Coronavirus Has Saved Lives In China–Emma Pinchbeck
By Paul Homewood
Emma Pinchbeck, formerly Deputy CEO of the renewable lobby group, Renewable UK, apparently believes the coronavirus pandemic has been good news for China:
https://twitter.com/ELPinchbeck/status/1248148351939416065
It seems she heard about this on the far left Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, so it must be right.
Leaving aside the actual numbers, the idea that COVID-19 has in any way been good news is contemptible. Trading off one set of actual lives lost against another theoretical set is utterly callous.
Pinchbeck admits she has no basis for the numbers, but assumes they must have something to do with air pollution. Leave aside the contentious details, such as the almost certainty that China has grossly underestimated its death toll from COVID-19, the fact that “deaths due to air pollution” is not an absolute concept but one of premature death, and the fact that much of China’s air pollution results from indoor coal fires.
There is a fundamental and fatal flaw in her logic.
As a direct consequence of China’s industrial revolution, living standards for the majority of its population have improved out of all recognition.
They are better fed, clothed and housed. Their health care and other public services have been transformed. The problems caused by famine, flood and drought are a thing of the past.
As a result, life expectancy has risen from 60 years in 1970 to 76 years today.
This is not to say that China does not still have real air pollution issues. But the way to solve these lies with technology and not returning to the dark ages.
They are already building clean coal power stations, which take out most of the real pollutants, and building them outside of cities as well.
And to deal with pollution from homes, industry and transport, they only need to take a leaf out of the Western playbook, implementing Clean Air Acts and vehicle emission standards.
Does Emma really want China to return to the bad old days?
FOOTNOTE
Emma Pinchbeck is soon starting her new job as CEO of Energy UK, which represents all sectors of the power industry:
Energy UK is the trade association for the GB energy industry with a membership of over 100 suppliers, generators, and stakeholders with a business interest in the production and supply of electricity and gas for domestic and business consumers. Our membership covers over 90% of both UK power generation and the energy supply market for UK homes. We represent the diverse nature of the UK’s energy industry – from established FTSE 100 companies right through to new, growing suppliers and generators, which now make up over half of our membership.
Our members turn renewable energy sources as well as nuclear, gas and coal into electricity for over 27 million homes and every business in Britain
https://www.energy-uk.org.uk/about-us/about-us.html
I wonder whether she will lobby as hard for gas firms as she did for the over subsidised wind sector?
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Truly scary.
Energy UK. Another quango targeted by the insane lefties. I thought we have a Conservative government? Why then are lefties still getting the soft jobs? How exactly did she get the job and who chose her? Secondly I notice the usual pointless blurb you quote from her soon to be quango mirroring the weak wind lobby’s desperate attempts to “big up their output” with figures intended to impress the ill informed in respect of numbers of homes their trivial and erratic output “could” support based on of course capacity NOT actual output ignoring the real usage of power which is of course, industry. I see that for this “valuable” organization ( Energy UK) businesses are also a footnote…
Industry? Industry? – Oh yeah I remember that now.
Trouble is, we don’t actually know how many people died.
How many incinerators?
” Trading off one set of actual lives lost against another theoretical set is utterly callous.”
Yes Paul, but that it exactly what our own government is doing.
Only to minimise total deaths. Not because of a callous ideology.
I just looked her up! I keep trying to write but the only words I can find are NO! Her MA is bought and handed out for good behaviour.., her experience even weaker and she is immersed in a subject she knows nothing about….except the fashionable buzz words! She has scant experience and then BANG she appears as Head of Climate Change ..AND Energy at the WWF indeed! I have seen in the past how there is a job go around of a certain type where very early on grandiose titles are bestowed which suggest decades more experience than is actually the case and then that title opens up the world to them I shake my head in disbelief. How objective can she be with her background? All she has been doing is parroting propaganda… and now we have put her in charge of this energy quango???.
hostelmandotcom: “I have seen in the past how there is a job . . . . which suggest decades more experience than is actually the case . . .
My local council declared a climate emergency and is using a company called Anthesis. One of their top webpages states “OUR PEOPLE The largest groups of dedicated sustainability experts globally, sharing more than 3,500 years of sustainability expertise.”
https://www.anthesisgroup.com/people/
Not much experience, then (!) – and modest with it. Anthesis have a route for the borough achieving ‘carbon neutrality’ by 2040. I wonder how much more creative accounting they used in their report?
‘Pinchbeck admits she has no basis for the numbers, but assumes they must have something to do with air pollution.’
Surely she can conjure up a hockey stick graph, and move on from there.
I get the distinct feeling that the ‘Peter Principle’ should be renamed, ‘The Pinchbeck Principle’: She most certainly demonstrates the truth of its principle.
Bullcrap. It was technology that has lifted China out of the most abject poverty with a life expectancy of much less than 60 years. Some weeks of cleaner air will also not change a horrible lot. Air pollution-related diseases don’t disappear just because you live in the mountains with clean air now. The way to get rid of the horrible pollution is by doing what western countries have done. Use technology to clean up their act. But that costs money and I doubt Cina has any grey matter spare for that now.
Japan was expected to have a Corona virus explosion. It has no lock down and the numbers are relatively small. Today there were no deaths.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/03/20/national/coronavirus-explosion-expected-japan/?fbclid=IwAR2dXi5gM88gKD-GnfChP2iJsZDrVDUM5qXeduFJ7L9_2yXyTeo3r9Ri4O8
Christ. Utterly I same comment. She should be sacked and held in contempt
I guess Emma knows how to do the PM2.5 computations.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/04/10/epa-estimates-of-pm2-5-mortality/
Yes, as you show they are all made up statistics, no epidemiology as evidence to support the death rate from PM 2.5 just sort of a woolly opinion, with a huge uncertainty range which includes zero.
Not surprised it gains traction with idiots like Emma cause it says what she wants it to say.
Thank you John, for the explicit clarification of the issue.
The Pope is making an idiot of himself about the virus too – nature/climate blah blah blah!
Was it Tom Steyer or Gore (or one of the other American climate change nuts) that boasted that they had infiltrated the Vatican with ‘their’ advisers and the Pope was ‘theirs’ on climate change now?
The greens? Fabricating numbers?
Surely not.
But her hair looks nice.
Why is it that those on the left always rejoice when people die? Other people, that is. Not them. I keep looking to them to “lead the way.”
Why is it that the left always finds good in mass deaths of other people? Never themselves. I keep waiting for them to lead the way.
This is what happens when it appears not to post……you get two.
Just like buses 😉
I am somehow reminded of the Gospel of John, chapter 11, verse 35.
Lazarus.
Not particularly referring to this article but and interesting comment on her blog from the Times today about the Pope’s preaching the other day about Climate Change. https://www.melaniephillips.com/is-pope-pagan/
Did she allow for the pollution from the crematoriums going flat out? She’ll soon find out what happens to an economy bombed back to the Stone Age, pity that it will be UK’s.