Climate zealots’ net-zero push dies a quiet death — and not a moment too soon

Several rows of barbed wire secure the fence around an electrical infrastructure facility in Berlin, Germany. dts News Agency Germany/Shutters

What a difference a few years make.

Not long ago, politicians said climate change was going to kill us, so we must move to “net zero” emissions. 

This is theoretically possible: Since vegetation removes carbon, we could get to net zero by burning fewer fossil fuels.

Governments everywhere pledged to do just that.

President Joe Biden and European leaders promised “net zero by 2050.”

For a while, it seemed like it might happen.

Spain invested billions in its solar-power grid; Germany claimed to get most of its power from renewables.

But now they realize that they made a mistake.  

European businesses closed as electricity costs rose — and last year, Spain’s electricity supply shut down for 16 hours.

It was a wake-up call for the green dream.

“The power outages are the starkest illustration of bad electricity policy,” said Alex Epstein, author of “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.”

“You can avoid power outages with these bad policies. What you can’t avoid is scarcity and rationing and poverty.”

On top of that, the push for net zero left people more vulnerable to climate extremes.

There were 10,000 excess deaths this year during a heat wave in June, Reuters reported.

“These places in Europe can’t keep cool in the summer,” marveled Epstein, “even though we’ve had this technology for 100 years called air conditioning.”

A majority of Americans have air conditioning, but only about 20% of European homes do.

In Britain, some homeowners were even ordered to tear out air conditioners under climate laws. 

“This is just the pure religious nature of the climate catastrophist movement,” Epstein said.

“It has one commandment: ‘Thou shalt not impact nature.’ They just think that everything good is a happy climate god and everything bad is a vengeful climate god.”

“Why aren’t wind and solar enough?” I asked. “The solar panels keep getting cheaper. Batteries last longer.”

“Because the electricity grid has to be built around the worst day,” he replied.

When there’s no wind or the sun doesn’t shine, countries need reliable, steady power to back up renewable power.

Now, countries like Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom are walking back their net-zero push.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz now says rules must “better align climate targets, market realities, companies and jobs.”

He also said, “It was quite simply a strategic mistake to phase out nuclear energy.”   

No kidding.

And here in America, I hear less climate fearmongering.

The Washington Post reports, “Analysis of lawmakers’ appearances and posts on social media show they are going quiet on climate.” 

“It’s very surprising to many people,” said Epstein, “how unserious the climate catastrophists were about net zero, and the way you can see this is what’s happened with the rise of AI.”

Tech companies now report increases in emissions, even though “five years ago, they were all telling us: ‘climate change, existential crisis, got to go net zero!'” Epstein laughed.

Microsoft’s CEO had promised, “By 2030, Microsoft will be carbon negative.”

Since then, the company has increased emissions, without apology.

Google once said it would be “the first major company in the world to run on carbon free energy by 2030.”

It’s since removed that pledge from its website. 

Bill Gates, who once wrote a book about “climate disaster,” now writes, “We should measure success by our impact on human welfare more than our impact on the global temperature.”

“The fact that Gates has taken the new position publicly to me is a sign that we’re in a much better intellectual environment,” said Epstein.

“It would be nice for one of these executives to say, ‘You know what? I kind of lied and I advocated some policies that screwed over everyone, including myself, and I’m going to change,'” he added.

“But nobody has done that. They’ve just acted like their past self didn’t exist.”

John Stossel is the author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.”