“SCIENCE: Knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.” – Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

“CONSENSUS: General agreement; the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned.” – Meriam-Webster Dictionary.

Twitter has take off the gloves for Earth Day by banning ads that are scientifically true and instead will only promote “consensus” as approved by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to inform their decisions.

On April 24th, 2022 American Wire’s Melissa Fine reported:

In a move to coincide with Earth Day, Twitter has announced it will no longer accept advertisements on its platform that “contradict the scientific consensus on climate change.”

In what the company calls a “climate-forward approach to ads,” Twitter stated in a blog posted Friday, “People around the world use Twitter to connect with others passionate about protecting our planet.”

“Last year, we introduced a dedicated Topic to help people find personalized conversations about climate change. … To better serve these conversations, misleading advertisements on Twitter that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change are prohibited, in line with our inappropriate content policy,” the blog reads.

Read the full article.

Climate Change Consensus Myths

Mark J. Perry, a scholar and professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan, listed in an article titled “18 Spectacularly Wrong Predictions Made Around the Time of the First Earth Day In 1970” the following “climate change consensus” myths:

Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started:

1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal environment.
3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”
7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.
12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.
13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).
14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.
16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”
18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

The above 18 statements represented the best examples of the “consensus” on climate change in the 1970s.

So, has the world ended as Harvard biologist George Wald predicted? Of course not.

The Bottom Line

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) offered 8 common sense proposals to alleviate climate change:

1. End “Emit More Elsewhere” Policies: The ecologists’ slogan “Think Globally, Act Locally” is entirely appropriate to the issue of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2). Emissions anywhere impact the climate everywhere. Policies that, instead of reducing emissions, simply move them to other countries accomplish nothing. Domestic regulations, taxes, and tariffs aimed at reducing global warming may have the unintended effect of increasing the cost of domestic production to the point that companies offshore their operations. Similarly, increasing energy costs here will shift energy-intensive industry from the United States to places like Mexico, China, and India. At best, such policies merely move emissions elsewhere, at worst they increase them. Shifting the production of goods and resources away from countries with efficient economies to less efficient nations does more harm than good. Making a widget with 10 BTUs of energy in the United States is better for the planet than making the same widget in China with 40 BTUs. Producing a barrel of oil here is better for the planet than producing it in Russia, Venezuela, or Iran – countries that have proved unwilling or unable to protect the environment.

2. Admit Fossil Fuels Are Needed—for Now: The federal government’s Energy Information Agency (EIA) projects that the nation’s energy needs will continue to grow for at least the next thirty years, and that “[p]etroleum and natural gas [will] remain the most-consumed sources of energy in the United States through 2050.” One reason is that gas turbines are the only practical backups for the wind turbines and solar panels that the government has determined will replace traditional power plants. Because the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, backup is necessary. Currently, battery storage can power a city for no more than a few hours. That leaves pumped storage plants and natural gas fired turbines as the only reserve power sources that can come online quickly enough to stabilize the grid when wind and solar fail. However, pumped storage plants, which pump water up into reservoirs during times of low energy demand and then release the water through turbines during times of peak demand, are limited by geography and by environmentalists opposed to constructing new reservoirs. Mandating wind and solar, then, means mandating natural gas. Without reliable backup, homeowners and companies will relocate or install their own generators. Burning gasoline, diesel, and natural gas at hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across the nation will do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions. Given that natural gas plants are essential—having been made so by government dictates—the infrastructure needed to supply them is also essential. That includes production, refining, and transportation. The EIA’s report also predicts that “the transportation sector will consume the majority of [petroleum and other liquid] fuels, particularly motor gasoline and diesel” through 2050. Electric vehicles (EVs) currently make up less than 5% of the global auto market and about 4% of the American market. While they may someday replace gasoline and diesel-powered cars in significant numbers, that day is not yet here.

3. End “Produce Elsewhere” Policies: The Biden Administration is intent on shutting down natural gas and oil production in the United States while, at the same time, asking other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Iran to increase their production. But burning Iranian or Venezuelan natural gas instead of American gas does not reduce emissions. The Administration is accusing domestic oil companies of greedily raising the price of gasoline (at a time of general inflation, when all prices are rising) while expressing surprise that those same greedy corporations don’t take advantage of higher prices and produce more petroleum. But why would an oil company invest millions of dollars to expand operations when Biden is promising to shut down production once he’s solved his immediate political problems caused by rising prices? Why, after Democrats have proposed taxing away oil company profits, would anyone invest in firms that are targeted for extinction?

