"Environmentalism is austerity on steroids."

 

"The left claims to hate austerity and yet its eco-dystopia would plunge millions into poverty....
    "We’re against austerity, they insist, and yet then they agitate for an austerity of apocalyptic proportions. This, surely, is the most stark incongruity of the modern left. They rail against every library closure or reform of welfare payments as an intolerable assault on people’s living standards, and then they take to the streets in their thousands in support of a degrowth agenda that would plunge vast swathes of humankind into penury. They’re far meaner than any right-wing penny-pincher they claim to oppose....
    "[T]hese privileged hysterics are determined to drum into the small minds of the polluting masses just how dangerous climate change has become.... if [this eco-leftist movement] were to get its way, if its Malthusian dream of leaving fossil fuels in the ground were ever to be realised, it would make [politicians'] post-2008 austerity programme[s] look like an era of milk and honey. The impact of Just Stop Oil’s Anti-Industrial Revolution, its misanthropic urge to wind back modernity itself, would be truly dire – especially for the working classes.
    "Environmentalism is austerity on steroids. Consider one of Just Stop Oil’s key demands: ‘No new oil or gas.’ This would be – there’s no other word for it – psychotic.... [T]o ‘rapidly eliminate fossil-fuel use’ would make the world an impoverished, dangerous and miserable place for most people. Fossil fuels provide 80 per cent of the world’s energy. Just three per cent comes from solar and wind power, so beloved of green anti-modernists. And even that measly slice of global energy production is ... totally dependent on fossil fuels, especially natural gas, for 24/7 back-up. That is, if the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, we have to crank up the fossil fuels. Ours is a world in which three-billion people still use less electricity than your average American fridge. Agitating for less energy production in such a time is callous beyond belief. It would issue a death sentence on the world’s poor....
    "We are already getting daily tasters of how destructive eco-austerity can be. The Net Zero ideology, embraced by governments across the West, aims to do in slow-motion what Just Stop Oil would do overnight: wean mankind off fossil fuels. And its consequences are awful. Farms closed down, farmers losing their jobs, truckers’ lives being made more difficult, driving being made more expensive, air travel once again becoming the preserve of the rich, power stations going unbuilt… the elites’ unhinged hostility towards fossil fuels has already birthed all of this. Imagine how much worse it would get if Just Stop Oil’s vision of a fossil-free world came to fruition."

~ Brendan O'Neill, from his post 'Environmentalism is austerity on steroids'