GWPF Slam Zero Carbon Proposals As Irresponsible & Arbitrary
By Paul Homewood
The GWPF has issued this press release in response to the Committee on Climate Change’s new proposals to cutting CO2 emissions to zero by 2050:
Summary
The recommendation of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) for a Net Zero emissions target by 2050 is grounded in nothing stronger than irresponsible optimism and arbitrary assumptions about cost and technological feasibility. In point of fact, the technologies seen as necessary, including carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), further expansion of renewable generation, widespread adoption of hydrogen, and the very rapid electrification of the UK’s entire heating and transport systems, are either known failures or are unproven at these scales and would cost two to three times the amounts claimed by the CCC. Attempts to deliver these policies would ultimately fail, but in the attempt the UK would further harm its already declining productivity, and so erode the UK’s ability to compete internationally and thus deliver an acceptable standard of living for its people. This is not a sustainable low emissions strategy, and even if accepted by government is very likely to end only in humiliating and distressed policy correction. A wise government would reject this advice.
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) is advising the government of the UK to revise and increase the ambitions of the Climate Change Act. The Act already commits the country to an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 as compared to 1990 levels. The new proposal is that it should have ‘Net Zero’ emissions by that year. The UK has, the CCC claims, already reduced its inland consumption emissions by 40% against the 1990 baseline, and it presents the current proposal as a rational continuation of that success story. But this is a selective and misleading history. When the emissions associated with UK consumption through manufacturing in other countries are taken into account, the UK’s carbon footprint was actually still rising up until the 2008 downturn, when it fell because of economic difficulties, and is now showing some signs of returning to the upwards trend as the economy slowly recovers. In essence, the UK simply exported its emissions to other parts of the world, principally China, in substantial part through carbon leakage resulting from high energy costs in the UK, costs which in substantial part were the result of climate policies. This history gives no ground for optimism with regard to the Net Zero target now proposed. Far from being a success on which we can build, UK climate policy has been a failure, resulting only in domestic economic damage and the illusion of reduced emissions.
The overriding problem facing the UK is the comparatively slow growth in productivity. For much of the last century, the UK’s productivity has been below that of the major industrial economies, and the gap has grown in the first two decades of the 21st century. The consequence has been no growth in real wages and incomes, a fact that strains domestic budgets and exacerbates a general reluctance to make the investments required for future economic prosperity.
This deterioration in productivity growth closely follows and is substantially associated with the implementation of policies to reduce energy use and carbon emissions. There are three reasons for this link:
(a) Large amounts of investment and labour have been diverted to capital-intensive renewables, crowding out investment in other infrastructure and sectors with much higher levels of capital and labour productivity.
(b) The resulting increases in energy prices have prompted high-productivity manufacturing and other industries to conclude that they should look elsewhere for growth in both demand and production.
(c) More generally, the efforts and resources of businesses and innovators have been diverted away from improving productivity and towards efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Furthermore, the idea that there is a global opportunity for the UK to grow by exploiting low carbon technologies is demonstrably a myth.
There can be no doubt that these factors have had a major impact on the development of the UK economy in the last two decades. Low carbon growth may be the holy grail, but the reality is almost no growth and slower reductions in carbon emissions per unit of output than in, say, the United States. Yet the CCC is now recommending proposals that are explicitly designed to reinforce this disappointing performance.
If the government accepts the CCC’s proposals, which are marked by a persistent special pleading about the costs and feasibilities, it will immediately sabotage any plan to rectify the UK’s poor productivity performance and weaken international competitiveness. Its recommendations will ensure that the UK suffers from even lower productivity and be still poorer relative to the rest of the world in 2050 than in 2020. At the same time, the slower growth in productivity brought about by these proposals will increase the burden of meeting the CCC’s targets to a level that will not be bearable. The only doubt is how much pain the population will endure, and how much damage will be done, before these infeasible targets are abandoned.
