Climate Movement and Its Socialist and Religious Vibes
In an interview with us, Kaarel Ots, head of Nasdaq Baltic Exchanges, says the climate movement has become a religion of sorts with elements of Socialist ideology.
Kaarel Ots has been a financial sector executive for over 25 years. In Estonia he has long been an outspoken opinion leader and a frequent op-ed writer in the biggest newspapers, discussing mainly issues related to economic and financial conditions.
During the Covid pandemic, he became one of the few rational voices in Estonia arguing against policies such as lockdowns and vaccine coercion. In an interview with us, Ots says that Covid policies and the 'climate change' movement are notably similar. Both presume you ‘trust the science’ and if your views diverge, you’ll be facing censorship. In truth, this is no science any more, but 'religion', and if you look at the particular policies of that climate 'religion', it reminds one of Socialist ideology, he says.
In a rational world we must ask a few simple questions about the move to Net Zero, Ots says and asks some of them in this interview. Do we understand that the move we call 'energy transition' means recession? Do we understand that Europe with its ageing and shrinking population emits less than 10% of the world's anthropogenic CO2? If we bring our emissions to zero, will it help the planet somehow? If Europe does everything that has been planned, what will the impact of it be on Earth's temperatures in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years? Do we have those answers?
We are very busy with something we call a 'green transition' across Europe, which essentially means that in the name of the fight against climate change, we are going to bring our CO2 emissions to zero, and in order to do that we need to be subjected to various restrictions, new taxes and so on. The justification for us needing to bring the emissions down to zero is saving the climate. And we are told that this is all based on science – that we need to do all this in order to protect the climate because otherwise the world will be doomed. But let's take a step back. Let's discuss science. What's the state of science in your opinion?
Let's go back in time a little bit, to 2020. I think everyone remembers that science was also at the forefront then. Everybody had to trust that science, even though it was a relatively constricted section of science and scientists that was referenced. And just to recall: initially, there was a model that said that a very large number of people were going to die because of Covid. Then science said that you had to wear a mask because of the virus. Science said that children should be vaccinated, and so on. Those who disagreed with this science – there were even well-known scientists who doubted these steps – were openly mocked, refuted, and censored. A new word was coined for censorship – fact-checking. In essence, any contrary opinion was banned. And when I think of science in general, it seems to me that this did science a great disservice. Science is supposed to be something that can be considered sceptically and viewed with scepticism and doubt. And if we think that we have a question about why something is the way it is, then in my understanding science should hypothesise about it. But what the scientist thinks – that's theory. And then it should be put to the test. That's how I would think of the scientific process.
So have we not then put forward a scientific hypothesis that CO2 is to blame for climate change and scientifically proven that hypothesis?
Indeed, there is a hypothesis like that. But I am not so convinced that its validity has been proven. And why I brought up the Covid parallel. I see a lot of similarities between the two here. We live in the information age. There can be no problem in getting information. To take such an ignorant stance here is, in my view, a perfectly conscious choice. It was the case with Covid and it is the same with climate issues. In the case of Covid, those who were sceptical of these 'scientifically' justified moves, were called Covid sceptics and conspiracy theorists. I was also once the subject of an article in a publication that was constantly engaged in fact-checking. I was said to be a Covid sceptic. And that was already towards the end of 2021. It had been a year and a half for one to read, analyse, and come to conclusions on various issues surrounding Covid. And all those opinions or facts that I was mocked for in the newspaper at the time proved to be true eventually.
What I mean is, what are the chances that the doubters on these climate issues are right as well, at least to some extent? We should be questioning a little bit about how this CO2 hypothesis is dealt with. Because science, in my view, does not tell us what we should do. Science tells us what is the case at the moment, and it will continue to do so until somebody questions the current view. Those who say what should be done are politicians. These decisions and choices are political. And today I have not been able to find such convincing evidence that the CO2 to which you referred - the odourless colourless gas that is said to be pollution – is warming the climate. It is a gas that is present in the atmosphere at 400 per million units, or 0.04%. Of which, in turn, the anthropogenic part is, according to various estimates, somewhere between 3% and 10%. How much exactly is unknown. But it is precisely this fraction that is warming the climate and causing climate change? And any other doesn't? Everything else that could be causing this climate change is just off the table. I'm not saying that the climate is not changing. Of course, it is. But we have had ice ages in the past and we know that our planet has orbital cycles, the Sun has different cycles, and so on. So maybe there is still something else that is affecting the climate, too?
Of course, it has to be pointed out that, in reality, it is not just you who thinks like that, but a whole lot of respected scientists as well, who have now been relegated to the so-called fringes of the issue, marginalised.
Well said. In fact, they are a little more than marginalised, because censorship in this area is going on in the same way as it did a few years ago on Covid. So science has in some ways become a question of faith. Somebody believes something very much and if you take the doubt and scepticism out of science, that's religion. It is taking on such religious dimensions already.
