The cynicbin me says that the lack of action on climate change, reform of pensions systems, migration and so on is mainly caused by old people always voting the conservative, reactionary and “social” democratic parties. Now the earth finds it way into equllibrium by taking these people out of the voting process first.

In Germany we can’t even find a way to share the costs and benefits of installing better heating in appartement buildings, because the landlird lobby is succesful in argueing against paying part of the CO2 price, despite controlling which heating system is installed. So i am optimistic, that mandatory rules for ACs will only come, when old people already had to leave the cities, or died off in the heat waves.

Summer will become ever harsher, and the older parts of our populations will suffer ever more from it. AC is slowly becoming a necessity to survive…

This recent energy scare caused by the Russia-Ukraine war spurred me to spend more time evaluating my position on fossil fuel CO2 taxes and credits. Approximately 600,000 people die each year from extreme heat, while 4.5 million die from extreme cold. Let’s ignore the ratio for now, because there are second and third order consequences beyond extreme heat like famine to account for. 4.5 million people die each year because of inadequate access to cheaper energy. This is of course linear. Every time energy prices go up, so too do the number of people dying. That is the direct cost of the war on oil, coal, and natural gas, and there are many indirect costs (and lives) which go far beyond this. The intention of climate activists is to make fossil fuels much more expensive, meaning many more deaths.

Of course, maybe the goal here is worth killing 4.5+++ million people per year. There are no perfect solutions; only compromises. Maybe many more will die if we don’t act. The IPCC estimates that an additional 250,000 people per year, between 2030 and 2050, will die from the effects of climate change. That covers all modes of death, such as famine. For those in the room doing the math, many times more people will die today by making energy more expensive. Activists are asking us to sacrifice millions of lives per year today to save an estimated 250,000 lives per year decades from now.

For this reason, I no longer support making energy more expensive. I support environmental efforts to reduce pollution, but I can no longer justify the high cost of human life associated with taxes on energy. Instead, I really think activists should focus on making energy cheaper. This means working on solutions to make renewable energy and nuclear cheaper per unit of energy than fossil fuels. That’s a path to saving lives which I think most people can get on board with.