Juno News - Niall Ferguson pushes back against Davos green agenda

00:00:00.000 So, Dr. Ferguson, why is it you think a lot of the green energy proposals we've seen so far have not really been all that effective?

00:00:06.720 Well, it's a little bit like economic planning through the ages.

00:00:10.260 If the U.S. government, or for that matter, the European Union, mandates a transition to so-called renewables

00:00:18.100 without thinking through the unintended consequences of that kind of central planning,

00:00:23.040 you get what we've seen in the last two years.

00:00:25.300 You could call it greenflation, where prices have soared.

00:00:28.740 In practice, putting a price on carbon is not something that consumers were ready for.

00:00:33.500 So, even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you could see some of the problems playing out.

00:00:39.160 It's very hard to get to so-called net zero.

00:00:42.040 Truth, the world continues to need hydrocarbons, and cutting down the supply of hydrocarbons is just a recipe for higher energy prices.

00:00:51.100 That's not politically sustainable in democracies.

00:00:53.680 So, you can see why this enterprise has run into trouble, and I think that was predictable.

00:00:59.560 Do you think that the problem is the specific goal, or is it that idea, as Hayek wrote about,

00:01:03.900 that you just can't centrally plan something like that as government?

00:01:08.140 Well, I think the solutions to the problem of climate change or global warming, which I certainly don't deny,

00:01:14.340 will come from technological innovation.

00:01:16.180 It's technological innovation that's made solar so much more efficient in the last decade or so.

00:01:21.640 The idea that central governments, or for that matter a world government of the sort that some people at Davos dream of,

00:01:28.060 could somehow bring that about, I think is at odds with historical experience.

00:01:33.680 So, my sense is that the fears of a climate catastrophe today are a little bit like fears of a population catastrophe back in the 1970s.

00:01:42.120 They're the kind of nightmares of the end of the world that technocrats, educated elites, are often drawn towards.

00:01:49.380 My sense is that we will, in fact, gradually transition to more efficient energy.

00:01:54.320 We've been doing that, in any case, for decades.

00:01:57.720 I mean, if one simply looks at the reductions that have already happened in emissions in Europe and North America,

00:02:02.800 that wasn't because of government mandates.

00:02:04.680 The big problem is still China.

00:02:06.800 If you look at all the increase in carbon dioxide emissions since Greta Thunberg was born,

00:02:13.220 about two-thirds is China and about 85% of the increase in coal consumption.

00:02:18.320 And nobody here ever has an answer to the question, how do you constrain China?

00:02:22.040 How do you make China honor its pledges?

00:02:23.880 Until there's a good answer to that question, there's clearly not going to be a reduction in global warming.

00:02:29.320 There's a good answer to that question, there's a good answer to that question, there's a good answer to that question.

Juno News - January 23, 2023