Is Energy and Climate Policy Doomed?

Stupidity and Banditry is leading us away from real, implementable solutions.

While contemplating what to write for my next substack post my mind consistently returned to the insights on human stupidity by Carlo Cipolla (no, I was not worried the essay was describing me…but…humans are really bad at judging their own intellectual abilities, so maybe I should be worried!). This brilliant essay by the late Italian economic historian succinctly describes five basic laws of human stupidity and the dangerous impacts of stupid people on society. For those that haven’t read it, do yourself a favor and give it a look. Or you can keep reading and I’ll give you the highlights.

Cipolla’s essay is not meant to be prejudiced or discriminatory against a certain population of people, he is simply describing the natural share of stupid people in any given society. If you are one of those people who think everyone innately has the same faculties and capabilities, then perhaps the essay will irritate or trigger you. For those who live in the real world, it is an accurate general description of the makeup of humanity. It is not to say individuals always act a certain way, but it is a good breakdown of the aggregate.

To better understand why this essay has been on my mind of late, we must review Cipolla’s Five Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.

1. First Basic Law of Human Stupidity — Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

Given the inability to accurately identify the amount of stupid people in a society, Cipolla defines the constant number by the sigma/standard deviation designator — σ. They are everywhere, occupying any positions across all institutions, at all times and we always underestimate the true number. And we never expect ourselves to be one of them.

2. Second Basic Law of Human Stupidity — The probability that a certain person will be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

This is an iron law, meaning it allows no exceptions. There are the same constant number of stupid people, σ , across all levels, groupings, and classes of society. The share of stupid people in the elite/wealthy/leader circles of society is no less (or more) than those of bureaucrats, drug dealers, taxi drivers, authors, or nurses. It also doesn’t discriminate against sex, race, or education level. The much-esteemed energy and climate policy makers are not immune to this — stupidity is found throughout. And it seems to be growing in the developed world.

Cipolla states:

The underdeveloped of the Third World will probably take solace at the Second Basic Law as they can find in it the proof that after all the developed are not so developed.

3. Third (and Golden) Basic Law of Human Stupidity — A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

Cipolla describes three additional general types of people: the intelligent, bandits, and helpless.

These are descriptions that outline the aggregate of an individual’s life choices, but Cipolla allows for inconsistencies in decision making. For example, some intelligent people can behave stupidly at times, and some helpless people can behave intelligently. But overall, the most consistent performing group are the stupid ones.

Another group that is prevalent are the bandits. They are divided into two primary groups. Those bandits that trend towards the intelligent quadrant — which are less numerous than the second type of bandit — tend to gain more than the losses they cause to other people/society. The more numerous and harmful bandits are those whose gains are less than the losses they cause to other people/society. Banditry is also prevalent throughout energy and climate policy stakeholders. Here is Cipolla’s visual description:

4. Fourth Basic Law of Human Stupidity — Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

Cipolla states about the Fourth Basic Law,

Through centuries and millennia, in public as in private life, countless individuals have failed to take account of the Fourth Basic Law and the failure has caused mankind incalculable losses.

5. Fifth Basic Law of Human Stupidity — A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

The corollary of the Law is that:

A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

Cipolla closes out his essay with his best prose. He says,

Whether one considers classical, or medieval, or modern or contemporary times one is impressed by the fact that any country moving uphill has its unavoidable σ fraction of stupid people. However, the country moving uphill also has an unusually high fraction of intelligent people who manage to keep the σ fraction at bay and at the same time produce enough gains for themselves and the other members of the community to make progress a certainty.

In a country which is moving downhill, the fraction of stupid people is still equal to σ; however, in the remaining population one notices among those in power an alarming proliferation of the bandits with overtones of stupidity and among those not in power an equally alarming growth in the number of helpless individuals. Such change in the composition of the non-stupid population inevitably strengthens the destructive power of the σ fraction and makes decline a certainty. And the country goes to Hell.

This is where we are now. There is a proliferation of bandits that cause more damage to people and society than they benefit. Politicians, business leaders, academics, scientists, etc., etc., etc. There are a lot of intelligent people out there, but there are many more bandits and stupid and helpless people.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of examples of stupidity and banditry running amok in energy and climate policy:

• Demanding our electricity system, the backbone of our society, run primarily on intermittent, diffuse power sources — of which your global competitor holds near monopolies on critical components to said sources— and which rely on the very changing/erratic climate you are so fearful of without the necessary energy storage technologies and backup assets to balance out the system. How is it that Texas and California grid operators have to consistently issue blackout warnings in 2023? Bad policy and poor investment decisions; not more extreme weather events.

• Refusing to invest appropriately in the necessary electric transmission infrastructure to help manage the more fragile power system which will have much greater demand/stress as everything is electrified.

• Attempting to destroy the supply of the current primary energy source (fossil fuels) of the global economy without having sufficient replacement supplies in place, and at the same time doing nothing to diminish demand. In fact, many governments further subsidize fossil fuel prices that actually incentivizes more use (or at least it disincentivizes a change in demand).

• Believing/selling the idea the clean energy transition will be easy and cheap and fast, especially in an era of high (normal?) interest rates and inflation with self-induced supply chain challenges (thanks COVID lockdowns and the genius of Western policymakers to offshore nearly all essential manufacturing). The easy money era from 2009-2022 is over. Renewables are due for a market reckoning, and it won’t be pretty.

