In a recent episode of the Trigonometry podcast (released March 8, 2026), hosts Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster spoke with Australian geologist Professor Ian Plimer under the title “The Climate Crisis is a Scam.” Plimer, a veteran scientist who has studied Earth’s history for decades, laid out a blunt case: the climate is always changing – it has done so for billions of years through natural cycles, ice ages, warming periods, and massive shifts in CO₂ levels far higher than today’s 0.04%. He argued there is no credible evidence that human emissions are the primary driver of catastrophe, and that the “crisis” narrative has become a new secular religion, a cult sustained by grants, politics, and fear.
Kisin and Foster pushed back where appropriate but let the conversation go where the evidence led. They explored how the net-zero push has dramatically shifted public and political discussion – not because the science suddenly changed, but because the economic pain is becoming impossible to ignore. Plimer was direct: “We’ve had times in the past when the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere was at least 10% and perhaps 20% compared with 0.04%. And what did we have then? We had the biggest ice ages this planet’s ever enjoyed.” Humans have thrived through far greater swings than anything projected today. More people die from cold than heat, he noted, and adaptation (not utopian elimination of CO₂) has always been humanity’s winning strategy.
Your friend’s reaction – “I don’t understand people who don’t believe in climate change” – is common. But that misses the point entirely, as you rightly told him. Most serious skeptics (including Plimer, Kisin in his separate discussions on net zero, and countless geologists, physicists, and economists) do not deny that the climate changes or that humans have some influence. What they dispute is the apocalyptic framing and, far more importantly, the catastrophic policy responses built on it.
Governments around the world – especially in the EU and UK – have seized on climate alarmism as the perfect pretext to expand control, introduce new taxes and levies, and reshape entire economies. The outcome? Energy prices have skyrocketed, industries are fleeing, and ordinary families are materially worse off. This is not theory; it is documented reality in household bills, fuel poverty statistics, and deindustrialisation data.
The Pretext: Taxes, Levies, and “Green” Mandates
In the EU, electricity taxes and levies – many explicitly tied to climate and renewable targets – now make up roughly 25% of the average household electricity bill. That is not a small surcharge; it is a quarter of what families pay every month, funneled into subsidies for intermittent wind and solar, grid upgrades, and carbon trading schemes. The European Commission itself admitted this in its March 2026 Citizens’ Energy Package, urging member states to cut these charges because they are driving energy poverty for millions.
The UK is no better. Ofgem’s price cap still includes substantial policy costs even after recent tweaks. Average dual-fuel household bills stood at £1,758 in the January–March 2026 period – 44% higher than pre-Ukraine-war winter 2021/22 levels, despite wholesale gas prices having fallen sharply. At the 2022 peak they hit £2,380 under the Energy Price Guarantee. Families were forced to choose between heating, bathing, or eating – exactly the human cost Plimer highlighted on Trigonometry.
These are not natural market prices. They are the direct result of net-zero policies: closing reliable coal and nuclear plants, forcing renewables onto the grid without adequate storage or backup, and loading the cost onto consumers via green levies and obligations. Germany’s Energiewende offers the clearest warning – years of nuclear phase-out and coal-to-renewables switch produced Europe’s highest industrial electricity prices and contributed to factory closures and job losses. France, by contrast, kept its nuclear fleet and has far lower, more stable prices. The difference is policy, not weather or geology.
Net Zero: Economic Suicide Disguised as Virtue
Professor Plimer called net zero “totally ridiculous” and “economic suicide.” Humans are carbon-based life forms; plants need CO₂ to grow. Eliminating net emissions by 2050 without massive nuclear expansion or technological miracles is impossible without de-industrialising entire nations. Western countries are “completely recapitalising grids” at trillions in cost, replacing cheap, dispatchable power with weather-dependent sources that require expensive gas backups precisely when the wind drops.
The result is not just higher bills today. It is structural weakness:
UK industrial electricity prices rose 124% between 2019 and 2024 – four times the U.S. increase – leaving Britain with the highest power costs in the Western world.
Manufacturers are relocating to Asia or the U.S., where net-zero ideology has not yet strangled affordable energy.
Households face ongoing volatility. Even official Climate Change Committee (CCC) modelling concedes that staying on fossil-heavy paths would expose families to 59% bill spikes in future crises, while “decarbonised” paths limit rises to 4%. But that modelling assumes perfect execution of the most expensive transition in history – and ignores the trillions already spent with little measurable climate benefit.
Critics like Bjorn Lomborg and the Trigonometry guests are clear: the tiny temperature reduction net zero might deliver by 2100 (often estimated at 0.1–0.2°C even under optimistic assumptions) comes at the expense of real suffering now. Meanwhile, China builds coal plants at record pace using Australian coal, happily exporting solar panels and wind turbines to the West while we hobble our own economies.
The Human Cost: Families Pay the Price
This is what your message to your friend correctly highlighted. Whether the climate is in a natural warming phase (as it has been since the Little Ice Age) or has a modest human contribution is secondary. The policies are the primary harm:
Millions in energy poverty across the EU.
British pensioners and low-income families skipping meals or turning off heating.
Rising populism and political backlash as voters realise they were sold a false choice: “Save the planet or stay poor.”
Plimer’s closing message on the podcast was pragmatic: we cannot stop natural climate change, but we can ensure humans thrive through adaptation, cheap reliable energy, and technological progress. Nuclear power (barely discussed in mainstream climate circles) is the obvious bridge – safe, dense, low-carbon, and proven in France.
Time to Separate Science from Policy
You don’t have to “deny climate change” to oppose net zero. You simply have to look at the data on household bills, the 25% tax-and-levy burden in Europe, the UK’s persistent 44%+ price elevation, and the human stories behind them. Governments have used fear of a changing climate – a constant throughout Earth’s history – to justify the largest wealth transfer and regulatory expansion in peacetime history.
The Trigonometry episode is a timely reminder. Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster did what good interviewers do: they let uncomfortable truths surface. The real scam is not the climate itself. It is the ideological policies sold in its name that are making families poorer, colder, and more vulnerable today.
Focus on what actually works – affordable energy, innovation, adaptation, and nuclear – and the debate changes instantly. Until then, net-zero dogma will continue to hurt the very people politicians claim to protect. Your friend may not like the label “scam,” but the lived reality of skyrocketing bills and policy-driven hardship is hard to dispute once the numbers are on the table.
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