear little connection to economic, technological, or political reality, and logic is displaced by frenzy: “C” no longer follows “B,” “B” no longer follows “A.” Those struggling to understand how policy-makers could insist on the urgent electrification of everything (or so it often feels) at the same time as they weaken the resilience of already-strained electricity grids need look no further.

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Working toward net zero has attracted strong public support in Europe and more-cautious approval in the U.S. Spooked by endlessly repeated prophecies of climate doom, people like the idea of a grand project to help the planet but have been mostly unaware of its less appealing implications and unduly reassured by the thought that 2050 was decades away. But there have been warning signs that, when net zero begins to bite hard, voters will bite back. Polls show public backing for net zero but limited enthusiasm for paying for it. According to an Ipsos poll taken in 20 countries worldwide and published in April 2023, only about 30 percent of people (25 percent in the U.S.) would be prepared to pay “more” of their income in taxes “to help prevent climate change.” “More” is not the same as “a lot,” and the bill for net zero would be paid not only in steeper taxes but in a higher cost of living. However, 55 percent of respondents to a YouGov poll conducted last year in the U.K. would support policies to reduce carbon emissions only “if they do not result in additional costs for ordinary people,” an impossibility. At around the same time, fewer than half of Americans polled by the AP-NORC Center and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago said they would support a monthly carbon fee on their energy use, and, of those in favor, nearly a fifth said that the charge should not be more than a dollar.

And serious pushback has begun. The protests in 2018–19 by France’s gilets jaunes (yellow vests) were initially triggered by the prospect of a fuel tax inspired by climate policy. Dutch farmers followed their example, alarmed by the threat to their livelihoods from rules designed, in part, to combat climate change. The BBB (BoerBurgerBeweging), an agrarian party of the Right formed in 2019 in response to the protests, has benefited from more-generalized discontent and, drawing votes from across the Netherlands, it became the largest party in the Dutch senate last year. An impressive showing in November’s elections for the legislature’s more powerful lower house may yet — it’s complicated — lead to the formation of a government by a (more or less) populist coalition less supportive of today’s green agenda.

Since December, there has been a wave of protests by farmers elsewhere in the EU. The causes vary, but in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Lithuania, Romania, and Spain, they include opposition to climate-related policies.

The drive to hit net zero by 2050 is unlikely to stabilize the climate in time (the target date may even now be beyond reach), but there’s a clear risk that it may destabilize the West, not least because of the harm it will do to its economies. For instance, it will push up a wide range of prices, whether because of the cost of the mandates that come with it or from the impact of an energy squeeze as the use of fossil fuels is curtailed. As it is, high energy costs (some of which are attributable to climate policy) are already sparking fears about “deindustrialization,” above all in Germany, where energy-intensive industrial companies have been relocating production abroad. To take one dismal statistic among many: German chemical production hit a 28-year low in 2023. The country’s increasingly far-right party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) — which has been polling in second place — has suffered no harm for favoring both fracking and nuclear energy and opposing “green madness.”

And then there is the destructive effect of regulations imposed with scant regard for current economic conditions, such as those requiring the retrofitting of office buildings to make them more climate-friendly, the last thing that embattled landlords need at the moment. In March 2023, economist Kenneth Rogoff warned of upward pressure on long-term real interest rates due (in part) to “the massive costs of the green transition.” How much those costs might add up to is the subject of endless contention and is, in many respects, unknowable, but there cannot be any doubt that “massive” is the right adjective. In a 2023 report, the management consultants McKinsey & Company argued that getting the G-20 economies “on track” for net zero by 2050 would take investments that could exceed “an additional $35 trillion this decade,” with about a third supposedly coming from “business-led innovation” and “baseline growth.”

Even without the extra pressure referred to by Rogoff, higher inflation and the ending of the era of ultralow interest rates have dented the optimistic assumptions that previously encouraged the flow of private capital into projects that would bring net zero closer. The less that the private sector puts up, the more that governments determined to hit the 2050 target will have to chip in. That would mean adding to their mountains of debt, hiking taxation, cutting expenditures in other areas, or some blend of the three, with, in all probability, tricky political and economic results.