4. End Pipeline Restrictions: When President Biden killed the Keystone Pipeline on his first day in office, City Journal noted: The symbolic victory of the pipeline’s cancellation will not have any measurable effect on the decarbonization of the U.S. economy. Keystone’s untimely demise will not change the rate of our national consumption of fossil fuels; instead, American consumers will simply be forced to buy more oil from countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela. More of our gas will be imported by plane or ship rather than from a net-zero emission pipeline—and we’ll pay more for it at the pump, too. Pipelines are the safest and most efficient way in which to transport natural gas, petroleum, and petroleum liquid products. Forcing oil and gas to be moved by ship, rail, or truck instead makes little sense economically or ecologically. Under Governor Andrew Cuomo, the state of New York banned fracking for natural gas and obstructed the construction of new natural gas pipelines. As a result, the state has had to generate more electricity with fuel oil, which produces more CO2 and pollution than does natural gas, and the state has also had to import natural gas from Russia and Trinidad and Tobago. “In 2016,” according to the Wall Street Journal, “Officials in Massachusetts and New Hampshire blocked financing for the $3 billion Access Northeast Pipeline, which would have reliably provided fuel to three New England states.” Consequently, a tanker sailed into Boston Harbor in 2018 carrying Russian LNG (liquified natural gas).

5. Repeal the Jones Act: The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (the “Jones Act”) forbids transporting goods between American ports on ships that aren’t American built, owned, registered, and crewed. The Act’s carbon footprint is enormous because it prevents us from taking advantage of the veritable conveyor belt of foreign-flagged ships that circle the nation and frequent American ports. A Japanese ship, for example, dropping off goods in, say, Seattle, can’t pick up goods from there and deliver them to San Francisco or Los Angeles. Because there are currently fewer than one hundred cargo ships that are compliant with the Jones Act, many American products must be sent by rail, truck, or air even though they could be far more efficiently —and with far fewer CO2 emissions—transported by sea. The Act also increases Americans’ cost of buying domestic goods by raising the cost of transporting them. As a result, Americans are led to import more foreign products than they otherwise would, producing more CO2 in the process. Moreover, there are currently no Jones Act-compliant LNG transport ships. As a result, Puerto Rico buys natural gas from Russia rather than from Texas or Louisiana. Similarly, prohibitions on new pipelines have forced states like Massachusetts and New York to ship in natural gas rather than buying it from Pennsylvania. And, because of the Jones Act, they must purchase their gas, not from the U.S., but from countries like Russia, France, Algeria, and Norway.

6. Allow LNG Transport by Rail: After pipelines and ships, the safest, most efficient, and least polluting way by which to transport petroleum products is rail. Working to kill any option save keeping gas in the ground, however, the Biden Administration suspended authorization for transporting LNG by rail tank cars.

7. Stop Blocking Loans to Oil Industry: In September 2021, President Biden nominated Saule Omarova to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Omarova supported a “National Investment Authority” (NIA) that, in her words, would be responsible for “devising, financing, and executing a long-term national strategy of economic development and reconstruction.” Banks, under control of the NIA, would direct capital investments toward politically approved technologies and investments and away from industries, such as petroleum, that are out of favor. In January 2022, not dissuaded by his earlier failure, Biden nominated Sarah Bloom Raskin, an advocate of climate-related banking regulation, to the Federal Reserve Board. The current strategy for addressing climate change—using wind and solar—requires natural gas-fueled turbines for backup. Yet the current administration is doing everything in its power to short circuit the strategy by blocking domestic production and transport of natural gas and starving the industry of capital. We are quickly leaving ourselves with the only option of importing natural gas from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, and Iran—countries that don’t necessarily wish us well. Putin is threating Europe with gas cutoffs to force them to acquiesce to his takeover of Ukraine. Do we really want to subject ourselves to the same sort of extortion?

8. End Ethanol Mandates: Clear-cutting forests in the United States and rain forests in the Amazon to grow biofuel crops isn’t green. This commonsense notion is backed by research in 2007-2008, 2014, and now in 2022. In February of this year, the National Academy of Sciences published a study that found that corn-based ethanol is “likely at least 24% more carbon intensive than gasoline due to emissions resulting from land use changes to grow corn, along with processing and combustion.”

And thus ends the lesson on government climate change policy, myths, consensus and science.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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Recently, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a recall for electric-vehicle batteries made by LG Energy Solution of South Korea. Fires have been caused by some of these batteries, which are used in Mercedes, Hyundai, and General Motors products, among others.