• Supporting and promoting the climate activists that are protesting the lack of progress on emissions reductions and the ineffectiveness of those in power. If climate activists turn violent, who do the current policy makers and leaders think they’ll come after? It’ll be them! They are the ones in charge!! Also, why the hell does anybody give any credence to what an uneducated teenager is yelling about anyways?

• Demonizing the very industry and market participants who have the technical and financial capacity to support the energy transition.

• Not allowing any open discourse on or questioning of the climate science and choking funding and career opportunities for any researcher/principal investigator who questions the climate dogma.

• Saying no to nuclear power while rushing to electrify everything and claiming the world will end unless we produce energy without GHG emissions. Instead, we have to significantly increase environmentally harmful mining for large numbers of critical minerals to build wind and solar and batteries (and electrolyzers for hydrogen!). If you believe climate change will bring about the end of humanity as we know it, yet don’t support nuclear power as a low/zero carbon energy source — you don’t fit in Cipolla’s upper right quadrant (intelligent); perhaps you belong on the left side (helpless or stupid).

• Using climate change as a scapegoat for the failure of political leaders to invest in necessary critical infrastructure, forest management, building codes, market improvements/regulation, and a ton of other areas across critical sectors.

• Expecting emissions targets and internationally negotiated treaties and joint statements to equate to actual concrete, substantive progress within global energy systems to reduce emissions. The virtue signaling has gotten out of hand.

• Using domestic/national border GHG emissions as the indicator of climate progress and for emissions accounting. Much of the developed world claims reduced emissions since the 1990s, but their actual emissions use (when including emissions associated with domestic consumption of goods manufactured outside its borders) are much higher than reported. Be honest! Deindustrialization is a suboptimal climate strategy, but one used by many governments since the 1990s to show climate progress.

• Preventing developing economies from monetizing their domestic energy resources (fossil energy) and improving their citizen’s quality of life because of climate apocalypticism. Green diplomatic colonialism is real and is a danger to poor nations. Remember Cipolla’s Five Basic Laws — there are just as many stupid people in the developed world vs. the developing world! The stupid people are more dangerous in the developed world as they have more power and money to propagate their policy prescriptions globally.

• Sacrificing true environmentalism for climatism, prioritizing GHG emissions reductions above all other environmental issues and concerns. We need more old school environmentalism that looks at a larger set of problems. Why aren’t we focusing efforts on improving air quality by shifting from wood and biomass for cooking fuels to natural gas? What about actually recycling plastics and cleaning up our oceans? There are so many other areas where human activity is wreaking havoc on our environment — it can’t all be focused on reduced GHG emissions.

• Constantly touting the levelized cost of electricity as something real and proof that renewable energy is cheaper than other types of electricity generation. It is not an honest, real assessment of the cost of renewable energy.

• Assuming climate models accurately predict the future. They can be useful tools, but hop over to Roger Pielke’s substack for an honest take on their utility…and the weaknesses of specific widely used scenarios for the climate models. He also has a great substack on the impacts of human decision-making and global catastrophes and how poor (stupid?) decision-making is a major factor in our largest catastrophes.

This is just a share of the crazy policies we have to navigate (and hopefully overcome) today. There are many, many more. Rishi Sunak in the UK is the first politician to recognize the reality that is coming to more and more net zero focused economies. He just scaled back the UK’s near-term push towards net zero by 2050. And he is getting killed for it from most leaders and politicians. It will be critical to see how his party does in the next UK elections. Given the Five Basic Laws above, voters may still vote for the political party that continues the climate alarmism push. Americans still vote for cognitively impaired 80-year-old Senators and Presidents — democracies don’t always end up with the smartest choices.

Bill Gates just said the quiet part out loud at a recent event when he admitted there is a lot of exaggeration in climatism. The world is not going to end because the share of carbon in the atmosphere moves from .0280% to .0421% or higher.

The overly ambitious, dimwitted energy transition and climate policies promoted recently all have at least one thing in common — they increase the cost of energy. This may not affect the wealthy bandits propagating these policies, but your average Joe and Jane are getting crushed by the combination of higher energy prices, higher transportation costs, higher food and housing costs, and higher everything else costs. It is a mess.

As for the stupid, let’s turn to the latest statement from UN Secretary General Guterres. This guy keeps doubling down on dumb statements. This week in New York he said, “humanity is opening the gates of hell” due to human-induced extreme weather events. The gates of hell! There have been significant weather events this year — possibly accelerated by the volcano eruption last year that ejected massive amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere — but there has always been, and always will be, severe weather events. This is not new. It’s the weather. Typical politician trying to score empty virtue signaling points with no means (and I would argue no real desire) of affecting actual change. It is a talking point — and one that is getting tiresome.

I want to be clear, however, that human-induced climate change is real. Higher amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will contribute a warming effect, which in turn will have knock on impacts throughout the climate system. We should take appropriate, measured steps to reduce emissions and be responsible stewards of our environment. We should invest a lot of money in innovative technologies (hello fusion! hello new materials and superconductors! hello a lot of things that aren’t large-scale offshore wind and solar!). We should also do our best to foster the improvement of lives and GDP in the developing world — it is a proven fact that wealthier societies have the capacity and time to care more about the environment as the people are no longer worried about how to stay warm or where their next meal will come from.

We need better policy and more intelligent solutions. We have to reduce the number of bandits and stupid people in leadership positions. We need an honest discussion about the facts, about what we don’t know, and about what the impacts are of our current policy prescriptions. We need to do better.

Okay, enough of the ranting for now. Please subscribe and share and look at my other posts. Let me know what you think!