By Paul Homewood
Another one sided report from Harrabin:
Radical new climate change commitments will set the UK on course to cut carbon emissions by 78% by 2035, the UK government has announced.
Hitting the targets would require more electric cars, low-carbon heating, renewable electricity and, for many, cutting down on meat and dairy.
For the first time, climate law will be extended to cover international aviation and shipping.
But Labour said the government had to match “rhetoric with reality”.
It urged Boris Johnson to treat “the climate emergency as the emergency it is” and show “greater ambition”.
The prime minister’s commitments, which are to become law, bring forward the current target for reducing carbon emissions by 15 years. This would be a world-leading position.
Homes will need to be much better insulated, and people will be encouraged to drive less and walk and cycle more. Aviation is likely to become more expensive for frequent fliers.
The government has accepted the advice of its independent Climate Change Committee (CCC) to adopt the emissions cut, which is based on 1990 levels.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56807520
It was of course always inevitable that the 80% emissions cut targeted for 2050 under the Climate Change Act would be brought forward once Parliament had nodded through the Net Zero Act.
Harrabin fills out his report with comments from his eco chums, most of whom ludicrously complain the government is not going far enough. And the idiot Ed Miliband moans “We need a government that treats the climate emergency as the emergency it is. That means greater ambition than this government matched with much more decisive action”. More to the point, perhaps he might care to explain why he committed to an 80% cut in emissions in the first place, without having any plan as to how it could be achieved, or the cost of doing so!
On the contrary, the government has already gone too far by announcing bans on conventional cars and gas boilers, which will be extremely costly and disruptive for most people.
Harrabin’s only mention of cost is this:
“The CCC report accepted by the government says low-carbon investment must scale up to £50bn a year in the UK. But it adds that in time fuel savings from more efficient equipment will cancel out investment costs.
The CCC believes around 1% of GDP – national wealth – would need to be spent on shifting away from fossil fuels over 30 years.”
To Harrabin, cost is a non-issue. If it was, he would have challenged the CCC’s ridiculous assumptions. Indeed the two sentences are contradictory – if fuel savings cancel out “investment” costs, then we would not be spending 1% of GDP, currently about £20bn a year.
Why is there no mention by him (or Miliband for that matter) of much more detailed and realistic costings, which put the cost of Net Zero well over £1 trillion, such as the Treasury’s own calculations?
What we do know is that low carbon heating/insulation will cost homeowners tens of thousands, and businesses will be forced to spend billions more, money which could be better spent on other things. And there is no sign of electric cars coming down in price relative to petrol/diesel.
The press release from No 10 is here. It is full of the usual waffle, but contains very little new detail. One such item however is the fact that our share of international shipping and aviation emissions will now be part of our carbon budget. Given that these are unlikely to fall globally in the next decade or so, this will effectively mean that the UK has to make even bigger emission cuts domestically to offset the sins of the rest of the world.
The new target of 78% by 2035 means that emissions will need to be reduced by 61% from 2019 levels.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
April 20, 2021 at 01:27PM