The study that underlies the CCC’s proposals is marked by what can only be called ‘fantasy analysis’. Electricity demand is required to double on present levels, when in fact it is falling due to high prices. The CCC’s plans require that all of that additional electricity must come from low carbon sources, as opposed to under 50% today. The CCC itself admits that CCS is ‘essential’ to its vision for the 2050 target, and must be substantially deployed before 2030, with a significant level by 2026. At present it is non-existent in the UK, and non-viable at scale elsewhere. There must be 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030, and 75 GW by 2050; at present there is 8 GW, all heavily subsidised, with no sign that the industry is in fact able to build offshore wind at market competitive rates.
The CCC believes that petrol and diesel cars and vans must be phased out well before 2040, but admits that even the current eye-catching and over-ambitious plans to mandate electric vehicles by 2035 cannot deliver this transformation. It consequently suggests that new fossil-fuelled vehicles must be outlawed by 2030. Such a ban would in all probability destroy the existing market for domestic car manufacture, as Chinese and other Asian companies using cheap energy and cheap labour will make the UK uncompetitive.
The study notes that the UK’s provision of space and water heating must be converted to electricity and hydrogen, but admits that there is currently ‘no serious plan’ in existence for this revolution. That is correct, but unfortunately, the study does not itself provide one.
The CCC states that there must be very large afforestation schemes to act as carbon sinks, at a rate of 20,000 hectares per year up to 2025, and 27,000 hectares per year thereafter. The CCC itself admits that the current rate has been only about 10,000 hectares per year over the last five years. In any case, the use of forestry as a carbon sink only has a short-term impact unless CCS is applied to wood burning, which is not feasible on a small scale and is unaffordably expensive on a large scale.
Overall, the CCC’s reaction to these manifest failures and difficulties is to conclude that the ‘voluntary approach’ has failed hitherto and would not deliver the new proposals. Implicitly, therefore, the policies that it recommends must be mandatory and state-led. But nowhere does the CCC’s report consider whether the state actually has the administrative or technical competence to successfully deliver these remarkable objectives. Nor does it consider whether the cost of doing so is likely to be tolerable to the public. Indeed, strikingly, though the CCC makes assertions about the cost and benefits of increasing the Climate Change Act target to Net Zero, there is no attempt to actually quantify the marginal costs and benefits of each step necessary – the most fundamental requirement for such an exercise. Indeed, many of the costs actually cited in the report ignore the practical realities of installation, operation and maintenance of technologies that are well-understood and have failed to achieve widespread deployment without large subsidies. Experience tells us that, if adopted, the CCC’s programme will cost anything from three to five times the estimates in this report and will take up to twice as long to implement.
In summary, the Committee on Climate Change has not produced a serious assessment of the practical feasibility and costs of a Net Zero 2050 target. On the contrary, it has simply taken the Net Zero target as a given and made irrationally optimistic and arbitrary assumptions comprising a fictional narrative that magically delivers the emissions reduction goal as the Happy Ending. This is unrealistic, irresponsible, and misleading.
The government should obviously reject the Climate Change Committee’s poorly argued advice, which is economically hazardous and does not offer a sustainable emissions reductions trajectory.
https://www.thegwpf.com/gwpf-statement-on-the-proposed-net-zero-2050-emissions-target/
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The problem is that “a wise government would reject this advice” Where on earth does the UK find one of those?
Don’t look to Australia
Rus
Queensland.
The CCC, Chaired by a corrupt person, is quite superfluous to the UK’s needs, and now, with a spineless, stupid government lacking all common sense, should be wound up.
But don’t hold your breath.
I would like to add some new people to your circulation list. How do I do it ? A
Sent from my iPhone
>
Each would have to go to the site, and click on “Follow”, giving email addresses etc
Perhaps the easiest is for you to email them with the site link, and ask them if they want to follow it
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/
Gummer has had his nose in the trough for years. Unfortunately our pathetic government tends to believe everything thre CCC says, as it does not understand the issues properly. Their proposals are clearly pie in the sky, but this won’t be realised until it is too late to undo the damage.
Any more than they understand brexit.
“Gummer has had his nose in the trough for years” One has to ask, do his bosses have their noses in the same trough?