Maybe that's why this 'green transition' or 'Net Zero' movement uses so many slogans instead of facts. There are a lot of different slogans associated with it, but when you start looking into them, they are not really based on much. I like this slogan for example that is frequently used: the economy has to fit within the boundaries of nature. You hear that slogan all the time. I don't understand what it means, do you?
I have heard it from politicians in Estonia and other countries. It really is such a well-worn slogan. Speaking of slogans, I do not know whether these posters were up in any other cities as well, but in any case, at the end of last year, Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, was full of advertisements commissioned by the European Commission: You are EU. There were four different posters and each poster had three messages. Those messages were Western values such as freedom, democracy, stability, and so on. Each of them had a third word associated with this 'green transition'. For example, 'climate protection', 'green transition', and 'energy independence'. So I wondered, is this telling us that, in the same way that we should value democracy and freedom, we should also engage in the fight against climate change? And, of course, as far as the economy's capacity to fit into nature is concerned, a question arises: how is it even possible to distinguish between the two? Is man not a part of nature and doesn’t man need to fit within nature as well? Seems a bit quirky.
But if you look at this 'green transition' as a whole and try to understand what it is made of, somewhere between 70 and 80%, or maybe more of it, is concerned with energy. So much so that everything else is just ripples. All the traffic jam taxes, car ownership taxes, taxes people have to pay for visiting a city somewhere, or taxes for having a heating system deemed 'wrong' by the government or whatever – there are various examples. But the main thing is energy, and there is not much debate about that. And under the same slogan that the economy has to fit within the boundaries of nature, we are told that if we switch to renewables, it will make us competitive and it will be beneficial. I would clap my hands if that were the case. Unfortunately, we are seeing something quite different. What we are seeing is that both Europe as a whole and certain countries individually are losing competitiveness. The best example of this is Germany, which is the leading economy in Europe and one of the largest economies in the world at large. It all started with their decision to shut down nuclear power stations. They have invested very heavily in renewable energy. As far as I understand it, somewhere between 200 and 300 billion Euros has been invested. Yet today, it has come to a point where energy is not just being produced by coal-fired power stations, but by lignite, which is considered the most pollutive of all possible energy sources. This has become the main source of Germany's electricity today. We are seeing major problems in industry, and some would even say that Germany is undergoing deindustrialisation. Today, Germany is importing from France the nuclear energy that it decided to shut down.
But if you look at it a little more broadly now, more and more people are saying that it is not possible for our economy to grow under such conditions. It seems to me that this should be said honestly. There are elections in 2024 in a great many countries, but it seems to me that this is not such a popular message with voters.
Indeed, we are being told instead that this 'green turnaround' will bring us economic growth.
Yes. And I would have no objection to it if that were the case. If we could really manage to get our energy, for example, from the Sun, in such a way that we could supply everyone with it cheaply, that would be the ideal solution. But at the moment we do not have that technology. There is an old saying in Estonian that you should not spit in the old well before the new one is ready. It seems to me that what we're doing is that we're already plugging up the old well and we're thinking that now we should start building a new well.
This European 'Green Deal', which they came up with before Covid, was based on cheap Russian gas. I was following this back in 2019 because I came across a McKinsey report that estimated how much this project would cost. At that time, it was estimated to cost 28 trillion Euros, and it was also estimated that every year the demand for electricity in Europe would increase by two per cent. But now we have to factor in that huge amount of money that was printed over the two years of Covid. And I think that in the past it was really expected that we would print our way out of all the problems as we actually did for almost 10 years, and that we would print our way out of this 'green turnaround' as well. Now it seems that we are probably unable to do that, and those who perhaps sincerely believed that such printing of money would not lead to inflation are the only ones still thinking about starting to print money again. So I don't see where that money could come from. That 28 trillion is certainly no longer 28 trillion. It is much more. So we have a plan that, at least to me, seems a bit utopian.
And then we have selected only one metric for the whole thing – that same CO2. Europe today taxes CO2 at a price many times higher than the world as a whole does. Certainly many times higher than China, for example. Europe has set itself the goal of becoming the first 'Net Zero' continent in the world, or in other words, emitting zero CO2. At the same time, we know that China and India are rapidly building coal-fired power stations. If we all believe that the globe is round and that the globe as a whole is surrounded by the atmosphere, then Europe's plan to become the first 'Net Zero' continent will, at least in my opinion, have no impact on the overall amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We can all drive electric cars – just as the plan is that by 2035, fossil-fuel cars will no longer be allowed to be sold. We can do all sorts of things here, but it seems to me that all we will achieve is a reduction in our standard of living and a reduction in the competitiveness of our businesses.
The entire global economy has been based on fossil fuels for centuries. Economic growth and energy essentially run in a one-to-one correlation. Very, very precisely. Energy and minerals are even more closely correlated. We have about eight billion people and about 40% of them use as much electricity as a fridge takes in a year. They have essentially no electricity. And another 20% or so have a very unstable electricity supply. So we have a very large region or large regions of the world where there is total energy poverty. And then we have some regions where indeed there is perhaps excessive consumption. But these extremes somehow disappear in this 'green transition' discussion.
