[CLIP] Will Cars & Air Travel Become Luxuries of the Rich?—Andrew Montford on the Push for Net Zero

We're already spending quite a lot of money paying factories and things to shut down. And we're all being told we have to have smart meters in our homes. So instead of your old fashioned electricity meter, which just counts how many kilowatt hours you've used, you'll have a smart meter which is connected to central government. And that will give central government the ability to switch off appliances in your home when the wind isn't blowing. Now they don't like to talk about it very much, but that is what they will do. Of course, your electric vehicle charger will switch off if the wind isn't blowing. They can switch your fridge off for a few hours because, you know, maybe it'll be OK. Maybe you maybe your your your food won't defrost in that time. And if push comes to shove, if things get really bad, they will be able to switch off your heating because you'll have you'll have a heat pump and they can just switch that off. We can get periods of three weeks where there is basically no wind anywhere in Western Europe. I mean, I particularly remember the winter of 2009, 10 in the UK, where we had temperatures that were in sort of the range of minus five to minus 10 where I live for three weeks. And there was literally no wind. And obviously this I live in Scotland. There's no there's no solar power anywhere in the middle of winter in in that kind of weather system. Everybody essentially would be switched off. I shudder to think what would what would have happened if you were relying on an electric heat pump for those three weeks. It really would be quite terrifying. But again, they're doing these things anyway because that's what they have to do. It's that's that's what the the net zero dogma says has to happen. Well, and the obvious thing I think of here at this point, or maybe I don't know how obvious it is, but I found Michael Schellenberger's arguments in his book Apocalypse Never quite compelling that there's this kind of general idea that just energy use overall is something that needs to be reduced and that this is just kind of a process to get there. And of course, you know, he will argue, well, energy use is actually what allows for human flourishing. Right. So so there's this there's this question of ideology for sure. This is what you've been talking about throughout the interview. Schellenberger is absolutely right. And this is something that Alex Epstein, of course, talks about a lot as well. Energy is not just another commodity. It's it's it is absolutely central to having a civilization. Civilizations are built around energy. We have reduced our energy use per capita in the UK quite a lot because, as I said before, essentially all our manufacturing industry has has gone overseas. The other thing that we've done here is that people have been forced to buy low energy appliances, which have been more expensive, but save some money on energy. So that has been something that has been relatively painless. Those those, if you like the low hanging fruit like that has gone now. So it will be increasingly difficult to make that happen. And the reality is that the only way they're going to get energy down to the extent that they need to is essentially by rationing of one form or another. So I mentioned before that the electric the electricity grid couldn't cope with everybody being able to charge their electric vehicles. Well, in fact, they probably don't care because the conclusion is that, well, not everybody's going to have an electric vehicle anymore. And you know, you will you'll you'll ride on the bus or you'll ride on the train or whatever. And for people like me who sort of live out in the countryside, I don't know what we're going to do. But yeah, having personal transportation will be something that's restricted to the rich, I guess. And the same for air travel and that kind of thing. And also, you know, the poor people will be paid to switch off when electricity is in short supply. So, you know, people are already being offered money in the UK to switch off their appliances when when electricity prices are high. And yeah, that is not a world that I think most people want to live in. Most people enjoy their, you know, their two weeks in the sun in the summer. Most people like being able to drive to visit family and friends and go off on camping trips and things like that. But these environmental extremists don't want you to live like that. And it's it's it's disturbing because I don't think people realize what's coming. The corollary of everything, or I guess the obvious outcome of everything you're describing is just a lot more government control and intrusion into the personal and private space. Absolutely right. There is a big control agenda here. And again, there's quite interesting parallels to the pandemic again here, because we have this thing called the Nudge Unit in the UK, which is essentially was a department of the central bureaucracy. It's now allegedly independent, but essentially is trying to apply the same psychological techniques to get people to change their behavior in the way in which the bureaucrats think we need to change our behavior. So the whole machinery of government stops being about serving the people. And it is about directing and controlling the people. So yeah, it's sort of soft control, but also hard control, like rationing and, you know, switching off your appliances and that sort of thing. And it's yeah, it's a totalitarian agenda. The totalitarian in the strict sense of the word in that every single aspect of life is going to be affected by this this agenda. So whether you get to go and see granny is is going to be it's going to change. You're not going to see your parents as much if they live 50 miles away, because you're probably not going to have a car. So it's going to be a major expedition if you go if you go to see your family. I don't know. Maybe people will start start to live in extended families again. I don't know. But yeah, it's it's scary in a way, isn't it?