Much of the money to be invested would be spent replacing assets that are performing well but, from a climate-policy perspective, are now viewed as flawed. Such “investments” are little more than spending on glorified repair work, some of it of rather shoddy quality: For example, wind is a less efficient source of energy than the fossil fuels it is meant to supersede. Repeated on a sufficient scale, this diversion of capital from more productive use will lead to lower economic growth than might otherwise have been the case. This forgone gain could (maybe) be justified as an insurance premium, but it’s a reminder that “green growth” will do far less than we have been told to offset the hit to GDP growth that striving for net zero by 2050 will entail.

The economic damage caused by the rush to net zero could obviously stir up popular discontent, but so could the increasingly burdensome and intrusive changes introduced by climate-policy-makers into everyday life — there are or there will be plenty to choose from, and they go far beyond brutal utility bills: There has already been a bitter debate in some countries, including Germany (where it played well for the AfD), over plans to compel people to buy expensive electric heat pumps for their homes. Depending on where you live, there are bans or threatened bans on gas ovens, short-haul flights, cheap airfares, many types of conventional cars . . . well, the list already is lengthy, and it will only get longer. It is also worth considering the impact of substituting fossil fuels with (less reliable) renewables when America’s overstretched electricity grid already is beginning to look dangerously unstable. Recurring blackouts are not a natural vote-winner. And then there’s the small matter of significantly higher prices for meat and dairy products as (direct or indirect) climate levies kick in. Given the merciless math of net zero, they are coming.

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Wind Power

The sun sets behind wind turbines at the Saint-Nazaire offshore wind farm off the coast of the Guerande peninsula in western France, February 25, 2023.

Stephane Mahe/Reuters

Some measures, such as the coerced switch to EVs, will anger voters and damage the economy. Its compressed timetable may mean that many drivers end up paying more for cars that deliver less, especially if the current gaps in charging infrastructure are not filled quickly enough: Tesla cannot do it all. However good the network, the logistics of charging are never likely to be straightforward for city-dwellers without a parking garage or driveway of their own.

And quite a few automakers may find themselves in a fix, caught between slower-than-expected EV sales and, at a time when they are investing huge amounts into EV production, mounting regulatory constraints on their cash-generative conventional-car business. Chinese competition (particularly in Europe, where tariff barriers are much lower than in the U.S.) will add to their misery. But American automakers should not feel too relaxed: BYD, China’s leading EV manufacturer, is planning to set up production in Mexico, which, of course, has a free-trade agreement with the U.S. That said, rules relating to the sourcing of components as well as restrictions on eligibility for the Inflation Reduction Act’s $7,500 tax credit mean that this is less of a threat (for now) than it may seem.

Much of the advantage that incumbency has given Europe’s automakers won’t survive the transition to EVs. Benefiting from the expertise gained at home and their ability to price their cars very attractively (both are linked to extensive state support), Chinese companies are well placed to grab a sizeable portion of the European EV market, hurting the economies of “carmaking” countries across the continent. In August, Wang Chuanfu, the CEO of BYD, called on the Chinese auto industry to “demolish the old legends and achieve new world-class brands.” It was a prudently patriotic note to strike in the age of Xi, but Wang meant it.

More cars are made in Germany than anywhere else in Europe. Its automakers are key to the country’s vital industrial sector, already battered by high energy costs, of which more are attributable to climate policies than in many other European countries. A Chinese savaging of Germany’s automakers would wreak havoc within the EU’s industrial powerhouse, with knock-on effects throughout the bloc. Should Brussels establish that EVs imported from China are unfairly subsidized, it could take action. But if Beijing retaliated, Germany’s automakers, which are heavily exposed to the Chinese market, could be in deep trouble.

And there won’t be enough of those new, much-vaunted “green jobs” to save the day (something that should bother labor unions more and may now be beginning to do so), not least because too many of them will be in China. Germany was once a leading manufacturer of solar panels, thanks to subsidies that underpinned demand. After these subsidies had been greatly scaled back, Chinese firms, helped by a lower cost base (made possible in part by Uyghur forced labor), jumped in, and they now dominate the market. Something similar may be happening with wind turbines and, yes, if less so (for now), EVs.

