We are standing still. That was the conclusion of BP's chief economist upon the release of its latest statistical review of energy—the annual report that all global warming specialists hold as the gold standard of climate and energy data. He was referring to a chart that stopped him cold. It showed how in 2018, the non-fossil share of the global energy mix was the same as it was in 1998, the year the UN Kyoto Protocol was agreed.
More than two decades of climate diplomacy, carbon pricing, and, in recent years, a record build-out of variable renewable energy such as wind and solar, with very little so far to show for it all. We have barely moved.
The democratic socialist explanation for this state of affairs should be fairly straightforward. If the market is left to its own devices, there will continue to be an incentive to produce any commodity so long as it is profitable, regardless of what we know of the harm that good or service may inflict. Fossil fuels are perhaps the contemporary example ne plus ultra of such irrational production.
