Cutting greenhouse gas emissions must cost more than 'business as usual'

Get real. All human life and its 'business as usual' produces greenhouse gas emissions. Always has. Some try to force cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. They enlist support. 'Virtue signalling' is the new religion. Banks/financiers genuflect. 'Skin in the game' for big betters.

Some governments price or tax emissions. And offer subsidies for claimed lower-emissions activity. Why? Because most won't volunteer, for free, to cut their own emissions, profitability, employment, and living standards. Without assurance all others will do so too, why should they?

All that is reality. Don't believe advocates' fervid claims. In particular, the nonsense that more (claimed) lower-emissions 'renewables' will reduce power prices is fantasy-land.

Were that really true, no taxes or subsidies would be needed at all. Government budgets would be better-balanced. And – hallelujah – 'renewables' would become part of 'business as usual'.

Rubbish. Check power bills. Look at NIMBY reactions to 'renewables' expansion. Governments are taxing emissions and subsidising renewables. And they're doing both badly and opaquely.

Of course'business as usual' costs more. Energy costs are soaring. Spinmeisters asserting renewables will bring energy prices down are lying. Not all people are economic illiterates. How much more would current, distorted,'business as usual' cost in a 100% renewables world?

One claim is we must complete the transition to renewables. 'Unreliables' will be cheapest then. Really? Do power prices ever start falling during later stages in the transition? No. They go up more. And they won't miraculously fall when 100% 'unreliables' is reached. Prove me wrong. Check out the current California, USA, situation. This was foreshadowed by MIT in 2018.

The question is not how much power costs will fall. They won't. The correct question is: What's the smallest cost increase possible for any target reduction in greenhouse gas emissions?

Answering that question requires an apples-vs-apples comparison of the costs of all ways of reducing emissions. No option 'off the table'. Deck not stacked to favour one energy source.

There's no 'free lunch' – let alone a 'free lunch' plus extra 'free' cash lying (sic) on the table. Zealots preach otherwise. But the dismal rules of scarcity, real comparative advantage, and basic economics, can't be repealed, despite announcements they can. Nothing's really 'free'.

Lying based on fantasy, bereft of objectively verifiable quantification, is damaging. Do the analysis properly. Make sure others can check and confirm it. Continuing the current political blathering ensures even higher power bills to come. Its supporters' credibility is shredded.

Anti-fossil fuel advocates and politicians rail against fossil fuels. Some are invested against them and argue others should punt likewise. They're 'talking their own book'.