Matt Ridley: The Climate boondoggle is the biggest transfer of money from the poor to the rich since Sheriff of Nottingham
By Jo Nova
The poor today are even paying to help the very rich people of 2100 get slightly richer
Matt Ridley
In a droll, but scathing assessment, Matt Ridley calculates that even in a best case scenario, with the most generous estimate of how useful a wind turbine might be, the people in the UK are spending £25 billion a year to reduce global emissions of CO2 by 0.00002 or two hundredths of one percent.
At that rate getting the world to net zero will cost £100 trillion a year – or the entire world’s economic output.
The numbers burn like the Hindenburg, yet serious people keep a straight face, like we are living in an episode of Monty Python. The Parliamentarians pretend to save the world, the scientists research a pretend world, and the media pretend to be journalists.
Excerpts from Matt Ridley on X:
The climate boondoggle is one of the most regressive wealth transfers in history: never in the field of human commerce, or at least not since the sheriff of Nottingham, has so much tax been paid by people so poor to people so rich. Perhaps Ed Miliband is hoping that by giving lots of money to rich people, he can then impose a wealth tax on them in a sort of economic perpetual-motion machine.
There appears to be no end to his generosity to the rich. He has recently announced an increase in subsidies for electric cars, electric heating and electricity bills, and this week he quietly let slip that he will raise the amount he pays for new wind farms and index-link the payment for an extra five years.
What’s that? You don’t have a wind farm? Bad luck. Landowners who do can trouser £150,000 per wind turbine per year in rent for twenty to thirty years. One is arguing in court that £10m a year for his wind farm is not enough. …
https://joannenova.com.au/2025/07/matt-ridley-the-climate-boondoggle-is-the-biggest-transfer-of-money-from-the-poor-to-the-rich-since-sheriff-of-nottingham/
