The Cynicism And Absurdity Of Climate Alarmism

A new report from the UK government boasts of a claim to have cut its national carbon emissions by more than half over the past 50 years. Data compiled by the Global Carbon Project (GCP) claims to show that Britain’s emissions have dropped by 52% since their peak in 1970.

This set senior British Conservative Party officials boasting, led by Claire Coutinho, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (yes, that’s her actual title).  “Britain is the first country in the G20 to halve its carbon emissions,” Coutinho bragged. “We are world leaders in tackling climate change.”

Coutinho’s comment echoed specious claims made last September by Prime Minister Rish Sunak, who said in a speech, “[W]e’re so far ahead of every other country in the world. We’ve had the fastest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the G7. Down almost 50% since 1990. France? 22%. The US? No change at all. China? Up by over 300%.” The truth, of course, is that the US has cut its own emissions over the past 15 years to levels roughly equivalent to its emissions in 1992; but hey, when it comes to crass politics, who’s really counting, anyway?

But counting is important and, for the UK, the legitimacy of all this virtue signaling about emissions depends entirely on how the counting is done. Writing at The Telegraph, Jonathan Leake points out that the method deployed by the GCP counts only what are known as “territorial” emissions from domestic production. Leake correctly notes this method fails to include emissions from “all foreign-produced cars, clothes, food and every other import as well as the shipping that imports those goods into the UK, and most of the aviation fuel burned for passenger flights.”

Oh.