One fact unmentioned is that UK emits 1.1% of world CO2. Thus whatever the corrupt Lord Gummer does will make no foxtrotting difference.
Oh and ‘carbon’ is not a problem anyway. As the doctor said at the end of The Bridge Over the River Kwai-“Madness Madness “
In today’s post Dr North comments that he has never experienced such a closed mind in government, the civil service, think tanks and academia as exists today. I have little faith that our Morons of Parliament will take note of the GWPF report but continue leading our country to economic destruction. He noted that there is an interesting book entitled The intelligence Trap looking at why smart people – our MPs allegedly – do stupid things. It is a counterpoint to the theory of groupthink as to why they are so stupid.
It does make you seriously wonder whether the whole Climate Change exercise is being orchestrated by some malevolent government elsewhere who simply wants to see the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland disappear up its own brexit. alas, my grandchildren will never forgive me…
“It does make you seriously wonder whether the whole Climate Change exercise is being orchestrated by some malevolent government elsewhere”
It is – UN Agenda 21, now renamed as Agenda 2030:
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/development-agenda/
“Tackling climate change and fostering sustainable development are two mutually reinforcing sides of the same coin; sustainable development cannot be achieved without climate action. Conversely, many of the SDGs are addressing the core drivers of climate change”
Smart meters and smart motorways (both leading to interminable exasperation) are probably part of the same plot, its tempting to blame the EU, but in many areas they simply implement whatever makes them look good at the UN.
I’ve always maintained that leaving the EU just cuts out the middle man for this sort of thing.
Spot On.
This would have made for a comedy script until the IPCC came along.
I have recently finished rereading George Orwell’s 1984 (actually the compendium of all his novels) and was struck by the similarity to the AGW movement(s).
The basis of 1984 is that the Elite (Inner Party) want absolute and permanent power. If the life of the masses (Prols) is too easy they are hard to control so they are kept in a state of semi poverty by a continuous war which uses up the free resources.
The importance of the war is supported by the Propaganda Machine (Ministry of Truth) that continuously changes history to match the requirements of the Inner Party and to suppress free thought. Those who have any free thought or who challenge the system are taken away by the Thought Police. The need for and support of the war are driven by daily two minute hate sessions and by longer hate weeks. The organisation is run by the Outer Party who get certain limited privileges but are constantly monitored and brainwashed by their ‘Telescreens’.
Looking at today people are already mostly voluntarily locked to their ‘Telescreens’ (Smartphones, Tablets, TVs, etc.) and get most of their information from the Media, especially social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Very few people ever look at what is behind this information and are ripe for being told that Climate Change, AGW, etc. is our war. Rather than just two minute hate sessions we are bombarded with calls to war, most stuff on the BBC science section, David Attenborough’s Climate Change: the Facts, Hottest Day Evaahh, reported Increases in natural disasters, Corbyn’s Climate Emergency, etc. Extinction Rebellion bought the Hate Week around the world.
The Elite will keep doing just what they want to, buying beach villas, flying round in private jets, living in mansions whilst trying to create energy poverty for the masses to keep them under control. The dash for renewables has significantly increased energy costs wherever it has been implemented, UK, Germany, Australia, etc. The money all goes those who already have money and can afford to pay up front for solar panels, wind turbines, EVs, etc. and get the various government subsidies. The ‘Prols’ just get higher bills.
How many people just believe the Ministry of Truth? How many actually look and see the number of papers and articles that have to be withdrawn or corrected? Dissent is suppressed as far as possible with cries of ‘Denier’ and personal abuse. Scientists are threatened with loss of funding or sacking (the Peter Ridd case in Australia is a ray of hope).
Does anyone else see it like this?
You’ll have to excuse me for repeatedly pushing this story, but ut explains a lot:
“1984” was written not as a manual but as a warning, pity our politicians are not very good at reading. I read it at School and soon picked up that it was a warning.
Oh, they are good at reading. They are using it as a plan of action.
No link, paywalled………. but have you read the latest Ambrose Evans Pritchard effort in the DT business pages – today?
ZERO CARBON and at “no cost!” well…… according to AEP.
Yes, it’s drivel!
