BBC Moral Maze Waffle-Fest Fails to Address Objection That Net Zero Could Leave Billions Dead From Starvation

There was a herd of elephants tramping loose through the studio in last week’s Net Zero edition of the BBC Radio 4 programme Moral Maze. Amidst an hour-long waffle-fest, the estimable journalist Ella Whelan pointed out that billions of people will die under Net Zero 2050 since half the world’s food is created using fossil fuels. This particular jumbo is a particularly jarring presence when Net Zero fanatics plan the end of civilisation as we know it, so wittering guest Dr Alice Evatt from the Oxford Environmental Change Institute lamely replied: “Billions of people are at risk from climate change.” Since this was a British state quango running the broadcast there was no debate about climate change and the distinctly unsettled science surrounding its causes and effects, just the traditional blind obedience to a politically settled narrative. As a result, the hour-long discussion was largely predicated on an assumption that it was justifiable to initiate industrial and societal collapse on the basis of a precautionary principle predicated on an invented collapse of the climate.

The BBC’s favourite sandwich-board sanctimonious prelate Giles Fraser said the world was going to have to get colder, poorer and less secure, adding that “if this [climate change] stuff is true”, the threat is existential. Of course if we just listen to the state broadcaster we will not be any the wiser as to whether this stuff is true since genuine climate science debate has been banned for years. This of course means that a Leftie like Fraser can get away with silly doom and gloom nostrums and promote world poverty based solely on an argument that begins with the word “if’.

Whelan was on cracking form, having earlier trumpeted loudly that Net Zero was an attack on the quality of life of the working classes, “in order to provide the middle classes with a bit of a warming glow to show off at their next vegan sustainable dinner party”. For Whelan it was class war, an argument that rings true as UK political groupings such as Labour and the LibDems turn into elite middle class echo chambers with weakening connections and sympathies with the majority of British people. “Interesting proposition, the industrial revolution was our gift to the world,” sneered Matthew Taylor, a long-time Moral Maze panellist and a former Labour director of policy.

To be fair to Fraser, cocooned in his cosy world of righteous, religion-tinged Left-wing politics, he probably has little idea of the devastation that removing hydrocarbon use from a modern industrial society will cause. As with many on the Left, Net Zero is a dream-come-true that collects political power into the virtuous hands of those who seize control of energy, and hence influence most of the essential functions of human existence. For decades, Fraser has probably ignored any scientific suggestion that the atmosphere is a complex place, and scientists have yet to convincingly separate any human-caused climate change from the natural influences constantly at work. If “if” is all he has to go on, he might like to consider Whelan’s remark that half the world will starve if his wish to ban hydrocarbon use is ever achieved. Of course, he is not alone in his utter stupidity that is based on an unsubstantiated science opinion that human-produced carbon dioxide, the gas of life, is the major control knob on the climate thermostat.

Last January, around 200 members of the British Parliament were prepared to support proposed legislation from an individual member that would have cut all hydrocarbon use across the British economy, both domestic and that used abroad, by around 90% within 10 years. Only very stupid, ill-informed people, or those with a sinister undisclosed motive, could conceivably have supported this measure, since it would likely have led to mass starvation, death, disease and societal collapse in the near future. But all the Lib Dem party, all the Greens, 90 Labour members and two crackpot Conservatives were in favour, something the British electorate might wish to consider at the next General Election if any of these dangerous muppets seeks a continued presence near the levers of power.

The ‘half the world dead from starvation’ trope might be an exaggeration – if it is lucky, the human race might get away with a reduction of just a third. A disproportionate number of the deaths will of course be in the ‘developing’ world since they will not be as well-armed as their Western neighbours. In any ‘might is right’ hunger fight, they will inevitably come off worst. In a Net Zero world of severe shortages, some form of colonialism or empire will make an inevitable comeback. Emeritus Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen, of Princeton and MIT respectively, have noted that “eliminating fossil fuel-derived nitrogen fertiliser and pesticides will create worldwide starvation”. With the use of nitrogen fertiliser, crop yields around the world have soared in recent decades and natural famines, as opposed to those local outbreaks caused by war and other human follies, have largely disappeared. The graph below shows the astonishing rise in basic crops from the time hydrocarbon-produced fertilisers were first widely used.

“Four billion dead if artificial fertiliser is banned is not BS,” notes former Greenpeace founder Dr Patrick Moore. “It is an almost guaranteed outcome.” Ella Whelan was right to bring this serious matter to the attention of BBC listeners. It’s just a shame that the rest of the wittering, virtue-signalling Moral Maze panel had their own Net Zero trunks firmly stuck in a place of perpetual darkness.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.