This has always been a major problem. And probably will so continue.

Can we develop renewables and fossil fuels in a sustainable way?
I doubt it.
Our atmosphere consists of a thin skin of gas around the world.
We cannot replace it.
If we pollute it beyond a certain point, it becomes unusable, and we die.
So we need to rein in any excessive use of materials on our planet.
Which means we need to live a simpler life.
I doubt that will happen too.
So we are headed for some kind of climax or disaster along the road ahead of us.
Future generations are not going to thank us methinks.
And a word about poverty.
Our particular ancestors were innovative.
I think they had to be because they lived in cold climes.
They had to think hard or perish.
They thought hard.
So they survived well.
And advanced us swiftly to the level of comfort we enjoy today.
In places where people didn't need to think so hard to survive, standards remained basic.
So much so, that by comparison, they are now far behind us.
I think we should be willing to show them how to improve, but not try to live their lives for them.
It is up to them to get organised, and bring their own standards up.
If they can't or won't do this, their standards will remain low.
We must accept this reality

The article falsely presents net-zero as a ban on modernity for the poor, when in reality the cheapest new energy in much of the developing world is now renewable electricity, poverty has fallen alongside expanding energy access, and climate impacts themselves disproportionately harm the very populations the it claims to defend.

Don't bother with it.

Its hard to exaggerate how much I like this article. I've read quite a few articles and essays recently with the general theme that covid (or more exactly the 'expert' response to covid) was the death of the cult of the expert. But this pulls together all sorts of stands to that observation in a highly erudite way.

Read it twice and saved it for future reference. I particularly liked the way Orwell was drawn in. As Orwell once wrote: "There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them”. Lockdowns was one of those.

The collateral rise of MAGA and MAHA represents a revolution in the administration of the state. It may well be nipped in the bud because the global elite and the US deep state don't take these attacks on their wealth and power laying down.

Bhattacharya, mentioned in the article, and now head of the NIH was one of the first to recognise that the lockdowns and the entire reaction to covid was wrong and to urge a different path. The medical authorities ruthlessly shut him down, but he has risen triumphant both in his career and in the way his original observations were shown to be correct.

The reaction to the death of expertise is enormous. There was a time when merely asserting that "experts say" was enough to end discussion. No more. But its not all good. The distrust that the lying about the covid vaccine has engendered will have negative impacts as people reject vaccines whose efficacy aren't in question - eg whooping cough and measles. The authorities including MAHA have a lot to do to rebuild trust in those type of vaccines.

But all in all, a very satisfying article

oops wrong thread

Net zero was always a first world project. Only the first world (Europe, the US, Japan, the Anglosphere) ever really bought it because only they could ever really afford such lunacy.

And now they are coming to realise that even they can't afford it - at least not without trashing their economies.

We will eventually get to net zero CO2 emissions, not by government fiat and not for the good of Gaia, but because there will come a time when energy will be made cheaply and efficiently and reliably without the need to burn stuff. But that technology is a long way off yet.