Ambrose came up with an additional 75 GW of wind power. Yesterday wind generated 0.14 GW from 20.8 GW capacity. Assuming we see another day similar in the future with this added capacity we will have a stunning 0.65 GW. I am not terribly clever but I can do simple mathematics. Can our politicians?
Thanks Dave
I am writing a post tomorrow picking up on some of these specific issues
I do read and like to ‘crunch on’ Ambrose penned acticles, on his economic analyses and particularly about the dreadful WA capitulation to the EU and to which the PM Mrs May wishes Britain to sign up to, Ambrose is absolutely spot on.
However, with wearing his Dr. Pangloss spectacles and wittering on about some uncosted but so bluming burdensome brilliant green future imho, to name it as “drivel” Paul and as is your wont (and rightfully so at that because it is your style) – you are being very, very polite.
🙂
It’s great to have the GWPF issue such clear words of common sense, in stark contrast to the “climate change” insanity we get day in and day out from our politicians and the establishment media.
I fear our parliament of scientific and technical illiterates will meekly concur with the CCC. In the past two days MPs have twice cheered proposals for zero net emissions and yesterday they declared a climate emergency. Of the many dozens of speakers over these two days only Sir Christopher Chope spoke any words of caution. The TV coverage showed the shameful spectacle of all the groupthinking, brainwashed MPs literally turning their backs on him and closing their ears to what he had to say, so fixated are they on their virtue signalling climate ideology, see https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2019-04-30/debates/9ECD0AF0-6797-4BE7-A3C2-AC8E45CF8B57/ClimateChange(NetZeroUKCarbonAccount).
I fear the only solution to alleged dangerous man-made global warming is to vote all the irresponsible ideologues who believe in it out of office and for the rationalists who replace them to adopt a much more rational and less expensive climate policy of adaption as and when necessary, coupled with committing serious research and development into alternative forms of sustainable energy for the future. Either that or we have to wait for the inevitable “humiliating and distressed policy correction” when the wheels eventually fall off their hopeless decarbonisation plans.
“… and for the rationalists who replace them …” – there aren’t any!
Ukip reputiated the climate change nonsense and I expect Nigel Farage will carry that across into his new Brexit Party. It is plain to see that the overwhelming majority of politicians who follow the establishment line on climate change also oppose Brexit. They are all more concerned about the globalist policies of the EU and UN than they are about the well-being of the people of the UK.A chance to kill two birds with one stone.
Douglas – I’d be surprised if Farage goes anywhere near climate change. It’s so poisonous, it would enable his detractors to distort the message.
What the kids in school never hear and is shut down on univerity campuses, what the UK political claque refuses to hear, is an accounting, a counter narrative to the alarmist shills and extinction guff propagated by the liars and charlatans of the media muppetry and supported by the corporate blob pulling the strings in Berlin. Plus, not least the jiggerypokery behind the scenes done by some Hungarian billionaire and his cronies ala bilderberger/sierra club and with his propaganda unit open forum foundation and sending his useful eejits (most NGOs) into the world….. Though and until the Westminster claque are thoroughly reminded of who are their bosses, ie the electorate and are thus dispersed to the four winds and via the ballot box and the administration are whipped back to heel………there is no chance of any counter attack on the OWG, the UN agenda 2030, from realism, pure science alas it is, then: only total economic oblivion beckons the UK.
“A wise government would reject this advice.” There’s no chance of the advice being rejected then – not with Clark and Perry there.
So true, so sad, so desperate to relate it but there it is, and: no wonder the country is in the mire and very deep doings at that.
We’ve got to somehow drain the this swamp, drain it and thus deprive the swamp hounds their fetid breeding ground, of Marxist scheming, ruination and festering.
Paul, am I right in assuming you put some stats together a while back re temps, extreme weather etc. I’m planning on visiting my MP because I’m seriously concerned that this is all going to far (if not already). Surely someone has to get our MPs to listen to the serious scientists out there and not activists, eco-loons and exploited children before we take this country down the tubes. I have a few stats that I can present, but if you have something better that would help. Perhaps if more of us can express our concerns we might get a few more to question this madness.
