Not sure what to get your loved ones for Christmas? Here’s my advice: buy them a wind-up radio. They may grimace as it's unwrapped (they may assume it’s a ‘wind-up’, ho-ho), but they’ll thank you for it one day.
Because, year by year, it’s becoming clearer that society is on the brink of a breakdown. Not a full-blown civil war (although, as the academic David Betz has recently observed, don’t bet against it), but a collapse in the systems which mark out our world as modern.
I find survivalists, the ‘preppers’ who build underground shelters in anticipation of the zombie apocalypse, a trifle eccentric. Not necessarily wrong, but definitely odd.
At bottom, I have that fundamentally lazy British mindset that, if the brown stuff really comes into kinetic contact with the fan, we will find a way to muddle through. So I’m not naturally inclined towards catastrophism.
But I should be. And, thanks to Richard Dearlove, I now am. Sir Richard, to give him his proper title, is someone to take seriously. He was the boss of MI6. And was so when it mattered, from 1999 to 2004; a period taking in 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Sir Richard recently wrote a magazine article that ought to be required reading not just in Whitehall, but in every home. It made clear how our obsession with net zero has left Britain on the edge of a precipice.
He says successive governments have made us shockingly exposed to energy blackouts. And that our enemies know this, and are desperate to exploit our vulnerability.
If you want to know what an energy blackout looks like in an advanced society, look at what happened to Iberia earlier this year. It started innocuously enough. A power cut meant the Madrid Open tennis tournament had to suspend play halfway through a match.
Net zero madness has us in the jaws of very dangerous enemies - and they have the kill switch - Colin Brazier | Getty Images
But what looked like a minor inconvenience quickly took on a more worrisome dimension. In the Spanish capital, emergency workers were called to rescue people trapped inside lifts in almost 300 buildings.
Electric trains - and their passengers - were marooned inside tunnels. Traffic lights gave up, ATM’s stopped dispensing cash, and phone chargers wouldn’t charge. Tens of millions of households in Spain, Portugal and southern France were impacted and fearful.
Initial reports suggested that an overdependence on solar and wind had caused the grid to crash. It’s not clear, months later, if this was wholly correct.
Other technical factors were in play. But the point about the fragility of our electricity-dependent lives holds true. Whether it’s giant A.I. data centres hoovering up power, or the spread of electric vehicles, our reliance on electricity is deepening. And if the power trips, we are all in for one hell of a ride.
As we saw during lockdown, just-in-time logistics systems mean we are only ever a few deliveries away from food shortages. Apple Pay may be convenient, but it won’t be there for you to buy petrol or groceries when the lights go out.
For someone who spent decades living in a secret world where very bad things happen, Sir Richard Dearlove is well-qualified to understand risk. In his article, originally published in The Spectator, he says both Russia and China see the UK’s almost millenarian belief in the power of renewables as our Achilles heel.
Russia is the most obvious threat. It has been seen how our energy grid increasingly uses undersea inter-connectors, not as occasional or emergency sources of power from the gas fields of Norway or nuclear power stations of France, but as a matter of routine. Sever those cables and, if the sun stops shining and wind ceases to blow, we are in serious bother.
But it’s China that really has us by the short and curlies. Our wind turbines and switching mechanisms within the National Grid rely on ‘cellular modules’ made in China. They’re also found in Chinese-made electric vehicles, which are heavily subsidised and increasingly common on British roads.
These cellular modules are not to be trusted. They contain ‘kill switches’. Anyone who thinks these things are science fiction hasn’t been paying attention.
They exist, and they work. Take John Deere tractors. On my family farm, we have an ancient John Deere, built decades ago, and long before such machines doubled in size and could - effectively - drive themselves using GPS.
These new behemoths are worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, which is why they proved attractive on the prairies of Ukraine to Russian soldiers in search of booty.
But when their new owners tried to fire up these stolen John Deere tractors and combine harvesters, they didn’t move. Immobilised, at least for a while, by a hidden kill-switch operated from America.
Now, imagine what would happen if China wanted to punish Britain for supporting Taiwan, if that plucky little island were to be invaded by the communist troops of Beijing. Imagine what the M1 would look like if every Chinese-made EV suddenly stopped working.
As Sir Richard points out: “All Chinese companies are subject to the control of the leadership, so within a few hours of a decision by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), every motorway and every city in the UK could be blocked with immobilised Chinese EVs. Similarly, the grid could be unbalanced as its switching mechanisms are disrupted from computer centres in Beijing.”
Again, let me stress, these aren’t the fevered ramblings of a teenager who doesn’t get out much and lives in fear of Extinction Level Events, like a rogue asteroid hitting the Earth.
This is the considered judgment of a man who knows more about how the world really works than most of us can begin to imagine. And, if you still think I exaggerate the danger of EVs turning into roadblocks for a rogue state, consider this. In China, Tesla cars are banned from areas where there are sensitive security assets.
The Chinese Communist Party knows that the next war will be fought on the Internet of Things and is not taking any chances at home.
Some people are paying attention. Lord (Maurice) Glasman, the Labour peer who was invited to the Trump inauguration, has called for our National Grid to be put under the control of the Ministry of Defence.
He and organisations like Net Zero Watch are drawing attention to the fact that our obsession with renewables isn’t just a road to higher inflation. It’s more serious than the cost of living. It’s about the defence of the realm itself.
But that isn’t to say the exorbitant price of renewables and the strength of our military are not unconnected. Armies are expensive and need bankrolling through economic growth.
British electricity bills, the highest in the developed world, are crippling our shrunken manufacturing base. Labour has banned new oil exploration and imposed a 78 per cent tax on North Sea gas producers. Consequently, half of our gas now comes from Norway, with all the vulnerability to Russian subs that entails.
Like many people this December, I’m looking at the weather forecast, wondering whatever happened to winter. I don’t deny for a second that our climate is changing. But Red-Ed Miliband’s net zero policies are not the answer, especially if they empower coal-hungry China and Russia, a petro-dollar oligarchy.
So, bring on a cold snap. Perhaps one like the 2012 Beast from the East, a spell of super-cold weather which hit much of Europe. It’s doubtful, according to Andrew Montford of Net Zero Watch, that the UK could withstand a repeat of that 2012 winter without rolling power cuts, such is our reliance now on renewables.
It would be a chilly few days, potentially fatal for some, but it might provoke the cold shower of realisation that our deluded policy-makers seem to need.