CO2 emissions are the consequence of producing energy. It is true for animals, including humans, who breathe out the much-maligned gas which is produced in our cells as glucose and oxygen combine to release energy and produce water and CO2. And it is true for the human production of energy by burning of fossil fuels. But now we are told by “experts” from teenage icon Greta Thunberg to the motley crew of hippies and hard left campaigners in the Extinction Rebellion that unless we phase out fossil fuels in a matter of a few years the planet is doomed. The use of fossil fuels is the result of an evil conspiracy of big business interests, we are told, and when CO2 is emitted it is a malignant attack on the planet and humanity. But are fossil fuels really as bad as their reputation?
The rise in CO2 emissions has accompanied the industrialisation of first the western world and later what we now call the developing world – but what else has happened since pre-industrialisation? Well, in 1800, the average global life expectancy was 29 years; today it is 71, and even in the poorest parts of the world people can still expect to live to their 50ies or 60ies. Two centuries ago, the vast majority of the world’s population of around 1 billion people lived in extreme poverty. Despite the population having grown to almost 8 billion, the number in extreme poverty has fallen, to an estimated 734 million (World Bank data 2016). Famines, routine just a few decades ago (especially in Africa), have all but vanished.
This lift in lifespan and living standards for us all, but primarily for the poorest among us, is the single most morally laudable achievement in human history. And the most important factor in this development is that we have figured out how to produce massive quantities of energy, primarily by burning fossil fuels. CO2 isn’t generated for fun, it is the consequence of a huge lift in living standards as industrialisation brought unprecedented wealth to the masses, and it has allowed us to heat and light up our homes without spending our days collecting firewood, transport ourselves and the goods we rely on across large distances in much reduced time, and myriads of other things, most of them not even contemplated by our ancestors just decades ago. The amount of labour that once bought 54 minutes of light now buys 52 years of light. Energy is the lifeblood of the capitalist civilisation.
Renewable energy sources – wind and solar primarily – can’t anywhere near replace fossil fuels today, and while they may possibly be developed to be more efficient in coming decades, any attempt to transition the world to green energy in the near future would cause a catastrophic economic collapse which would see swathes of us pushed into the same punishing poverty which fossil fuels allowed us to escape. Is that really what the Extinction Rebellion campaigners want? And don’t we, and especially journalists and politicians, have a moral bound duty to aggressively question those who advocate extreme changes to society? Sadly, but for a few exceptions, the establishment treats the climate alarmists as experts, despite their outrages and unscientific claims (for example that billions of people face death within decades as a result of climate change) – and while realpolitik dictates that policy changes that are inconvenient or costly to the masses are bound to fail, the pandering to the climate mob is a sad spectacle, when instead of vilifying fossil fuels we should be celebrating their contribution to human progress and tread very carefully when we discuss their replacement.