This is my paper for GWPF on the UK
Thanks Paul.
“In any case, the use of forestry as a carbon sink only has a short-term impact..”
The same is true for any biological CO2 “sequestration”. The only hope is the CCS negative emission capture-and-store technology. But, it operates in the millions of tonnes per year when it is billions of tonnes that are required to make a difference. Irrational and totally impossible.
Something that is never mentioned in connection with CCS is how much space is there to store carbon dioxide underground even if it was possible and affordable to capture billions of tonnes from the air.
It is normally claimed by proponents of CCS that the carbon dioxide can be put into disused gas and oil wells. I’m sure that the theoretical storage capacity is limited by the basic laws of physics and chemistry.
At any given pressure and temperature x number of molecules of any gas will occupy the same volume (Boyles law I think). Natural gas is mostly methane plus small amounts of propane and butane. The chemical equation for burning methane is
CH4 + 2O2 = CO2 + 2H20
Therefore 1 molecule of methane produces 1 molecule of carbon dioxide, in other words burning methane produces the same volume of carbon dioxide (at a given temperature and pressure). Given that the temperature and pressure in any given gas well will stay constant over time (if the well is full) then in theory there is enough space to sequester all the carbon dioxide that is produced from burning methane. Other hydrocarbons contain more than one carbon atom per molecule so will produce more than one molecule of carbon dioxide for each molecule that is burnt. Therefore burning butane and propane, which are C3H8 and C4H10 (or maybe the other way round, I forget) will produce 3 and 4 times the volume of carbon dioxide compared to the original gas. Therefore there is only room to store a fraction of the emissions generated from burning these gases.
The situation is more complicated with oil. Crude oil is a mixture of compounds that contain 5 or more carbon atoms, so will produce large numbers of carbon dioxide molecules (and hence large volumes) for each molecule burnt. Given that oil is a liquid it will occupy a smaller volume than a gas (even under pressure) therefore old oil wells will only have enough space to hold a small percentage of the carbon dioxide produced from burning the oil.
When it comes to the carbon dioxide produced from burning coal, forget it. There is no way to put large volumes of carbon dioxide in old coal mines and make sure it stays there let alone open cast mines.
If a rough assumption is that fossil fuel use gas, oil, and coal in equal amounts then the above suggests that the theoretical maximum amount of emissions that could be stored underground is one third. Once emissions from land use changes, agriculture, etc. are taken into account it would only be possible to bury a quarter or less of our emissions, and this is assuming it is technologically possible and affordable on a large scale.
CCS has to go down with renewables and batteries as yet one more technology that can’t be deployed on the scale required even if we wanted to. Seems like the only option is to go and live in a cave and eat berries, or at best go back to living in the 19th century. When are groups like XR or CCC etc. going to realise this?
I regularly get your postings and from time to time I comment, but I now find that it no longer works like that. I often lose the post before I have finished. This never used to happen but then my details were always there, now they are not. I have to fill in the details every time and bfore I finish my post disappears.. Sorry if at any time I have offended you, I do not think I have but I do enjoy getting the actual news from your site.
Yes Derek, I have mentioned the boring need to keep filling in name etc. He did ask if others had the problem.
I am certain he is not rejecting you, it is just this new website is a bit basic.
Yes, it seems to be a WordPress issue.
I and others have had the same problem with WUWT,etc (although I don’t know why you are losing posts!)
When all new houses have vastly more expensive heating systems one of the unintended consequences will surely be higher smoke pollution as home-owners revert to wood-burning stoves or even coal fires.
A friend of mine told me just yesterday that a salesman called on him to try to sell him on the idea that he should scrap his oil-fired CH system and replace it with £17,000 s’-worth of air-source heat pump, which, he was told, would satisfy all his heating and hot-water requirements in his small three-bedroom detached house. I pointed out to him that if he would only spend £5k on installing double-glazing he would get a better return on his existing system.
Harry,
We have an electric air-sourced heat pump, and cold winters. Ours was connected to pre-existing ducts throughout the house.
