https://tilakdoshi.substack.com/p/uk-economist-says-the-quiet-part
By TILAK DOSHI
Excerpt: When petrol prices rocket because of supply shocks—such as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the rerouting of oil tankers—one might have expected a discussion of geopolitics, market signals and the obvious supply-side remedies. Of which there has been plenty, some competent and even masterly, some not so competent by “instant expert” talking heads in social and mass media. But a recent article by an economist in The Conversation offered a solution so perversely tone-deaf it could have been lifted from a Babylon Bee satirical script.
Citing research that a 10 per cent rise in UK petrol prices can cut demand by up to 5 per cent, the piece solemnly declared that “high prices are a way of adjusting consumption to cope with the lower supply.” The subtext was unmistakable: with refined products suddenly scarcer, the proper response is not to produce more fuel if the country were blessed with domestic fossil fuel resources (like the UK) or to import more from sources outside the Strait of Hormuz or both. Instead, the advice from Christoph Siemroth, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Essex, is to make what little remains even costlier—so that the hoi polloi drive less, take the bus and hasten the glorious transition to net zero.
Clueless and Insidious
One is reminded of Marie Antoinette’s famous cake remark, betraying aristocratic cluelessness. But The Conversation article is something far more insidious: the capture of economics itself by the green ideology that now rules our institutions from the BBC to the Treasury, from Oxbridge common rooms to the UK Met Office service. The discipline that once stood as the last redoubt against the Frankfurt School’s long march through the social sciences has fallen. Frank Knight, Gary Becker, George Stigler, Milton Friedman et al held the gates against postmodern gibberish for a generation. No longer. The barbarians are inside the citadel, wearing lanyards from the oxymoronically named Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, chanting “sustainability” like a secular rosary.
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A version of this article was first published in the Daily Sceptic https://dailysceptic.org/2026/04/14/economist-says-the-quiet-part-out-loud-high-energy-prices-are-good-for-the-climate/
Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former (cancelled) contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.