The problem is that rare manufacturing defects can cause overheating and fires. An Associated Press article describing the recall notes that recalls made voluntarily by individual manufacturers for these batteries date back to February of 2020. In November of that year, GM began recalling over 140,000 Chevrolet Bolt EVs to replace possibly defective LG batteries, and LG paid GM $2 billion in compensation.

The insurance industry obviously has a stake in this matter, and a small survey conducted by its Highway Loss Data Institute showed that the rate of fires for electric cars is about the same as it is for gasoline-burners:  0.2 per 1,000 insured vehicle years.

If the best you can say about electric car fires is that they’re no worse than fires in gas-powered ones, that’s faint praise.

Combustible

The underlying problem in electric-car battery fires is the technology. You may not be aware that the liquid or gel electrolyte in the type of lithium battery used in electric vehicles cannot be exposed to air without catching fire. This is one reason that manufacturing such a battery is so tricky.

Back when photographic film was the only way to take pictures, manufacturers figured out how to make hundreds of square yards of sensitive film every day in total darkness. But it wasn’t easy, and the fact that film never got as cheap as, say, toilet paper, had an incalculable effect on the entire industry.

Unless the electric-car business manages to break free of liquid-electrolyte batteries, it may find itself stuck in a similar rut. Except for the battery, an electric car is markedly cheaper to make than a fossil-fuel one. The electronics and the motors are much simpler than the corresponding parts of a gas-powered car.

But right now, the cheapest electrics on the market are many thousands of dollars more costly than an average gas model because of the darned battery, and so the vision of replacing most of our gas-guzzlers with electrics remains just that: a vision.

Potential alternative

On the technological horizon is a development that could change all that:  the solid-state battery. Michael Faraday himself (1791-1867) discovered that solid materials such as silver sulfide could act as electrolytes, which means that ions can move about through them under the influence of electric fields. But up to now, truly solid electrolytes (as opposed to the liquid or gel-like products used in most batteries today) have resisted commercialization for a number of reasons.

A significant milestone in the development of solid-state batteries happened when John Goodenough, who was one of the original developers of current lithium-battery technology, announced in 2017 that he had made a solid-state battery with a glass electrolyte. According to some sources, solid-state batteries could have up to 2.5 times the energy density of current lithium batteries, although it is not clear whether this is a volume or mass energy density.  Either way, it would mean that for the same size or weight battery, a car using a solid-state battery might have a longer driving range than a gasoline car with a typical gas tank.

No one knows yet how to make solid-state batteries cheaply. Thin-film technologies such as vacuum deposition are sometimes used, and while there is concern that such technologies may be difficult to scale, vacuum deposition in other manufacturing areas has been applied to rolls of plastic and other large-scale manufactured goods.  So it’s more a question of investment and effort than fundamental technological obstacles, I suspect.

Tall order

Several automakers, notably Volkswagen and Toyota, are investing heavily in solid-state battery technology. But they have the obstacle shared by all automakers that any product engineered for automotive use has to be a lot more durable and reliable than anything used in the military or even aerospace fields.

Do you think military tank drivers go ten thousand miles without needing any service, or astronauts think they’ll be able to ride their rockets for ten thousand launches without having any problems? Yet we start a car several times a day for years and expect nothing to go wrong.

It’s that kind of standard that every electric-vehicle battery is expected to meet, and the wonder is that they have come this far.  Pardon an old technologist for making a statement that is more intuitive than fact-based, but when I look at a typical EV battery that consists of several thousand individually-manufactured, hermetically sealed, and electrically insulated cells, I see a technology that is fundamentally immature.

Digital computers remained the expensive province of a few wealthy institutions until manufacturers learned to take the many thousands of largely similar components and integrate them onto a chip.

Pricey

I suspect that electric cars will also remain in the realm of the wealthy until solid-state batteries bring the core cost down to the point that people will want to buy them, not because they’re afraid of global warming or want something to match their Patek Phillipe watch, but because they’re cheaper and easier to run than gas-powered ones.

In the meantime, we’re going to have to put up with recalls like the ones for the LG batteries that catch fire on rare occasions, because it seems to be the nature of liquid-electrolyte lithium cells to do that once in a while.

The best manufacturers can do is to watch their processes and inspections rigorously and hope that a better technology will come along that will let them make batteries more like people make computer chips these days, rather than like photographic film was once made, under difficult and unique conditions that are hard to maintain for long.

This article has been republished from Engineering Ethics with permission.

