Death by NetZero….
Many western nations will soon be avoiding NetZero and will choose to focus on Industrial based Prosperity.
In 2022 I wrote the book Take Back Manufacturing…. An Imperative for Western Economies.
The book was about the need for western nations to recover their industrial base from the disaster of global trade if they want to see a return to any kind of prosperity.
My book covered the past problems and the decline of the industrial base in most western nations and all the various factors needing attention to recover the future industrial capability, and the book discussed everything from taxation to immigration to education to technology etc.
Recently I was asked what is the “one thing” that can stop such an industrial recovery from happening?...
My response is …… Climate Change…. or more correctly, the misguided response to it.
Death by NetZero…..
Most nations in the western world signed up to undertake NetZero that has turned out to be a huge and dangerous group-think that has characterized the slightly warming planet as an emergency requiring an urgent and complete change in national policies for energy systems and citizen lifestyle choices that is clearly prosperity suicide, and is clearly unnecessary, technologically unattainable, economically unviable and extremely foolish.
Prosperity requires an ability to support a thriving industrial base and requires an energy system that is affordable reliable and locally abundant.
For most nations this has traditionally involved harnessing the power of either coal or oil or natural gas or hydro if geographically possible. And is better supported by local resources or as a fall-back resources or energy sources that can be imported from compatible trade partners.
The only other future option that still holds great promise due to its high energy density is nuclear power, but this so far only supports electricity generation so oil and gas would also be needed to support transportation and heavy industries.
What NetZero did was constrain these essential energy options away from fossil fuels (Coal, Oil & Gas) due to the requirement to decarbonise these energy sources, due to the scientific consensus that it is CO2 generated by the use of these fossil fuels that is creating the climate change emergency.
The alternative low carbon energy technologies, deemed renewables, such as Wind & Solar are proving to be highly unreliable and therefore unaffordable, and for many nations are not locally abundant, and will need to be imported from others that may not be a suitable trading partner.
Some western nations embraced such a renewables direction and to make it worse due to perceived safety concerns also turned off their nuclear options as well. Germany and the UK are the best examples of this mistake, and now after massive investment in renewables, have the highest energy prices in the world, and are experiencing rapid deindustrialization with massive negative consequences to their citizens prosperity.
What also makes their death by NetZero even more disastrous is that it’s now very clear that we don’t have a climate emergency on this planet.
The probability that our use of fossil fuels is the main driver of climate change or that it poses any near-term risk to humankind is low.
We still have many who continue to maintain or believe we have a “climate emergency” even when data shows climate change will have a very small impact on human well-being and flourishing, with any impacts being better managed with focused adaption funded by prosperity.
The History.
The UN-IPCC has been the prime source of climate science and policy direction, but recently due to over dramatizing the science, has lost its credibility, and this is also true for a huge portion of the scientific institutions that allowed the scientific peer review process to become politically subjugated, such that it appears to many to have lost the ability to tell the truth.
This had created a climate emergency narrative that was supported with much glee by a sensation seeking media.
This forced a false climate emergency consensus within the scientific environment that morphed into a climate emergency industrial complex more interested in accessing funding from gullible over liberalized governments than telling the truth.
This allowed the orchestration of highly expensive and destructive NetZero mitigation strategies moving us away from much needed global prosperity by negating the use of the most available, affordable, reliable, and abundant energy systems.
In the past these climate alarmists at all levels in western society did all they could to shut down and censor any reviews of the climate situation that has suppressed the truth in what is still a highly unsettled science.
This censoring effort was led by the self-serving power grabbing propaganda of the UN and associated politically subjugated scientific community using constraints offered by the scientific peer review process to keep the gravy train of the climate emergency narrative alive and keep the funding flowing.
Fortunately, reality is now kicking in with many western governments now listening to independent scientific study groups, with most of these governments decommitting from the climate emergency goals and planning to dis-continue NetZero activities going forward.
The US DoE formed such a study group and their climate report published as a working draft in August 2025 provides solid data to support a much more realistic position on climate risk and provides substantive and organized pushback to the extreme edicts of the UN-IPCC and associated peer review narrative, and provides a solid and more sceptical baseline for future review and more realistic policy setting.
New Climate Report from the US DOE - by Nigel Southway https://nigelsouthway.substack.com/p/new-climate-report-from-the-us-doe
The DoE report has been criticized for not adhering to a more formal peer review process by the supporters of the climate emergency consensus who undertook petty legal action to silence their position rather than engage in professional review. However, this will not stop the ongoing review process and final policy development by the DoE report team.
The summary of the DoE report is as follows….
