Manchester To Shut Down in 2027 If Carbon Targets Are To Be Met
By Paul Homewood
This really is hilarious!
Manchester will blow its carbon budget for the rest of this century within the next five years if urgent action is not taken, councillors have been warned. If the city continues on the current trajectory, it would exceed its carbon budget of 15 MtCO2 set for a 82-year period up to 2100 by around 2027.
Manchester council declared a climate emergency three years ago and the city now has a target of becoming net zero carbon by no later than 2038. The town hall is on track to halve its own carbon emissions by 2025, having already reduced the amount of carbon it directly emits by 30 pc since 2020.
A refreshed action plan, which was endorsed by the council’s executive this week, recognises the progress made in retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient, installing LED street lights and using electric bin lorries. But the council only accounts for around 3 pc of the city’s carbon emissions.
Councillors were warned about the challenges ahead as an updated climate change framework for the city was approved on Wednesday (September 14). They were told the city would use up its carbon budget by 2027 if it continues to reduce its emissions by around 5 pc a year, as it did before the pandemic.
Labour councillor Tracey Rawlins, who is the executive member for environment and transport, said the framework is a ‘call to action’. She said: "The city as a whole is not progressing as fast as we should be.
"The emissions that we’re responsible for as an organisation are quite small. We’re doing what we can, but it’s really important we continue to drive that."
It does no take a genius to work out that while councils might save a bit of energy here and there, introduce a few electric trucks and so on, whatever they do on their own is pure virtue signalling.
As the report notes, the council only accounts for 3% of the city’s emissions, most of which are totally out of the council’s control, and indeed the city’s.
The electricity Manchester uses comes from the grid, so they can do absolutely nothing about them. The vast majority of Manchester’s drivers own petrol/diesel cars, and its goods and passengers are ferried around on good, old diesel lorries and buses.
And how do Mancunians heat their homes? (I note, by the way, that the City Council has not decided to spend hundreds of millions of its budget on insulating all homes, not just council houses, fitting heat pumps and solar panels. I wonder why?)
Jus as with every local council that has gone down the same route, Manchester’s councillors doubtlessly preened themselves when they declared their climate emergency. But they were not prepared to put their (ie taxpayers’) money where their mouth is.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Ho, ho, bl**dy ho!
Welcome to the real world. Virtue-signalling t**sers.
“the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Equally applicable in this case
Every sensible person (OK, that doesn’t amount to many) suggested that before signing up to Ed ‘Bacon Butty’ Miliband’s Climate Change Act 2008, there should be a trial of the practicalitles, benefits and particularly the costs of this brave new world.
OK things are now even more ridiculous now than they were then. Thanks, Dave Boy, thanks, Theresa, thanks, Bunter!
But it is great that Manchester has stepped up to the plate and is happy to be first to drive off the cliff.
Perhaps they might get Liverpool to join in?
I will watch with interest.
Speaking as a son of that fair town, I can assure you that rivalry is the default setting when it comes to The Great City and Manchester.
I gather Scousers feel they should be an independent state. As a Manc manqué, the sooner the better 😉
As 1 in 4 there are employed by the taxpayer, good luck with that…
They won’t be able to drive off a cliff – the Scousers will have nicked the cars.
This is exactly what I asked our own council in Barnsley when they declared their climate emergency amd published their Zero40 policy. They don’t care, so long as the money keeps rolling in from London.
OPM solves all problems. That is, until the other people say stop that shit.
I think the inevitable outcome is in the detail.
They will use a mother load of taxpayer cash and take out loans to ‘invest’ in so called green energy and offset schemes to claim netzero, then expect the government to pick up the bill for the bankruptcy.
To be repeated by councils all over the country.
But what happens if the government finds that the country is bankrupt?
They cannot pay out more for fear of legal consequences to themselves personally, so it will be a case of fighting over the last lifebuoy on the Titanic.
Doesn’t anyone ever do cost-benefit analyses anymore? And if they don’t, are the Councillors in Manchester not financially responsible for losses caused by their actions?
No. No-one in power does cost-benefit analysis. Folk like Björn Lomberg do and get ridiculed
There certainly is a mechanism where individual Councillors can be personally charged for making blatantly silly decisions. A good idea to write to the Chief Executive saying that you consider that there is a danger of Members taking decisions that are Ultra Vires, or which are not supported by credible evidence and ask him to ensure there is a recorded vote.
On the other hand I believe that there are remnants of Treason legislation on the books. And when were they last used?
No public sector employee is ever responsible for their idiotic decisions.
I literally cannot believe there are people who believe this nonsense about reducing CO2 emissions. How low has the collective IQ fallen?
Much lower than the ppm for CO2!
…percentage-wise! Doh.
As I recall, back in the 80s, I think, there was an insane programme for local authorities to declare themselves “Nuclear Free Zones”. I suppose the feeble minded functionaries thought if a nuclear war happened, their declaration and Street signs would miraculously protect them.
This time around, I wouldn’t be surprised if the current batch of the feeble minded never considered that becoming carbon neutral would require anything more than a few signs in the streets and lots of reports and rhetoric.
We are truly being governed by idiots. And there’s no reasoning with them.