When the outside air gets cold, then resistance coils heat the air. We do not heat water with this. That sort needs to get air hotter than the one we have.
There are many other varieties.
If the electricity goes off there is no heat or air conditioning.
For winter emergency, we have a modern catalytic combustor wood stove . Wood is free {think on that}, but I have to cut and dry it. When cold for a long time, the wood stove can reduce heating costs, but our electric rate is low so we tend not to use it much. {Wife has a medical condition, and despite being quite efficient, the stove is not as clean as the electric.}
It is clear that these new draconian measures are aimed at Other People, since the wealthy will enjoy driving their gas guzzlers down empty motor ways; and with the airports mercifully free of the lower classes, they will no longer be forced to hire private planes in order jet around the world lecturing Other People on ‘climate change’. And no doubt all those new cars and boilers will be supplied by China. As to the ‘problem’ of old people using up too much energy keeping warm, hopefully they will use their dwindling reserves of personal energy complaining about the ageism of environmentalists; after all, we know what real pollution looked like before the Clean Air Act of 1956 was passed in response to the Great Smog of 1952 – and as they say in Yorkshire, we are not so green as cabbage-looking.
@ Dave Cowdell May 2, 2019 6:08 pm
If, like me, you saw that 0.14GW figure on “Gridwatch” please note that only 12.05GW from a total of 20.8GW wind generation is presently metered centrally by National Grid. The difference is made up of smaller sites connected to local distribution networks. Making an allowance for this bumps things up to about 0.22GW, but that’s still a laughably small contribution to the national demand of 34.41GW at that same time – just 0.65%! If we didn’t (still) have reliable generators available the country would have shut down…
The zero carbon imbeciles don’t seem to have caught on to the fact that, in order to meet their ambitious emissions target, they will be required to stop breathing.
Oh…I can think of a few candidates I would nominate for that!
I have tried to read the CCC report (275 pages of unmitigated jingoism all predicated on the truth of the recent nonsensical IPCC SR1 report). The amount of technical rubbish is horrifying, but the fact that there is no body in a position of power who can dissect and criticise the content is frightening: Deben is certainly a cunning bar steward!
The UK would cut its CO2 from 0.5 Gt/y to zero while the rest of the world increases by over 1 GT/y: these facts are in the report but, conveniently, not made too clear. The cost is said to be 1 – 2% GDP/y but the assumed technology improvements in CCS, batteries, windmills etc are crude guesstimates only. OMG, LOL……
I certainly wouldn’t want to belong to any club that employed Deben as a bar steward
I note that in today’s business section of the DT that Ambrose Evans Pritchard swallows the whole CCC agenda and supports it hook,line and sinker
BBC R4 PM is doing its bit all week. The lightweight Evan Davies interviews climate alarmists without so much as a: ‘say what?’
Today, Joanna Haigh of Imp Col Lon is interviewed. She is a scientist who believes totally in AGW but is interviewed not so much for her scientific skills as her political bent. And all without any query from ED.
Take for instance CCS: She claimed it works – is working somewhere – but needs to be ‘scaled up’!!. Davies did not bother to ask her where, how much CO² it can sequester, and, how much (it’s billions of tons) will need to be ‘buried’.
But the BBC will not allow sceptics to challenge people like this.
She is also a co-director of the Grantham institute….say no more.
She’s spent too long in academia – she should get out more.
“she should get out more”, I’ve no doubt she gets out a lot to conferences, but I’d suggest confining her and the rest of them to their make-believe world, and getting on with real life. I now despise the BBC and survive on Talksport, “Help me chill” (internet radio – no news!) and Scala (the new classical station on DAB).
Grantham is not academia. It is a marxist orgamization behind a smoke and mirror version of “science”
Climate change, a simple religion for the simple minded.
Why doesn’t the article point out that our emissions are now, as I understand it,, less than 1% of total emmisions. I believe this is the major point in the argument.
Because this is politics notthing to do with saving the planet…….and the UK is seen as currently weak politically and ready for the marxists to do what those murderous fascists do
What they SHOULD HAVE asked is………….