So far, the impact of changes in our climate over the last 300 years have seen global average temperatures increase by 1.5 C and this has been benign with extreme weather events in the U.S. showing no long-term trends.
This slight global warming will continue as we emerge from the extended cold period of the last 300 years, and this will slowly increase sea levels at about 1 foot per century well within our adaptive capability with the power of fossil fuels.
Weather metrics although highly variable as always, show no adverse trends, with any predicted changes due to climate change being well within adaptive capability.
Carbon dioxide concentration has increased by 25% in the last 100 years and does act as a greenhouse gas, exerting a warming influence
The increase in CO2 has mostly benefited our planetary environment and further doubling of CO2 is estimated to only contribute to temp increase of 0.35 C per century.
These elevated concentrations of CO2 coupled with the adoption of fossil fuel fertilizers has increased our crop-based food supply by up to 300%.
More CO2 will eventually make oceans less alkaline (lower the pH) that may be detrimental to coral reefs, although the recent rebound of the Great Barrier Reef suggests otherwise.
The world’s several dozen global climate models offer little guidance on how much the climate responds to elevated CO2, but these models and past experience suggest that CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed,
Aggressive CO2 mitigation policies could prove far more detrimental than focused adaption that will require harnessing the power of available, affordable, reliable, and abundant energy systems.
So, although we must always continue to work on the human impact on nature and our climate, we have no significant climate impacts on human flourishing and prosperity into the near future but we must learn over time to adapt to a warming planet.
Humans have been adapting since we came down from the trees and this will be no different... but it must be driven by economics and demand not useless virtue signaling.
The Outlook?
Although the climate science now points away from a climate emergency, it’s also clear that irrespective of what the science says NetZero type policies are not going to be acceptable to the majority of western citizens when it conflicts with prosperity.
It will mean the climate pledges of the past made by liberal minded governments will be withdrawn or not renewed once the nations democratic machine catches up with majority voter sentiments.
So, many national governments are reconsidering their climate policy positions, and the recent COPs meetings reflected this situation, and achieved nothing, other than clearly demonstrating ongoing de-commitment for the dangerous NetZero journey.
As recommended by the DoE report all our national governments will most probably follow far more realistic and rigorous ongoing reviews and much more open scientific discussion before they set future policies to ensure they are based on firm facts.
The DoE with be updating their climate report drafted back in August 2025 and the next release will be timed to go head-on with anything the IPCC tries to push with its next released reports.
The position from the DoE is going to be well supported by other Climate realist groups such as the CLINTEL Group, the CO2 Coalition and other think tanks such as Heartland etc.
Clintel Climate Intelligence and the Response to Climate Change https://clintel.org
Home - CO2 Coalition https://co2coalition.org
These climate Realist Groups are growing and expanding their reach and have a significant amount of detailed research papers that mostly don’t refute the details in the scientific sections of the IPCC, but do not support the twisting of the facts in the IPCC policy sections.
The good news is that the real facts are now being exposed by the efforts of these climate realist organizations and so there will be far less interest in protecting a climate narrative and supporting cooked up climate emergency predictions and wishful thinking solutions that were enabled by the past dangerous climate emergency group think.
So far China and India continue to play the long game and will not engage in any mitigation effort as they continue to strengthen their economies with significant building of both nuclear and coal-based power plants.
The USA under the new president has already fully switched away from the NetZero plans of the previous administration. Many western nations have listened to Trumps truth telling talk at the UN about the risks to prosperity from NetZero, and it is anticipated that both the UK and Germany and many other EU members will follow the USA direction and will cancel the foolish NetZero policies once they sort out their politics.
Nigel Southway is based in Toronto Canada and is an independent business consultant and recently authored the advocacy book Take Back Manufacturing.
He is also the author of Cycle Time Management: The Fast Track to Time-Based Productivity Improvement, an early textbook on the concept of LEAN thinking and Six Sigma, and how to implement it.
He consults and educates worldwide on Business Productivity Improvement, Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Industry 4.0, National Sustainability & Prosperity, Global technology transfer projects and joint ventures and more.
He has gained experience assisting clients across a wide range of business sectors and industries and helps clients develop a strategy and a vision to attack waste, capture productivity improvements, increase profits, and become more competitive in the global market.
He is a part time professor for Canadian Colleges and lectures on Advanced Manufacturing and Global Supply Chain Management.
He is a past chair of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and the leading advocate and spokesperson for the Take Back Manufacturing (TBM) Forum, and the North American Reshoring initiative in Canada.
To learn more about the book Take Back Manufacturing and the Author, Click Here