Well, it must have worked because we lived in Sheffield when it was a “Nuclear Free Zone” & never saw a single mushroom cloud (:-))
People’s Republic of South Yorkshire.
A favourite of the hard-of-thinking Labour councils of the time. Along with a rival I covered the affairs of one such (for obvious reasons I shan’t name names) and we used to compare notes after meetings, partly to make sure what we had written down was what had actually been said — unbelievable as it might be — and partly to agree on which idiocies we were going to ignore since we reckoned it was no function of local papers to make councillors look foolish, they being quite capable …..
The nuclear-free zone idea supposedly included electricity but took no account of the presence in the district of a nuclear power station! The other favourite — anti-apartheid — reached its zenith (or perhaps nadir) when one member, a lovely man with the IQ of a house brick, announced how proud they should be at making Xxxxx an anti-apartheid free zone. I kid you not.
PS I should point out the few non-Labour members were equally adept on occasion at providing “unusable” copy!
Sorry for the digression. I thought a bit of light relief in these trying times ……
Yes. That was relatively harmless virtue-signalling by local politicians with notions above their IQ level. A similar thing happened after the Dunblane school shooting when several local authorities in Scotland declared themselves “Handgun Free”. The problem with the current crop of thought free numpties is that they actually make people’s lives worse in pursuit of their fantasies.
Mancunian morons led by cretins!
They are fortunate to be blessed by the presence of Professor Kevin Anderson of the Manchester Tyndall Centre: https://tyndall.ac.uk/people/kevin-anderson/
“Kevin Anderson holds the Zennström professorship at Uppsala University and is chair of energy and climate change at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE) at the University of Manchester.
Kevin engages widely across all tiers of government (UK and Sweden) on issues ranging from shale gas, aviation and shipping to the role of climate modelling (IAMs), carbon budgets and ‘negative emission technologies. His analysis previously contributed to the framing of the UK’s Climate Change Act and the development of national carbon budgets.”
He is a mentor to Greta.
Presumably they will replace their work force with robots or will they fit their employees with CCS devices to capture all the CO2 they keep on exhaling. The insanity just keeps on growing.
“But they were not prepared to put their (ie taxpayers’) money where their mouth is.”
But they are going to buy electric bin lorries at vast expense, so that’s exactly what they do!
What on Earth makes you think electric bin lorries help save the planet?
They won’t. That was my point! Councils are spending taxpayer money on this stuff, instead of fixing roads.
Here we go, the next weather to be attributed to climate change, typhoon to hit Japan.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62938608
Vera in 1959 had 1 minute sustained wind of 305kmh, considerably higher than forecast for this storm.
How could this happen?
Government schools.
Which means there are no logical solutions. The bizarre beliefs and philosophies that brought you here STILL EXIST. They have not gone away. And you can’t fix them with the truth. I’m afraid UK is in so deep, many people are going to be hurt before you start turning it around.
You have an actual city government talking about exceeding their ‘carbon budget.’
“Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” — A. Einstein
I am surprised that the manchester journalist who wrote that article did not point out that manchester’s failure to keep to its carbon cutting programme is due to its remarkable transformation into a thriving and expanding community and economy – especially as the article had a picture of several of the giant skyscrapers that have been built in just a few years .
This week we were on a ridge at Lyme Park and looking down on Manchester and noticing the number of huge buildings sprouted there since we last walked that ridge, just a few years ago. And in the same edition of the paper there were reports of numerous large residential ,office and recreational developments on previously neglected or derelict industrial wasteland.
Manchester should be proud of its renaissance and if that means blowing its carbon budget , then so what. The difference that Manchester would make to global warming is so small you need an electron microscope to see it .
Also the council is budgeting £192M to get to carbon neutral ,but has a £20M budget deficit that it wants central Govt to fill. Madness. Let the people of Manchester get on with what they have historically been good at , building business and making money (this time more equitably distributed ) and just ignore the stupid couincillors and the carbon neutral rubbish.
“More equitably distributed.” Please describe how that works, Mike.
It takes time, universal education , and suffrage, and the hard work of several generations of publicly minded politicians. But it works . Look up the series of booklets called “Greater Manchester Revealed” (some are free access) which cover the archaeological work in and around Manchester . The living conditions in the 19th C in some of the areas of central Manchester are vividly described . Nothing like that now exists for the working people of Manchester. Progress, slow maybe , not complete , but getting there .
Yes but that’s just silly. People got wealthier as labour became more productive, not as politicians or others got involved. Labour is a market, as even Marx observed. Of I start a new business and need skilled workers, I have to compete with other businesses to get them. Its not a more equitable distribution, it’s the evolution of market pay as productivity increases.
Maybe one way for Manchester to reduce (on paper) its ‘carbon’ (sheesh!) Would be to declare any ‘national or international’ sources of this evil gas should not be included in its ‘carbon budget’. So, all motorways running through its conurbation (national) and Manchester Airport (national & international) would not count.
The up side for the greenie Council is that it would make more work for their CC committee and give them a reason to be. (Again, sheesh!)
If Manchester or anywhere else had a workable plan for increasing global cloud albedo they might get a touch of their desired cooling. Otherwise, forget it.