Making matters worse, neither the EU nor its member states have access to the enormous amounts of (borrowed) money that the Biden administration is able to throw, however unwisely, at green-job creation in the U.S. The bill for that will come later.

Put all the above together and it seems reasonable to expect a broader revolt against the current direction of climate policy, in time. That’s more likely in the U.S., where it could be easily accommodated within the existing party alignment as an item on a Republican program. There have been signs lately that some congressional Democrats, particularly those in vulnerable seats, are aware of this threat. A number have called on the administration to slow down the rush toward both a “forced” switch to EVs and away from natural-gas power plants. So far as the former is concerned, the White House, reportedly after prompting by Detroit and the United Auto Workers, has paid some attention. The new emission rules announced in late March were somewhat more relaxed than had originally been proposed and, in theory anyway, offer a greater role for hybrids. But in Europe, where the political establishment and (in principle) a large majority of voters still support the 2050 net-zero target, its opponents face a longer haul and may prefer to try their luck instead with “outsider” parties of the Right such as the PVV (Partij voor de Vrijheid, or Party for Freedom), the AfD, and Marine Le Pen’s RN (Rassemblement National). That all these parties have a certain rapport with the Kremlin is just one reminder of the geopolitical risks that the West is running as it drives on toward net zero.

A more generalized crisis — as opposed to, say, the farmers’ protests — could alter things, but, despite signs of unease, notably on the center-right, and pushback on some issues, most mainstream European politicians have yet to voice much concern about the general direction in which net zero is taking the continent. However, that may be starting to change, a process that could well accelerate if (as is currently forecast) the populist Right makes major gains in the EU’s parliamentary elections in June. Should that occur, it may prod the center-right European People’s Party, the largest grouping in the parliament, into taking a markedly more adversarial approach to the course that climate policy-makers have been taking.

Meanwhile, there is growing recognition that some imminent benchmarks on the path to net zero by 2050 will be missed. The extent to which the world still relies on fossil fuels allows for no other interpretation. To oversimplify, the slippage in timing is due not only to less-wealthy countries’ prioritizing growth and energy security (among other matters) over climate worries but also to the practical difficulties involved in decarbonizing so much of the global economy so quickly (in one estimate 18 million kilometers of cable will be needed by 2030 alone). The ongoing revival of interest in nuclear power on both sides of the Atlantic may be a sign, like the EU’s earlier acceptance that nuclear power is green, of greater common sense about the way to net zero, but it doesn’t imply any broad change of direction. And building nuclear-power stations takes time.

The prevalence of a genteel climate fundamentalism, or something close to it, in the media, much of Europe’s political establishment, and an influential segment of the Democratic Party in the United States will be hard to reverse. Its appeal has many explanations. These range from the psychological to the financial (it has proved to be a rent-seeker’s dream) to the pragmatic (single-issue fights apart, such as over heat pumps in Germany, it has been politically perilous to oppose net zero in Europe, as it now is, to an extent, within the Left in the U.S.). And then there is the way that “the climate” offers policy-makers an unusual opportunity to wield quasi-authoritarian power within a democratic framework, an opportunity that can also be used to pursue agendas — such as the broader war against (any sort of) cars — only very loosely connected to the direction in which our planet’s temperature is going.

And so (as alluded to above), in the absence of a major crisis, any course correction will be fairly limited. It may amount to nothing more than stretching out the timetable. But for now — if new recommendations out of Brussels are anything to go by — despite the occasional, generally temporary or cosmetic concession (farmers may fare better than most), climate policy-makers remain focused, however unrealistically, on 2050. Given the need to make up lost ground, that will mean cramming in more emission cuts over a shorter period, intensifying the pain they will bring and increasing still further the chance of voter revolt.

To continue along the old path to net zero by 2050 would damage the economy, individual liberty, and the security of the West. It also would represent a colossal waste of resources (including those that could be used to pay for a more intelligent response to climate change, with spending redirected toward nuclear energy, improving resilience, and research into technological solutions that might actually work). In Europe much more than the U.S., it may take, to borrow an old phrase from Brussels, a “beneficial crisis” to force a change of course. But while a crisis seems inevitable, that it will be beneficial is not.

And that’s another reason to get off this path now.