I regularly enjoy Camilla Cavendish’s pieces, but to keep doing so I have to skip over anything she writes about the environment. It spoils it. How can a commentator who normally penetrates conventional wisdom be so taken in by it on this subject? Today, she’s wondering why people aren’t more worked up about climate change. Because so much said about it is demonstrable nonsense, I’d humbly suggest. Now I don’t doubt the planet is warming, but I have five problems.
1) Inevitability The driver behind the IPCC’s projected rise in greenhouse gas emissions is not by people jetting to France but the poor world getting rich. Not much we could, or should, do about that.
2) Eco-snobbery Within the developed world, the main driver of emissions is the poor starting to consume like the rich do. Taxing them out of the sky or off the roads is a deplorable solution for which we’d need pretty strong justification.
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