AUTHOR

Karl D. Stephan

Karl D. Stephan received the B. S. in Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1976. Following a year of graduate study at Cornell, he received the Master of Engineering degree in 1977… More by Karl D. Stephan

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Report urges Europe to ‘ban all business flights, private jets & internal flights…ban car use within cities…reducing heating in buildings’

Lockdown 2.0: The “Switch Off Putin” RePlanet report: “We propose bans on all business flights, private jets and internal flights within Europe to save oil, and bans also on car use within cities,” the report’s authors said. “This should be combined with free public transport.”

“In some ways, the speed of the change will resemble the Covid lockdowns,” the report noted, adding, “as, with Covid lockdowns, social pressure to abide by national restrictions will also play a big part.”

Morano:

“This ‘Switch Off Putin’ report is serving as Putin’s revenge on the West, allowing the once free West to destroy itself under the false guise of hurting — Putin.”

Climate Depot Special Report

By: Climate Depot -April 13, 2022 4:18 PM

A new report is urging Europe to hurt Putin by imposing COVID lockdown-inspired energy bans on Europeans. The RePlanet report, being touted by the UK Guardian, is calling for a “ban all business flights, private jets & internal flights,” imposing a ban on “car use within cities” and “reducing heating in buildings,” all while “fast-tracking solar & wind” power.  The RePlanet report is titled, “SWITCH OFF PUTIN: UKRAINE ENERGY SOLIDARITY PLAN – How we can stop funding Putin’s war machine.”

“We propose bans on all business flights, private jets and internal flights within Europe to save oil, and bans also on car use within cities,” the report’s authors said. “This should be combined with free public transport. While the impacts of this are not easily quantified, we believe this could double the reduction in oil use beyond that proposed by the IEA.”

The report is explicit in its enchantment with COVID lockdowns. “In some ways, the speed of the change will resemble the Covid lockdowns,” the report noted, adding, “as, with Covid lockdowns, social pressure to abide by national restrictions will also play a big part.”

The report, which calls for “energy rationing” and claims it will be “rationing via fair shares,” apes the COVID template by stating, “We may need a state of emergency declared.” The report is open about how COVID lockdowns can be the model for so much of what progressives and government leaders want to impose on society.

The first tool in the tool kit for these European academic activists writing the report is resurrecting the COVID lockdowns. The report is calling for energy lockdowns to allegedly punish Russian President Vladimir Putin, but in doing so, Europe will deploy self-inflicted punishing energy lockdowns on itself.

The report boldly demands more government intrusion in the lives of Europeans, a massive expansion of a micro-managed economy and society will be achieved by extended energy rationing, strict limits on freedom of mobility, more economic disruption, unemployment, and inflation. But according to the authors of the report, it will be so worth it because the measures will somehow “switch off Putin.” Europe will commit energy and economic suicide, but it will all be to harm Putin. Take that Putin!

The West has long targeted itself for self-destruction using the climate scare but now the Russian invasion of Ukraine is opening up more opportunities for the West to further self-flagellate itself to achieve its “climate goals.” The report is music to the ears of the global leaders, World Economic Forum, academia, and the media, who have been desperate to keep the lockdowns humming along.

The report declares that “European economies are now on a war footing in terms of the rapidity of the energy transition.” But a war footing is another phrase for massive oppression of your citizens. See: Climate agenda seeks WW2 mobilization – ‘But all mobilizations are oppressive. You can’t commandeer half of the GDP without disrupting or even destroying people’s lives’

A full return to a managed economy à la the 1970s is being demanded in the report, complete with energy restrictions and price caps. “Governments will need to introduce price caps and guaranteed minimum supplies at the household levels,” the report explains.

The “Switch Off Putin” report sounds an awful lot like an energy version of COVID lockdowns. Instead of opening Europe back up for domestic energy production, they are told to suffer and do with less and are prescribed the same failed lockdown-style policies they endured for COVID. It is odd how COVID ‘solutions’ also allegedly helped the climate and now the same solutions are being touted to deal with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Let’s simplify this: The proposed ‘solutions’ to climate change, COVID, and now the Russian war are all exactly the same — more lockdowns, hammer the poor and middle class with more restrictions on travel, less freedom, and even more surrendering of power to unelected government regulators.

This “Switch Off Putin” report is serving as Putin’s revenge on the West, allowing the once free West to destroy itself under the false guise of hurting — Putin.

Note: The authors of the “Switch Off Putin” report are Mark Lynas, Rauli Partanen, and Joris van Dorp.

