Are Britain and Germany committing economic self-harm? Is Western climate anxiety stifling African economies? Narratives of panic and despair are increasingly influencing the fundamentals of economic policy and energy policy.

Our latest ARC Off-Stage Conversation is a rallying call for an honest assessment of the direction of travel of energy policy. Germany and Britain are not alone in committing economic self-harm. This conversation, with experts Marian Tupy, Magatte Wade, Chris Wright, and Robert Bryce, lays out why energy equals GDP, and how outsourcing energy consumption to other nations is not a green policy.

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In Chris Wright’s words:

The UK has “driven up electricity prices so much… They're proud of the 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but what they never mentioned was that the majority of this is just reduced energy consumption.

“Energy intensive manufacturing just left. It's not made at a natural gas-powered factory in the UK anymore. It's a coal-powered plant in Asia and then loaded on diesel-powered tanker ship and brought back. That's not really greenhouse gas reduction, right? That's just exporting your emissions.”

It’s time for an honest conversation about energy. Too often policy makers make choices at the behest of activists which are irrational, anti-human, and fail to account for complexity. Yes, we have a duty to environmental stewardship. But panic driven policy making is almost always bad policy making.