Why in the world would anybody want a colder planet?
Because the crops grow better in winter. /sarc
The colder planet question is one for the UN and all the ‘climate crisis’ babblers.
Nobody wants to answer that question. Humans have always done better in warm periods.
I thought I’d replied to oldbrew. There is a way to stop albedo reducing – stop polluting the maritime/atmosphere interface with light oil and surfactant. It sounds simple but our society is throwing millions of litres of the stuff down our drains every day.
I’ve an image of a smoothed ocean surface tens of thousands of sq miles in extent. FB post as well.
JF
Virtue-signalling fools.
Time for London to follow the same path as Manchester and see the consequences. It will be interesting to see the electric vehicles stuck with flat batteries in London’s notorious traffic jams and councillors complaining about cold council Chambers.
Maybe the councillors will start to see sense or be replaced after being voted out by the public.
I also presume that the Nuclear Free Zone councils will refuse to use any electricity generated by Nuclear power stations.
The City of London already is. You might think that the councillors there might be more intelligent since they are mainly business employees, but I can assure you that they are not. A lot of them come from the legal profession which says a lot about their ignorance.
Regarding nuclear free towns,, during the 1990’s, I was involved in design and supply of some nuclear re-processing equipment for Roll Royce Nuclear in Derby.. J use before the entrance to the Roll Royce facilities was a sign. You guessed it – Derby, Nuclear Free City! Couldn’t make it up!
I suspect you are missing the point. This is the Left gearing up for drastic authoritarian bans. Cars driven only every day say. These people are small-minded busybodies, determined to make everybody behave.
Every OTHER day.
Please can we have an edit function!
Jo Nova’s website has a very useful Preview edit display option.
Use her site first to compose and then copy your text back to here.
You will own nothing and eat the bugs.
When will this madness end? How many people will it kill?
That’s a feature, not a glitch. Many dead pensioners.
My local ‘town council’, which is actually a parish council because it is within a larger city council area, also pompously and unanimously declared a ‘climate emergency’ and said our town would be net zero by 2030. I wrote to the mayor politely to ask what powers the town council to do anything about this, and to point out that the costs to our town would be several hundred million pounds. I said I looked forward to their annual reports that showed what progress they were making – given the target was only 8 years away, so about 1,000 businesses and homes should be being made net zero each year. I just got the usual nonsense reply. Meantime the real problems they can deal with in their limited powers just get ignored.
I went to a marvelous town council meeting some time ago when council property going vegan was proposed. The first intervention was that it shouldn’t apply to staff (milk for their tea was cited). The second pointed out that we are twinned with Hazebrouck in Northern France so it had better not apply to visiting dignitaries either! They had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed when I pointed out that they had the electric heating of our 16thC Guildhall up so high in winter that they were sitting there in shirtsleeves.
We are fighting an uphill battle against ‘willful ignorance’ where people are not interested in becoming informed and so rely on the legacy media where as Mark Twain said they will be misinformed. In my group are university educated seemingly intelligent people who still seem to think that the Covid jabs actually work – or resort to the unproven ‘it would have been worse had I not been jabbed’ – and are blissfully unaware of the huge list of adverse reactions including dropping dead with no warning.
No surprise that Manchester councillors virtue signal. Along the road from my old school, the civic centre of Wythenshawe is centred on Leningrad Square! Even the Russians have dropped that!
China produces Manchester’s 15M tonnes in about 2 minutes, as if it mattered.
The biggest emitters of carbon dioxide (excremental methane) in the Manchester City Council are most likely the councillors themselves. So, you do not have to be an Einstein to see the best way to reduce emissions.
Can we expect the council members leaving Manchester before 2027?
Our local council declared a climate emergency. As they seem so concerned about the existential crisis, which includes the deluge to end all deluges, I made well founded and researched flood alleviation proposals to them for stopping my feet getting wet now and again.
Most of these proposals were just to enact existing development flood alleviation measures that have been allowed to fall into dis-repair and have not been maintained.
The council have even built a car park in what was originally designed as a flood alleviation pond, supposedly protected by irrevocable planning conditions, when it rains the water escapes out through the nice tarmac road entrance, and floods the houses opposite.
Strangely my proposals are stuck somewhere in the council offices.
Tell the local paper. Get a journo to do vox pops with some of the threatened. Choose ten yr old girl, a granny, a handicapped person. Pix
I have given them lots of pics, and the people who regularly get flooded are rather annoyed, but it all gets put down to “Climate Change” and its not.
local press are only interested if it was climate change, we have had more success with agricultural landowners, who are interested in keeping the floods at bay, as they have no interest in their land being waterdamaged.
I cannot believe what DRIVEL people talk on these websites !!! If “climate change” were real we would all have drowned by now and the planet would be a gigantic BONFIRE ! We have been told these lies for DECADES but nothing changes ??!! When will we grow up and realise this planet is capable of running itself with NO interference from us !
Coun ils should give their street cleaners brooms instead of leaf blowers and bicycles instead of vans.
How much energy is expending changes Street lights to LEDs, and how low would it take to pay back that energy by the LEDs?