And that is why in Asia, for example, every opportunity is being used to have more energy. The energy demand is just so great. More is needed all the time.
More is needed, that's right. But there is also a very important question of how long will it be needed? Europe's population is aging and shrinking. The United Nations has come to the conclusion in its models that the world population will peak in 2100, and from there it will start to decline. In reality, this aging and decline will start much earlier, region by region. And where it starts earlier, it means that competitiveness will drop and economies will be hit much earlier. Europe is not growing, it is shrinking. America is growing a little bit, and largely as a result of immigration. In 2100, we will have an estimated 11 billion people on the planet, three billion more than now. These three billion people will also want to light a fire, or at best cook on an electric stove, or do the laundry. What that population projection will be, nobody knows exactly, but about 80% of it is expected to be African and Asian. They are the ones trying to catch up with us today. I do not think it would occur to anybody to tell them, listen, let us all slow down and think about the climate. The sequence of energy production starts first with burning manure, then wood, then coal, then fossil fuels in liquid form, then gas – all the time getting more efficient. We do not see us going straight to renewables in China, India, and Indonesia, in a way that those countries could meet their energy needs.
But if we now assume that it really is CO2 that is to blame for all these climate problems, then we should look at the CO2 emissions of the whole of Europe compared with the rest of the world. It is less than 10%. If we add the United States, we get somewhere between 20 and 25%, no more. Does it really help if two continents with aging and dwindling populations decide that they have reached their absolute wealth and future generations do not need more? They will just have to settle for less? But then there is still a question of whether that 20-25% will have any effect on global warming and any effect on climate change. So all this talk of 'Net Zero' has, for me at least, very little in common with actual nature and environmental protection. They say we must fight for climate. I don't know how it works. How can you fight for the climate? How can you protect the climate? And we are told the only defence mechanism is that you measure CO2 and try to bring it down to zero. Well, that would be a disservice to plants, but that's a separate issue.
When I was younger, there was also a lot of talk about nature conservation, but the important thing was that we had to have clean air, clean water, clean food. What we have come to is that we are actually talking about some atmospheric gases. And for the last 50 years, there has been all this talk about some kind of catastrophe. There were ozone holes, then there were acid rains, then there was talk of the world freezing over, then it overheated, and now there is talk of climate change. And the only thing we can do is start measuring CO2, otherwise, there will come a flood and everyone will die. And of course, the only way to solve this is to capture CO2 or not to emit it at all, and then all will be well. From a common sense point of view, I would look at it this way: when it comes to protecting nature and the environment, we should start with basic things like looking at how much we waste. After all, every person can look at how much they waste and how much they consume. But it should not be seen from the point of view of a Socialist party, where someone decides how much you can consume. As the communist slogan said: from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs. To me, this climate issue seems a bit Socialist.
That's one way of looking at it. What one might also note here, in this climate change discussion, is that there is a belief or affirmation that man is to blame for all the problems, so much so that it is almost like a sin and you are guilty no matter what.
A former Estonian president has even recently said that the Earth suffers from a disease called man, who emits CO2. It is very difficult to agree with this in any way. Was man somehow brought to this Earth by aliens, or has he still evolved through evolution?
But coming back to the previous point, one thing that every person and every country can regulate is waste, another thing is pollution. We want to have clean water and clean air. Those things are a bit on another level, I think, than just focusing on one thing – CO2 – which is really easy to measure.
But you know the saying: for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. It seems to me that what we are trying to do is to solve some of these complex issues with very simple solutions. And if I were to summarise the energy issue, I frankly think that it shouldn't be that relevant from what the energy is produced. But as the German Finance Minister said only recently, commenting on the idea that they should move away from coal-fired electricity: we should end the dreams of phasing out coal until it is clear that clean energy will be available and affordable. So if we now choose only one of these things – clean energy for example – and not the others, it seems to me that we are doing ourselves a disservice and we are doing nothing to ensure that the health of the planet as a whole is somehow improved.
People are afraid of all sorts of things. They have always been afraid of disease and wars and now they are afraid of the climate. And young people are frightened by the fact that every 10 years they are told there are 10 years left for our planet. And I myself have met some pretty intelligent people who have told me that something has to be done. We have to do something, otherwise either the climate refugees will come or something else disastrous will happen. And I have asked: if we do this now, what will the impact be? If Europe puts its plans into action, what will be its impact on Earth's temperatures in 10 years' time, in 20 years' time, in 30 years' time? Does the fact that we are doing something outweigh the fact that future generations will have to live somehow worse off because of it, or businesses will be worse off? Or are we just doing it because we have some kind of plan based on a model? And although we can see it is very difficult to implement that plan, we essentially throw all our energy and resources into fulfilling it?