Dystopian future?

From Climate Scepticism

BY JIT

It’s the 3^rd of May 2024, and Keir Starmer has been to visit HRH. Rachel Reeves is the Chancellor, and Ed Miliband is the Environment Secretary. Cheering people line the street as the Labour juggernaut glides past, “Things Can Only Get Better” blaring out.

What is the UK’s climate policy?

Well, it centres on Net Zero, of course. The delays – or slight hesitations – planned by Rishi Sunak are no more, and we are back on the Johnsonian path to ICE destruction. Sunak himself has exited the stage, either to set up a charitable foundation or to start a Peters & Lee tribute act with his missus. Regarding the UK’s electricity system, we are now implementing a compendium of delusional policies – delusional to the extent that I would hesitate to build a fictional world based on them playing out as they are intended to because of its lack of believability. The “plan” will save £93 billion for UK households, deliver 100% clean power by 2030 by quadrupling offshore wind, tripling solar, & doubling onshore wind, cut energy bills (£1400 off the annual household bill), create 1,000,000 green jobs, deliver energy security, make the UK energy independent, and be run and built by Brits.

Like I said. Delusional. Although that is like calling a dragon a large lizard. It’s actually incomprehensibly stupid, at the level of a plan steamed up by a committee of poached eggs. However, that is (nominally) what we are in for, and that is only to speak of electricity. You can read Labour’s plan at the link below, if you do not have a wall to bang your head against in preference.

What happens next?

Well, it depends on a number of things, in my view.

The Size of the Victory

If the margin of Labour’s victory is narrow, then a Conservative opposition has immediate leverage. It can make a nuisance of itself straight away, including in opposing Net Zero. But if there is an inverse-Johnson victory [the original’s mandate having been heroically squandered since 2019], then sceptics are in for a long five years. But a dark thought occurs to me now, which is that if Labour fail to squeak a majority and have to form a coalition, then if anything climate policies are likely to be more extreme than if they win outright – something that hardly bears thinking about for the future of the UK.

The Politics of the Rump

Another important question is what the politics of the Conservative survivors will be. Instinctively one might think that the survivors will be more right-leaning than the average, but the harvest may be indiscriminate. How this plays out will naturally help to determine the new opposition’s receptiveness to splitting from the Net Zero consensus.

Murder by Gaslight

Let’s say that the newly-minted leader of the opposition phones me up to ask my advice. He or she wouldn’t, true – and I wouldn’t answer the phone anyway [I never answer if I don’t recognise the number. No offense, whoever the hell you are. Leave a message if you have something to say. Your call is important to us, etc]. But let’s pretend that they called and I answered.

Where do I think the Conservative opposition should pitch their climate policies? Can they afford to ditch their support for Net Zero?

My answer is yes, and I think this policy is essential simply because it opens up a battleground where none exists at present. Any political party with an ounce of gumption will be able to swing public opinion away from Net Zero, while increasing its popularity at the same time. The present gaslighting we are subject to thrives on the Borg-like uniformity of present party policy. One only has to look at the Climate Change Act and the incremental tightening of its noose around the UK’s neck to know that there has been a shameful lack of scrutiny and opposition for fifteen horrifying years. Under these circumstances, the public is told that our woes are a terrible disease that we are inflicting upon ourselves by merely trying to get by. This abhorrent lie is 180 degrees away from reality. Our woes are caused by the medicine we have been given to cure this supposed malady.

Opposing Net Zero offers an easy way to land blow after blow on the new administration and its unicorn-farming policies. We have the cost. The loss of freedoms we usually take for granted. The side effects. UK’s inconsequential contribution to the problem, and the question of China. And the new opposition will be able to offload the baggage of Net Zero, which after all was if not born under its party’s watch, was brought up by it. The new leader can and must repudiate the absurdity that has gone before.

To put it simply, if the weight of Net Zero was removed from this country’s back, the UK would spring up so far that it would probably reach the latitude of Iceland. But for the end of Net Zero to even be a glimmer on the horizon, its vast costs and its lack of substantial benefits have to be more widely understood – hence the need for an opposition that opposes. At the moment we the people are under the impression, for example, that because the wind is free, wind power must be cheap. We think that all we need to do is to stop mainlining fossil fuels and we will be transported to the sunlit uplands. But as sceptics know, this fairy tale transformation will hit hard, and keep on hitting hard, the people who [perhaps implicitly] support it until we are rid of it, and for quite a while afterwards. Net Zero is a giant leaky balloon kept inflated by a constant flow of hype, delusion, noble lies and free money. It is high time for the balloon to be irreparably punctured.

Jit’s tuppenceworth

So what would I advise the new leader of the opposition to offer? Net Zero should be an aspiration, not a statutory obligation with a fixed implementation date, Nature or physics or gold be damned. The UK’s international commitment should be watered down; our promise should be to keep pace with the rest of the world’s emissions cuts, so that we will be at or below the average per capita carbon dioxide emissions going forward (relatively painless to achieve, given that we are, perhaps surprisingly to some, on the cusp of that now anyway). So there will be no more self-inflicted wounds until the rest of humanity join us in self-harming behaviour.

It’s time we were forthright about Britain’s history. The Industrial Revolution has become a badge of shame, which is a perverse situation only possible thanks to the freedom that it bought us. Yes, it brought pollution. But the real pollution has been mostly dealt with – in the West, at least – and carbon dioxide, a gas essential to life on Earth, has become mislabelled as a demon.

There should be no bans on ICE vehicles and no subsidies for EVs or their infrastructure. Petrol stations were not built by governments, but by entrepreneurs hoping to make a buck. So should charging infrastructure be. I would replace VED with a tax hypothecated for road maintenance, based on the mass of the vehicle.

What about our collapsing electricity grid? There should be no new subsidies for intermittent energy sources and/or energy sources that place strain on the grid. Let contracts with wind farms be for them to provide electricity when the UK wants it, not when the wind blows. That means as equivalent firm power, or however it was described in the Helm Review. [The same applies to solar.] At the same time, I would remove derogations for killing protected birds, and levy enormous fines on wind farms that kill them. [Yes, and pay the extra to bury cables.]

The only viable electricity future I see is gas to nuclear, which has the benefit of making the UK energy secure in the long term, is a low carbon source of electricity if anyone cares about that, and obviates the needs for hundreds of miles of new grid connections all over the show, buried or otherwise. There is a benefit to moving generation close to where it is needed, after all. There is of course the rather large problem of how to build nuclear power without the need for massive subsidies.

There should be no bans on oil and gas boilers. No mass insulation projects. If you want to mandate a new building standard for insulation, and that new builds must have heat pumps, so be it. But the old housing stock just can’t take it.

Schemes like ULEZ should be subject to local referenda. If people want it, give it to them. If they don’t, it is not for a virtue-signalling elite to decree it from on high. [I’m not sure how such referenda would work, bearing in mind that some people outside the zone would be affected by it.]

There should be no more loss of good cropland, because food security is likely to be as important in the future as energy security. Knowing that vast arrays of solar panels do not offer energy security, they will no longer be permitted except on buildings.

End Note

Net Zero had better be possible, because H. sapiens will eventually run out of fossil fuel. But that will happen over time, and as fossil fuel becomes harder to find, its alternatives will become naturally more competitive.

Well – that would be something like my answer. What would other Clisceppers say?

Featured image

Defunct Topshop, by the author