Climate zealots net-zero push dies a quiet death and not a moment too soon

What a difference a few years make.Not long ago, politicians said climate change was going to kill us, so we must move to “net zero” emissions. This is theoretically possible: Since vegetation removes carbon, we could get to net zero by burning fewer fossil fuels.Governments everywhere pledged to do just that.President Joe Biden and European leaders promised “net zero by 2050.”For a while, it seemed like it might happen.Spain invested billions in its solar-power grid; Germany claimed to get most of its power from renewables.But now they realize that they made a mistake.  European businesses closed as electricity costs rose — and last year, Spain’s electricity supply shut down for 16 hours.It was a wake-up call for the green dream.“The power outages are the starkest illustration of bad electricity policy,” said Alex Epstein, author of “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.”“You can avoid power outages with these bad policies.What you can’t avoid is scarcity and rationing and poverty.”On top of that, the push for net zero left people more vulnerable to climate extremes.There were 10,000 excess deaths this year during a heat wave in June, Reuters reported.“These places in Europe can’t keep cool in the summer,” marveled Epstein, “even though we’ve had this technology for 100 years called air conditioning.”A majority of Americans have air conditioning, but only about 20% of European homes do.In Britain, some homeowners were even ordered to tear out air conditioners under climate laws. “This is just the pure religious nature of the climate catastrophist movement,” Epstein said.“It has one commandment: ‘Thou shalt not impact nature.’ They just think that everything good is a happy climate god and everything bad is a vengeful climate god.”“Why aren’t wind and solar enough?” I asked.

“The solar panels keep getting cheaper.Batteries last longer.”“Because the electricity grid has to be built around the worst day,�...