Flashback: ‘Planned recession’ could avoid catastrophic climate change

In 2009 The Telegraph published an article titled ‘Planned recession’ could avoid catastrophic climate change’.  This suggestion was made by Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

At the moment the UK is committed to cutting greenhouse gases by a third by 2020.

However, a new report from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research said these targets are inadequate to keep global warming below two degrees C above pre-industrial levels.

The report says the only way to avoid going beyond the dangerous tipping point is to double the target to 70 per cent by 2020.

This would mean reducing the size of the economy through a “planned recession”.

Kevin Anderson, director of the research body, said the building of new airports, petrol cars and dirty coal-fired power stations will have to be halted in the UK until new technology provides an alternative to burning fossil fuels. [emphasis our own]

‘Planned recession’ could avoid catastrophic climate change, The Telegraph, 30 September 2009

We have attached a copy of the 2009 The Telegraph article below.

Kevin Anderson holds the Zennström professorship at Uppsala University and is chair of energy and climate change at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE) at the University of Manchester.

Anderson engages widely across all tiers of government (UK and Sweden) on issues ranging from shale gas, aviation and shipping to the role of climate modelling (IAMs), carbon budgets and ‘negative emission technologies. His analysis previously contributed to the framing of the UK’s Climate Change Act and the development of national carbon budgets.

In 2011, climate alarmist Anderson predicted ‘‘if you have got a population of 9 billion by 2050 and you hit 4 degrees, 5 degrees or 6 degrees, you might have half a billion people surviving … 4^oC by 2050-2070 looks “likely” (could be earlier and on the way to 6^oC +).”

In 2012, he said had done without a fridge for 12 years, but recently relented and joined the very small proportion of the world’s population that has a fridge. Adding: “This I may have to reverse!” Anderson also said he had cut back on washing and showering. “That is why I smell, yes,” Anderson told Climate Depot when confronted at a press conference at the 2013 UN Climate Summit in Warsaw.

Ahead of the 2013 UN Climate Summit in Warsaw, Anderson outlined a radical plan to hold temperatures to a 2C rise, although there’s no mention of a planned recession, the alarmist’s message is the same as in 2009:

A 4C rise, which is looking increasingly realistic, would be “catastrophic” and must be avoided at all costs, he now says that political and personal efforts should be concentrated on changing the consumption patterns of the very few who emit the most.

[Industrialised] countries need a 70% reduction in emissions consumption in 10 years to give us an outside chance of holding temperatures to a 2C rise. They need to cut emissions by 10% annually. We need to be fully de-carbonised in the 2020-30s, and that means planes, fridges, everything [must emit far less].

Make the rich change their ways to avoid a 2C rise, says top scientist, The Guardian, 21 November 2013

Professor Dr. Richard Tol, the author of Working Groups I, II and III of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPPC”), tweeted his response to The Guardian article:

In an essay published the week after the Warsaw summit, on 25 November 2013, Anderson asserted “… for a reasonable probability of avoiding the 2°C characterisation of dangerous climate change, the wealthier (Annex 1) nations need, temporarily, to adopt a de-growth strategy.”

As highlighted by Tom Nelson, in an email exchange between Christian Kremer of the European Peoples Party and Phil Jones, Jones said the 2^oC was “plucked out of thin air.”

Read more: ‘A planned economic recession’: Global warming prof. Kevin Anderson – who has ‘cut back on showering’ to save the planet – asserts economic ‘de-growth’ is needed to fight climate change, Climate Depot, 25 November 2013

Warsaw UN Summit Degenerates into Unscientific Claims to Advance Political Agenda

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Typhoon Haiyan was due to climate change. The Philippine’s lead negotiator Yeb Sano at the UN climate summit in Warsaw announced: “he will not eat during the conference until a meaningful agreement has been achieved.”  Jeffrey Sachs, a special advisor to Ban Ki-moon, said “climate liars like Rupert Murdoch and Koch Brothers have more and more blood on their hands as climate disasters claim lives across the world.” The typhoon fuelled calls for Global Warming Compensation Funds as poor nations “blame countries that industrialised 200 years ago for damaging the atmosphere.”

Meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue said: “Over the past 1,000 years, Philippines have been hit by 10-20 thousand tropical cyclones. Don’t be so arrogant to believe man caused Haiyan” and demolished claims that Typhoon Haiyan was the “strongest storm ever.” Haiyan ranks at number 7 among the strongest storms ever to have hit the Philippines.

Prof. Roger Pielke Jr. said: “The scientific evidence does not presently support claims of attribution of the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on tropical cyclone behaviour with respect to century-long trends much less the behaviour of individual storms.”

Gabe Vecchi, a research oceanographer with NOAA, said that if global warming altered Haiyan, it did not do so to a significant extent.

Bjorn Lomborg said that facts don’t support that climate change caused Typhoon Haiyan.

The IPCC’s authoritative Fifth Assessment Report in September 2013 stated there had been “no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century.”

Pielke Jr. said: “Given this data, substantial research on it and a strong IPCC consensus does anyone really want to debate that typhoon disasters have become more common?”

Read more: UN Climate Summit Rejects Its Own Science – Links Typhoon Haiyan to Global Warming – UN Summit Degenerates Into Unscientific Claims to Advance Political Agenda, Climate Depot, 19 November 2013

How is this all relevant to today?

Anderson is still pushing the “plucked out of thin air” 2^oC narrative. In 2020 Michael Flammer tweeted:

In 2021, Anderson told Democracy Now, that “at the current emissions we have 8 years and even for an outside chance, that’s at 1.5^oC, we only have 14 years.”  What the climate protestors are doing, locally, is much more in line with what “the scientists” are calling for, he said.

So, what are the protestors doing? Here are some examples:

• A climate protester dressed as Boris Johnson set fire to prop boat (involving two protestors), 27 October 2021
• Greta Thunberg sang ‘you can shove your climate crisis up your a***’ at COP26 climate conference, 2 November 2021
• Just Stop Oil protesters glued themselves to a National Gallery painting and covered it with ‘reimagined’ version (involving two protestors), 4 July 2022
• Just Stop Oil protester breaks down in tears and reveals ‘some of us will be wearing nappies’, 1 April 2022

As Anderson said, what local protestors are doing is much more in line with what “the scientists” are calling for. The last in the above list ties back to Anderson’s claim that the “plucked out of thin air” 2^oC will be the end of humanity.

Through tears, Just Stop Oil protester Laura Norton said: “I am so frightened and I don’t know how we’re not all panicking. Our children might not live to 30 because there won’t be a habitable planet anymore. “People have to stop oil or we’re going to see the end of human-kind.”  There were nine protestors at the scene. “We’re very cold… some of us will be wearing adult incontinence pants, some of us will be taking Imodium, so it’s uncomfortable,” Norton said.

Just Stop Oil tried to gain more support by asking those who were suffering from the cost-of-living crisis to stand with them – which would then make it a cost-of-living protest not a “climate change” protest.  It’s fair to say, Anderson has not garnered much support for his ideology that the world has 8-14 years left.

The featured image includes a cartoon ‘Mr. Stinky’ copied from Climate Depot