Matthew Parris Calls for Ban on Smelly Hydrocarbons Whether Climate Emergency is Real or Not

God In Heaven save us from the dripping wets who want to remove hydrocarbon use from modern society because they are a bit smelly and not very nice, don’t you understand. The same type of naïve people who think that society can do without hydrocarbons but they will still be able to pick up a soy latte on their way to buy organic humous at Waitrose. Step forward Matthew Parris writing in last week’s Spectator. He thinks that the scare over the claimed climate emergency is worth the cost and anxiety to rid ourselves of hydrocarbons because they are bad for health, domestic politics and the West’s future security.

It sems not to have occurred to luxury belief-laden Parris that life without hydrocarbons will cause mass starvation, death, societal collapse and no external security. Come on down the Caliphate, Boris the Bear, or even the French.

Parris appears far too grand to have actually consulted the science of climate and the mechanics of energy provision. He “distrusts” both sets of arguing people he obviously regards as climate nutters, although he admits that he lacks both scientific expertise and new information. Basic climate science is not that difficult to understand, but despite his admitted lack of information he rushes to print to promote an extremist Net Zero fantasy. “Well even if the climate emergency does not exist, it will prove useful to have invented it,” is his considered contribution to one of the great political and scientific issues of our time.

The soy latte/Waitrose shoppers were much in evidence early last year when around 200 members of the British Parliament were prepared to vote for a ‘climate and nature’ bill that would have cut hydrocarbon use across the entire UK economy, including imports, by around 90% within a decade. All the Lib Dems, the Greens, 80 Labour MPs and, Heavenly Father help us again, two particularly dim Conservatives. Just 10% hydrocarbon use would be barely enough to sustain the emergency services. Under this regime, food would disappear in the shops (yes, Waitrose included) since hydrocarbon-produced fertiliser doubles crop yields, there would be no transport, all building and most maintenance work would stop, people would freeze to death in their homes and the only available meat would be Fido in the corner. I could go on at some length about the catastrophic consequences. Sinister or stupid are the two choices to make of people who in any event should not be anywhere near the levers of political power.

Zealots or boobies – difficult in many cases to decide. Or perhaps both in the case of renamed Zack Polanski, the exciting new leader outside Parliament of the UK Green Party.

On energy policy, Parris is clueless. Solar and wind, he notes, are not the whole answer to the UK’s electricity needs, but with nuclear power “we shall one day be able to turn our backs completely on carbon”, he claims. Solar and wind’s contribution can fall on a very cold winter’s day to almost nothing, while nuclear provides only base load and cannot quickly be adjusted up and down. Back in the real world, the electricity grid’s requirements vary widely over a 24-hour period and only natural gas can provide an on-demand supply. Forget large-scale battery storage – progress has been minimal since the invention of lithium-ion technology. These basic immutable facts, widely ignored by Net Zero fanatics, explain why Britain has some of the highest industrial and domestic electricity prices in the world.

Parris’s down on hydrocarbons is summed up with his claim that burning them “is a filthy and unhealthy business, always was, always will be”. It causes traffic pollution near where he lives next to a road tunnel in East London. In his second home in the Peak District, he seems upset that an old railway closed over 50 years ago exhibits signs of ancient soot deposits.

In fact the air in London is cleaner and healthier than it has ever been in the modern industrial age. Blanket, choking smogs are a thing of the past. Potentially unhealthy levels of particulates can still be found, mostly underground in the all-electric train subway system.  The food is better, if not healthier, produced using hydrocarbons and trucked in by hydrocarbon-burning lorries. The water is cleaner and sewage is disposed of quickly and efficiently by hydrocarbon-powered systems. Life expectancy has soared since Victorian times. If you think vans are unhealthy, try living in a city where non-refrigerated food is dragged along summer streets slathered with steaming animal shit.

Needless to say, Parris is full of praise for his electric car which has a small, honestly-declared range of 160 miles (make that barely 100 when the temperature drops below freezing). Along with the wind turbines and solar panels, he seems unaware of the horrendous ecological damage they cause. There are not enough children in the Congo to mine all the battery cobalt for dinky town runabouts. Those seeking a longer range EV need to ignore the Indonesian rainforests being dug up for battery-enhancing nickel. Wind turbines kill millions of bats a year and help decimate slow-growing raptor populations. But who cares when luxury beliefs need burnishing. Who cares that 50% of the balsa wood used as a core for increasingly large wind turbine blades is now illegally logged in the Amazon rainforest.

On the strength of his Spectator article, Parris has very little understanding of the crucial role hydrocarbons play in a modern industrial society. Their presence is everywhere from medicine to plastic, from fertiliser to a still dominant 80% global contribution to energy. Their by-product, carbon dioxide, ‘greens’ the planet, diminishing food shortages and combating drought in marginal areas on Earth. Net Zero is dead almost everywhere, with billions of people seeking to enjoy the life-enhancing benefits that hydrocarbons bring. The same life-enhancing benefits that Parris and all his fellow zealots/boobies have enjoyed during their own long-lived lives.

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