The report’s co-author Mark Lynas is no stranger to extreme climate activism, having once hurled a cream pie in the face of “Skeptical Environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg over his dissenting climate views.

Watch the video below of Mark Lynas assaulting Lomborg with a pie during one of Lomborg’s talks.

#

Background: 

UK Guardian: Ban European flights and car use in cities to hurt Putin, report urges

Strong measures by Europe could quickly deprive Russia of oil and gas income worth billions, experts say

By Helena Horton Environment reporter

Excerpt:

Flights should be banned in continental Europe and car use banned in city centres to save energy and prevent Vladimir Putin profiting from fossil fuel sales, campaigners have said.

It would be possible for Europe to quickly end its reliance on oil and gas from Russia by taking strong measures, according to a report by the climate adviser Mark Lynas, energy analyst Rauli Partanen, and energy and sustainability installations specialist Joris van Dorp.

Policies include rationing, with everyone in Europe allowed the same minimum amount of energy to use, and limiting thermostats to 18C in winter.

The report’s authors said: “We conclude it is possible to eliminate Russian gas imports starting immediately in Europe. This will require an unprecedented level of European solidarity, a combination of a Marshall plan and a Berlin airlift to redistribute energy around the continent as needed and support the transition.”

The authors of the latest report from the RePlanet Research Institute, however, say such measures would reduce demand by 2.7m barrels a day in advanced economies, still substantially less than Russian oil exports to Europe.

The authors argue that we need to go further, and say they have worked out how to eliminate 25% of all oil use in Europe.

“We propose bans on all business flights, private jets and internal flights within Europe to save oil, and bans also on car use within cities,” they said. “This should be combined with free public transport. While the impacts of this are not easily quantified, we believe this could double the reduction in oil use beyond that proposed by the IEA.”

To replace the gas Europe buys from Russia, the authors recommend measures including stopping the nuclear phaseout in Germany, Sweden and Belgium, reducing heating in buildings by 4C, and a fast-track deployment of additional solar and wind generation.

RePlanet Report Excerpts: 

“We know that a rapid cessation of Russian fossil fuel imports will be painful for Europe.” …

“We will need dramatic measures to reduce demand, implemented via some form of energy rationing to ensure the burden is shared fairly and does not disproportionately hurt poorer households and countries.” …

“We may need a state of emergency declared, and an explicit political recognition that European economies are now on a war footing in terms of the rapidity of the energy transition. In some ways the speed of the change will resemble the Covid lockdowns, but with a different trajectory in the longer term.”

[ … ]

“Rationing via fair shares is the only alternative: governments will need to introduce price caps and guaranteed minimum supplies at the household levels so that everyone gets a basic amount and those with less ability to pay are not simply cut off. Turning down thermostats will be difficult to mandate and enforce, but with only a certain amount of gas allowed per household the incentive to stick to it will be substantial. As with Covid lockdowns, social pressure to abide by national restrictions will also play a big part.”

#

‘Rationing’: Enviros Push Radical Lifestyle Changes Amid Energy Crisis – The authors — two of which are from the eco group RePlanet Research Institute — also argued the Ukraine crisis highlighted the need for a rapid transition to clean energy alternatives. They said large-scale solar and wind projects should be immediately green-lit and constructed.

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Intl Energy Agency report urges ENERGY LOCKDOWNS: ‘Banning use of private cars on Sundays…Reducing highway speed limits…more working from home…cutting business air travel’ & SUV ‘tax’

IEA report ‘A 10-Point Plan to Cut Oil Use’ excerpts: “Reducing highway speed limits by about 6 miles per hour; more working from home; street changes to encourage walking and cycling; car-free Sundays in cities and restrictions on other days; cutting transit fares; policies that encourage more carpooling; cutting business air travel; and more.” … “Governments have all the necessary tools at their disposal to put oil demand into decline in the coming years, which would support efforts to both strengthen energy security and achieve vital climate goals.” …

Restricting private cars’ use of roads in large cities to those with even number-plates some weekdays and to those with odd-numbered plates on other weekdays

Car-free Sundays in cities: Banning the use of private cars on Sundays

‘Tax’ SUVs: “Sales of SUVs also keep increasing…policies to address the rise in sales of such vehicles – such as specific registration and road taxes – are key.” …Ban installation of new oil boilers

This new 2022 report from IEA comes follows their 2021 report urging a form of climate lockdowns to battle global warming. The 2021 IEA report called for ‘behavioral changes’ to fight climate and ‘a shift away from private car use’ and ‘upper speed limits’ and thermostat controls; limits on hot water & more!.“

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