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Climate plan based on phasing out fossil fuels doomed to fail, says Tony Blair

Tony Blair has called for the government to change course on climate, suggesting a strategy that limits fossil fuels in the short term or encourages people to limit consumption is “doomed to fail”.

In comments that have prompted a backlash within Labour, the former prime minister suggested the UK government should focus less on renewables and more on technological solutions such as carbon capture.

Blair said people were “being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal”. He said “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail”.

The paper itself, written by the TBI’s Lindy Fursman, said net zero policies were now “increasingly viewed as unaffordable, ineffective or politically toxic”.

https://archive.ph/K6RLl

For a more sane on this topic, see: Preparing for a New Cultural Paradigm with Jean-Marc Jancovici

2 comments

  • ...a strategy that limits fossil fuels in the short term or encourages people to limit consumption is “doomed to fail”.

    Maybe, but the world has to reduce global carbon emissions by half, within a relatively short amount of time, to have any chance of limiting warming to a level that gives us the best possible chance of not passing critical climate tipping points, and the only way to do that is to significantly reduce our use of fossil fuels. Carbon capture will likely also be necessary, and maybe so will be geoengineering (god help us), but there is no possible strategy for limiting warming and hopefully avoiding passing critical tipping points that doesn't involve rapid and dramatic reductions in fossil fuel use. So, if that's doomed to fail, then the world not passing critical climate tipping points is also doomed to fail. I think a lot of people just figure that's a foregone conclusion at this point, and maybe it is, but if that's the case then let's just be honest and say that what we're facing in the latter half of the 21st century, and possibly sooner, is significant catastrophe.

    • Agreed. I shared this not to promote Blair's viewpoint, of course, but to demonstrate how climate denial talking points are shifting away from "it's not happening" to "it's happening, but we can't stop it."

      To be fair, it's going to be incredibly difficult to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, especially when we look at it from a game-theoretic perspective. But the alternative isn't implementing techno-fixes like carbon capture, it's the collapse of the biosphere (and the resulting decline and collapse of industrial civilization). Elites like Blair continually stop one step short of acknowledging this (likely because they figure their wealth will insulate them, and/or they'll be dead before it gets that bad).