Net zero is already here

This magnificent feat has been achieved by Sky News, which is the umbilical cord linking me to Britain when I am away.

Pre-empting your gasps of delight, I hasten to clarify that Sky hasn’t yet reduced to nothing the content of carbon in the atmosphere. Yet it has done its level best to deliver net zero in integrity, intellect and informativeness.

This is the case in its coverage of most subjects, but what I find especially indicative is its tackling of climate change, né global warming. Though adding nothing to my knowledge of climatology, Sky puts some telling touches on my understanding of anthropology.

People have a dire need for orthodoxies anchoring their thought and guiding their behaviour. These used to be ancient and permanent, passed along from one generation to the next through the mediation of family, church and, to a lesser extent, school.

The first two are no longer in play: the church has been relegated to the status of an antiquated eccentricity, and the family to that of merely a provider, if that. Schools do shape orthodoxies but not the ancient and permanent kind. Fly-by-night would be a more accurate description.

Hence, for the time being you won’t find many young people who don’t accept gender fluidity as an irrefutable orthodoxy – nor people of any age who don’t confer the same status on climate change.

‘Orthodoxy’ comes from Greek: orthos ‘right’ + doxa ‘opinion’. However, the notion of what constitutes right opinion is these days fickle and laden with relativities.

In the past, the church would pronounce on that issue and it still does, except that practically no one listens. Considering the quality of most such pronouncements, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

High church officials routinely display ignorance even of their chosen subject, for example when referring to God as “he or she”. And when stepping outside their remit, they tend to ignore absolute, eternal truths, promulgating instead pernicious half-baked fads.

When it comes to forming orthodoxies, the church at best plays second fiddle to the school, with the media, especially television, picking up the conductor’s baton. It’s outlets like Sky TV that tell our increasingly dumbed-down masses what the right opinion is on any subject.

Back in the 1970s, before Sky graced the airwaves with its presence, the right opinion on climate was that a new Ice Age was just round the corner. Then the UN, that world authority on climatology, ruled that a gas that makes up 0.04 per cent of the atmosphere was warming up ‘our planet’ so much that the only way for us not to fry to death was to reduce its content drastically.

The same experts who used to preach global cooling then began to advertise global warming with an ardour fuelled by generous grants and subsidies. This neatly dovetailed with the anti-capitalist orthodoxy already in existence, adding to it an enticing new dimension.

Capitalism is powered by modern industry and modern industry is powered by hydrocarbons. Yes, that created and spread wide a prosperity the likes of which the West had never seen. But that’s nothing but crass materialism, explained the orthodoxy mongers.

First, if not everyone is equally prosperous, then no one should be prosperous at all. After all, modernity was inaugurated by a promise of equality, which means capitalism is in default. And then, most important, that immoral prosperity was bought at a fatal cost to ‘our planet’.

The message was so striking that it quickly took pride of place as an aggressive constituent of the orthodoxy thus formed. Global warming became an article of faith, a new religion allowing for no heresy or apostasy.

Sky News, which I’m singling out because it’s the only news channel I watch, if only for 10 minutes a day, is one of the temples of the new creed. Though the subject of net zero comes up every morning, neither Sky presenters nor their guests ever question the underlying assumptions.

Every premise is accepted with an unquestioning loyalty that few religions have seen since the Middle Ages. Some ministers go out on a limb and say that net zero remains the sacred goal towards which they strive. Alas, that goal is slower in coming than any right-thinking (orthodox?) person would wish.

These virtuous individuals must be reassured that, while the goal remains the same, the state of the economy is such that hurrying matters along may result in general impoverishment.

We would desperately love to eliminate hydrocarbons altogether and all at once, say politicians and commentators. And in due course we shall – bear with us. Just let us break the back of inflation (low productivity, post-Brexit and post-Covid slowdown, you name it), and then we’ll be able to kiss hydrocarbons good-bye.

The valid argument that the scientific justification for net zero is fraudulent is never heard, not even in the name of balanced journalism. Someone saying, for example, that the climate has been warmer than now for 85 per cent of the earth’s existence, even when neither hydrocarbons nor indeed people were a factor, wouldn’t be seen as a chap with a different opinion.

He’d be seen and treated as a heretic, to be immolated in the pyre of public disdain. So it’s best to keep him off the air. Both he and the orthodoxy will be safer that way.

P.S. Speaking of immolation: as I write this, France is on fire again. Two days ago a cop demanded that a 17-year-old Muslim stop the car he was driving. When the boy refused to comply, the cop shot him dead.

President Macron made a scathing statement about that ‘inexcusable act’, this before the policeman involved had been tried and found guilty. But then the French tend to be less pedantic than les anglo-saxons about the presumption of innocence.

Thousands of ghetto-dwellers all over France responded in a characteristically logical and measured manner. They started torching cars and burning houses in their own neighbourhoods, as one does.

Well, when in France do as the French do. So it was only by a great effort of self-control that I desisted from torching my neighbour’s car. What finally stopped me was the mournful realisation that I wasn’t French enough to act in such an indigenous manner.

A propos of cars, the victim was delivering pizzas in a Mercedes AMG, the high end of the range. Even assuming that the car wasn’t brand new, pizza delivery must be a remarkably more lucrative occupation in France than even in my rather upscale part of London. There the victim’s colleagues tend to ride scooters – leaving a much smaller carbon footprint.