“What statistically signigificant empirical dataset(s) exist which prove the assertion that man not nature is responsible for the world coming out of the Little Ice Age and continuing the temperature increase during this interglacial? Also WHAT statistically significant data set(s)exist which link man to the small global temperature increase coming out of the Little Iceage AND that that small readjustment “caused”climate change? We need a definition of what the climate death cultists think is climate change because frankly I am lost!
Climate change is anything they say it is:
Ballade of the Environment
They say that we are running out
Of everything; if we don’t wean
Ourselves from greed, continually flout
The laws of Nature – put ourselves in quarantine
From Baltimore to Bethnal Green –
We’ll crash this Spaceship Earth if we don’t man it,
And all become more fit and lean;
They say that it will save the Planet.
They say we can no longer doubt
The future won’t be evergreen:
If there aren’t floods there will be drought
And every weather state between;
To put it bluntly we won’t have a bean,
And as for Progress, we must can it,
And live more simply – recycle, glean;
They say that it will save the Planet.
They say that we must go without,
On further gains must not be keen;
Forget religion, but become devout
For Goddess Earth; adopt a plain cuisine;
Placate Professor Dawkins’ selfish gene – live underground or in a mezzanine;
Having children’s an expensive taste – they’ll ban it
And subsidise those windmills (the profits are obscene);
They say that it will save the Planet.
Envoy
Prince, you can teach us to be green
Till we are cabbage-looking; wherever there’s a fear you’ll fan it;
The rich can teach the poor how to be mean;
They say that it will save the Planet.
*********
Just as an experiment, I recommend that the UK government nominates one town to go carbon neutral for just one week to demonstrate to us skeptical plebs how wonderful life would be in the new green nirvana. For argument’s sake let’s pick on Brighton, after all they are the only citizens in the country who actually voted for a Green MP. Seems a fair choice to me. Before our week long experiment we will just strip the shops, garages etc of every fossil fuelled derivative product and deny our Brightonians of any energy source not 100% derived from natural sources. That’ll be virtually every item traditionally on sale then. Within 48 hrs all schools, hospitals and businesses would be forced to close through lack of energy, materials and the unavailability of staff. Within 72hrs large scale looting would break out as food supplies disappeared and the police would have to call in what’s left of our army to support them. Within 96hrs full scale anarchy would reign supreme. Within a week the remaining citizens of Brighton would be begging Paul Homewood to lead them out of captivity to the Promised Land of Sanity and Cheap, Reliable Energy, just like the good old times! Ok, I may be dreaming, but you get my point.
Can you please leave Hove out of this?!
I wonder if the Green Lobby have thought this plan to reduce our emissions to zero through. It places a lot of faith in our government. There is a lot of scope for it to go badly wrong. So instead of providing the world with ‘leadership’ we serve as a terrible warning. This, of course, puts them off from reducing their emissions leading to – Whoops Climate Apocalypse.
Is there light at the end of the tunnel? I saw a few people on the news being asked about their plans for dealing with CC. Their answer? Not a lot. The gulf between politicians and real people is starting to show and the more the proposals are exposed, as in this case, the greater will be the push back.
Alas I am skeptical about the scale of any push back. From what I remember, you are correct: if you ask people whether they are worried about global warming, they say yes, When asked how much of their own money they are prepared to stump up to stave it off, it amounts to less than a round of drinks at the Dog’n’Duck. So far so good.
At the moment, though, the public are blissfully unaware about where their money is going. How many know that a tenner out of the pocket of everyone in the country is going to Drax to subsidise their burning of Louisiana? Energy bills do not show what they would be in the absence of ruinous renewables. When spokespeople can get away with claiming that “fossil fuels are subsidised, and renewables only need a level playing field” while ignoring that fat carbon tax called fuel duty… well, what hope is there?
When they turn off the gas, it will be announced years ahead, and made to seem like an inevitability.
When they realise that people won’t give up their old bangers and buy an electric car, they will tax fuel into oblivion.
When they find out you’ve got your own drill, they’ll demand your place it at the disposal of the neighbourhood!