Time to get rid of the “Green Transition”

Global liberal elites love slogans, especially if they signal virtue while avoiding or discouraging critical thinking. At the beginning of the millennium globalists used the term “globalisation” in this way. It suggested an inevitable process which no-one could resist, and which could not be reversed. The losers in globalisation were victims of unavoidable progress rather than the consequences of decisions taken by the global elites. The use of the slogan avoided the need to think critically about the nature of globalisation and its constituent parts. Such critical analysis would have revealed that globalisation was a human construct which could just as easily be deconstructed, as we are now seeing.

Deprived of the use of “globalisation”, liberal elites, and in particular the eurocrats of the European Commission, have latched onto the “Green Transition” instead. In terms of virtue signalling, the “Green Transition” has advantages even over “globalisation”. Anyone who questions the “Green Transition” is not just unrealistic or a hopeless romantic but guilty of moral turpitude. To question the “Green Transition” is to position yourself with climate change deniers and fossil fuel industry lobbyists who care nothing for the fate of the planet or mankind. Thus, critical debate about the concept is closed down and its advocates can focus on implementing “the plan.”

In fact, the “Green Transition” combines policy areas with very different criteria and parameters for success. Essentially the “Green Transition” consist of three policy areas (plus the educational, fiscal and legislative measures needed to implement them): the promotion of new digital technologies; pollution reduction; and reducing carbon emissions. Promoting new digital technologies and their associated industries is a good thing to do in itself. Governments who fail to do so risk their economies being reduced to low skill, low labour cost level with significant penalties for the welfare of their citizens. Likewise, reducing pollution, in particular air and water pollution, is a good thing to do in itself. It significantly benefits the quality of life of a country´s citizens. Increasing evidence links air pollution to the lung and respiratory diseases that proved such deadly comorbidities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The promotion of digital technologies and pollution reduction are both policy areas largely within the control of national governments and, to some extent, of regional organisations like the EU.

The reduction of carbon emissions is different. It makes no difference if a given country or even region reduces their emissions to zero if the rest of the world keeps on pumping out carbon into the atmosphere. Indeed, attempts to radically reduce carbon emissions when competitor countries do not risks damaging the economy and the welfare of a country´s citizens without achieving anything in relation to climate change. As we are seeing in the current European energy crisis, the citizens end up suffering real economic and social consequences without any benefits.

Thus, the reduction in carbons emissions is not a matter for industrial or environmental policy (unlike promoting digital technologies or reducing pollution) but for foreign policy. If a country´s foreign policy cannot convince other countries (at least a majority of countries at a global level) to make similar carbon emission reductions to its own, its citizens are making sacrifices for nothing. The argument that through setting an example by reducing carbon emissions a country, or a region, can inspire other countries to follow suit is akin to pacifist arguments that unilateral disarmament will inspire the rest of the world to abandon warfare as a tool of foreign policy. Europe´s liberal elites have long propagated such arguments as part of their conceit that the post-modern European state is the model for the future that all will eventually follow. Events in Ukraine should have given the lie to this.

The “Green Transition”, by confusing very different policy areas, ties success in all to the achievement of carbon emission reductions, an area of policy where success does not lie in the control of any one government or region. The promotion of digital technologies and the reduction of pollution are successful only if carbon emissions are simultaneously reduced. But the focus on carbon emissions in one country distorts analysis of the carbon impact of new technologies. The carbon emissions of renewable energies are measured only at the end point of energy production rather than along the supply chain of their production. Much of Europe´s success in reducing carbon emissions can be attributed to its export of emissions (and other forms of industrial pollution) to developing countries as industry has been offshored.

Dropping the “Green Transition” would facilitate more critical analysis of the different policy objectives it incorporates and the tools for achieving them. It would also open up a space for debate about what to do if it is already too late for carbon emissions: what steps should governments be taking to adapt their economies and societies to global warming? This does not mean abandoning efforts to combat global warming, but it does mean recognising that we may already have passed the tipping point or that our foreign policy may fail to persuade other governments to make the necessary reductions in carbon emissions. Unlike the reduction of carbon emissions, measures to adapt our societies and economies to climate change does lie within the control of an individual country or region.

Shuan Substack