The case against a ‘climate emergency’

January is the ideal month for gaining a sense of perspective. I’m increasingly convinced that the ‘climate emergency’ is another social mania we’ll look back on with: ‘J-eez, what was that about?’ Why?

The paradigm displays the classic anthropocentrism of our era. As organised religion declines, we replace God with humanity. Arrogating to our species the power to dial global temperature up or down is typically arrogant (see: pride, goeth, fall). Claiming that something is all your fault is as vain as claiming it’s to your credit. Regarding ‘the planet’ as a frightened fluff ball that requires our protection is the ultimate hubris. ‘The planet’ can squash us like bugs. Or with bugs, which sounds especially gross.

Scary climate predictions are made by the kind of computer models that brought us the Covid hysteria

If technically secular, the belief system is suspiciously Christian. You know, all that feeling guilty for living and atoning for our sins. All that renunciation of pleasure (holidays, steak); better still, all that ruination of other people’s pleasure. Whether we can control the climate, humans can unquestionably control each other, and this movement relishes tyranny. It’s focused on what we may not do (fly, use a gas cooker). For any priestly class, despoiling other people’s fun provides its own dark joy.

Starting something doesn’t mean you can stop it. Even if we attribute a slight post-industrial rise in temperature entirely to human agency, we can’t necessarily reverse the trend. When you drop a brick from an overpass and then regret it, you still smash some poor blighter’s windshield.

Big picture, it’s unusually cold. Geologists estimate that most of the last 500 million years were much hotter than today. During the 300,000 years of human existence, the temperature has repeatedly peaked to present-day levels without anyone refuelling an SUV.