Ever since the United Nations decided that combating so-called climate change would become its signature issue in the late twentieth century, it has ratcheted up the rhetoric against carbon dioxide emissions. The UN’s war on greenhouse gases is predicated on the absurd notion that carbon dioxide emissions are the sole driver of the recent warming period and has culminated into what it calls the road to net zero, which it aims to achieve by 2050.
The UN defines net zero as “cutting carbon emissions to a small amount of residual emissions that can be absorbed and durably stored by nature and other carbon dioxide removal measures, leaving zero in the atmosphere.”
In 2015, the UN oversaw the development of the Paris Agreement, which it described as “the beginning of a shift towards a net-zero emissions world.” Eight years later, the UN was not pleased with the pace of the shift and decided it needed to “accelerate action across all areas — mitigation, adaptation, and finance — by 2030, including a call on governments to speed up the transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy such as wind and solar power.”
There are many problems with the UN’s net zero mission, primarily that it is totally impractical.
For thousands of years, humans have relied on fossil fuels for heating, cooking, and transportation. From coal to oil to natural gas, fossil fuels have played a vital role in humanity’s march of progress.
products, services, and everyday luxuries we take for granted in the twenty-first century would simply not exist. Make no mistake, the advent of fossil fuels has undeniably been a boon for humanity.
Tragically, the UN and their climate alarmist cronies ignore the enormous benefits that fossil fuels have blessed upon humanity. Rather, they solely focus on framing fossil fuels as a scourge that must be eliminated or else the entire world will become uninhabitable.
In reality, this fearmongering is unsubstantiated and reckless. For decades, the UN and climate alarmist activists have warned that continued use of fossil fuels will inevitably result in Armageddon. However, nearly none of their alarmist claims have come to fruition.
When I was in college, I remember watching Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, in which many assertations were made concerning an imminent environmental disaster due to climate change. For instance, Gore predicted that the global sea level could rise as much as 20 feet “in the near future.” Of course, that has not even come close to happening.
Over the past few decades, the UN, the mainstream media, academia, Hollywood, and governments all over the world have peddled similar talking points regarding the existential threat of climate change. But the facts tell a very different story.
In truth, the world is not on the verge of an environmental collapse. Weather events like tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, etc. are not becoming more frequent nor deadlier. Sea rise is not a dangerous threat and all the glaciers have not melted. Wildfires are not increasing in intensity and neither are heatwaves.
The UN does not want you to be aware of these facts because they directly undercut the core of their alarmist message and therefore undermine the supposed urgency for net zero.
Moreover, the UN is adamantly opposed to developing nations utilizing fossil fuels so that they can become economically competitive while drastically reducing the abject poverty that still exists in far too many countries.
If the continued use of fossil fuels poses no imminent threat to humanity, why is the UN so gung-ho about net zero?
Perhaps the answer is money. The sheer cost of transitioning the world from fossil fuels to renewable energy and achieving net zero is estimated to cost about $75 trillion, according to Goldman Sachs.
If not money, maybe the UN is seeking more power. From time immemorial, bureaucrats have sought to micromanage and centrally plan. Net zero is arguably the most ambitious power grab in world history, considering it would completely transform entire economies, societies, and cultures.
Whatever the reason, it is imperative that the UN’s grand plans for net zero are defeated. Thanks to the recent victory of Donald Trump, it seems like a fait accompli that the United States will once again exit from the Paris Agreement, dealing a decisive blow to net zero in the near term.
But that does not mean that net zero is dead. The UN and climate alarmist groups have invested lots of time, effort, and energy into their net zero scheme. To defeat it once and for all, more nations must join the climate realist movement, defend the use of fossil fuels, and realize that the renewable energy transition under net zero is a fantasy concocted by climate alarmists who have ulterior motives.
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.
Image: Unsplash
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