Will one woe tread upon another’s heel?

From Climate Scepticism

BY JIT

The key event for the UK will be an election in May, at which Labour will win a majority. I think it will be a small majority, but it will be a majority nonetheless. This result might be a double-edged sword: it will offer the possibility of opposition to bonkers plans actually having some bite, but on the other hand it may lead to the Conservatives not learning the lesson the sceptics would like them to learn. The Budget will be a sad last throw of the dice in which the Chancellor will not even throw the dice. How nice it would have been for the government to cut the green crap and dare the opposition to promise to reinstate it. But that is not the path we are on. The likely bribe will be an increase in the personal allowance, probably by a grand, starting with the new tax year. Labour still wins. The present government has gone through more incarnations than Doctor Who and is exhausted, at the end of its tether.

Labour’s stated policy is a prescription for national destruction, but the optimist in me says that it will run aground on the shoals of reality before too much damage is done. This depends, as I may have mentioned before, on the extent to which we the great unwashed will swallow the gaslighting BS that they are shovelling down our throats. What we believe causes our woes – whether some external force or government policy – is a key matter for the country. You already know that I believe that, when it comes to climate change, the “cure” is worse than the disease. The disease is mild, and the cure is no cure at all, but poison. Alas too few are persuaded of that view for now. Too many fall for the seductive idea that because wind turbines produce free electricity, then the more of them you have, the cheaper electricity becomes. This is a completely wrong idea, but the germ of truth that it holds appears to have the power to override more complex arguments around what a civilised nation requires from its electricity grid. I expect Labour to quadruple down on stupid, but there are a couple of other factors here. The first is that there is no magic wand that can instantly produce serried ranks of wind turbines up hill and down dale. Even a manic approach to renewables will produce pain that escalates only gradually. The second point is the corollary of the first: as the roll out is slow, as the difficulty of hiding the true drivers of our woes grows slowly, slow will be the dawning of the realisation that we are sawing off the branch we are sitting on.

Earlier crunches are inbound, and we know that whenever people are personally affected by Net Zero BS, they begin to oppose it. A generalised and theoretical approval of the goal of Net Zero becomes a particular and concrete opposition to at least one part of it when each of us realises that our part in all this is not as a mere bystander. The challenge for sceptics is to help people to connect the dots. What are the earlier crunches? We have the boiler tax, where because boiler manufacturers are going to be fined if they do not meet their quota of heat pumps, they will be forced to cross-subsidise heat pumps by upping the price of gas boilers – i.e. the heating systems people actually want to buy. It may only be a few hundred quid initially, but even this may have an effect on public opinion disproportionate to its effect on folks’ pockets. So far the true costs of climate policy to the ordinary punter have been kept well hidden. In 2024 it can be hidden no more. Now at last it comes to the fore.

At the same time as the advent of the boiler tax, we will have the ICE vehicle tax – a rather more daunting 15 grand for each vehicle beyond the manufacturer’s quota. By how much manufacturers will be over, and how much they plan to cross-subsidise their EVs is to me an imponderable matter for now. It may be that small petrol cars will be wiped out by the policy. But again the hit on folks’ pockets and freedoms will be impossible to keep hidden.

My prediction: by the end of next year we in the UK will be in a worse position climate policy-wise than we are now, and there will as yet be little gain in momentum for a change of course. I think there will be glimmers of hope. As they say, hope dies last. Which means I think that good sense will win out in the end, even if it takes a hell of a kicking along the way.

Please do append your predictions for 2024, particularly if mine seem off beam.

Let the turn in the year be a time for optimism and good health to all Clisceppers.