There is an old Scottish proverb which runs as follows: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” This came to my mind after seeing the brief note in the Daily Sceptic about the apparent award of a £70 billion contract linked to Net Zero projects by a small company in Stevenage to another small company in Cornwall. Even if there is a typo in quantifying the money involved, £70 million would still be a serious sum of money. However, we are not dealing with real money but some indicator of “value”, probably more in the eye of the provider than of any of the supposed beneficiaries. This is where the important story lies, in the bizarre incentives that exist in a world of bureaucracies committed to vague and ill-considered targets dealing with entrepreneurial types who have lots of sales panache but limited technical competence.
My background stimulated my interest in this story. Among other things, I manage companies which operate broadband networks in Scotland. Quite separately, I have published a lot on the economics of climate change and renewable energy, while in the past I managed large energy and infrastructure projects. I would not claim a total value of £70 billion but the total amount of real money at stake in these projects was more than £20 billion. Such sums may seem like funny money but they are not unrealistic when dealing with a large sector in a large country. That experience gives a clue to the lesson that we need to learn.
The company which supposedly awarded the £70 billion contract provides networking and other broadband services to schools. They seem like many other small IT companies in the area with, apparently, limited and not especially sophisticated skills. Managing high performance networks is a very specialized business quite separate from the management of IT facilities run over such networks. The consequence is that local authorities, private companies and other organisations often employ a hierarchy of sub-contractors to provide and maintain networks, IT and network services.
This hierarchical structure applies similarly when dealing with large infrastructure and energy programs. Even with decades of experience, the reality of such programs is littered with grotesque cost over-runs and failures to deliver what is promised. Politicians, bureaucrats and private sector managers do not have the incentives or the skills to deliver what is promised on time and within budget. The combination of project hype and poor management mean that the outcome is all too often an expensive disappointment.
Now, consider Net Zero as such a program. It is based, from beginning to end, on wishful thinking – that costs will fall rapidly, that new technologies will transform sectors within years rather than decades. There are thousands of companies – and academics – who claim that everything will be different in some way or other if only they are given lots of money. Anyone who takes a cautious view based on what we can do now and what it will cost knows that the goal is not feasible within the timescale promised and that the costs may be ruinous. But that is not the right answer, so instead we have “If wishes were horses…”
The public sector and large companies provide dozens of examples of how this works. In the last decade the public has been deluged with propaganda for Zero Waste – recycling all garbage rather than sending it to landfills. What could be wrong with that? But suppose you are a harried manager in a local authority which is setting up a recycling scheme but has no idea what to do with the stuff that will be collected. You go to some conferences and come across a group with some very pretty slides and a plausible story about how they are going to sort recycled waste to make plastic bags or packaging materials and send the rest to an energy-from-waste project (aka an incinerator). The council is persuaded to invest in the scheme and seemingly your problem is solved. However, two years later it comes out that the sorting facility doesn’t work, there is no market for the recycled plastics, the incinerator couldn’t get planning permission, and all of the “recycled” waste is being shipped to West Africa or Vietnam.
Such cases are not rare. They happen all of the time because developing and implementing new technologies or ways of working is expensive, time consuming and very prone to failure. Venture capitalists, whose primary skill is to assess risk, expect that only 1 in 10 of their investments will really pay off and that may take 10 or 15 years. Why should bureaucrats with less experience and skill expect to do any better? Yet politicians, urged on by lobby groups, set Net Zero time scales of five-to-10 years for changes that, on a realistic assessment, might take two, three or four decades.
The whole field is riven by conflicts of interest and the absence of any serious penalties for failure. There is a tendency to assume that if the goal is worthy we need not explore who really benefits in too much detail. Yet the truth is that governments, in particular, are very bad at managing large projects and programs. The reason is that it is difficult, tedious and often unrewarding work, none of which fits well with a political and administrative culture that is focused on hype and short-term goals. Whether it is the PPE saga or Test and Trace or HS2 or NHS IT contracts or any of the other blunders of our Government, the one thing we should have learned by now is that major Net Zero projects will not be delivered on time or on budget.
With Net Zero the situation is even worse because nobody knows what they are doing but there is a lot of ignorant money seeking a home. Local authorities, private companies and other organisations want their share of this money. The result will be a few successes, a larger number of partial or complete failures and a vast amount of money wasted. That is routine in venture capital and technology R&D. It is less acceptable when the money comes from taxpayers and is, in practice, diverted from more immediate ways in which the well-being of the population or the environment could be improved.
It is a sad reflection of the current media environment that anyone who challenges either the goal of Net Zero or the means to achieve it is likely to be labelled a “climate change denier”. Hence, I will be blunt: that is defamatory codswallop. Thirty years ago I was co-author of one of the first international analyses of climate change. I have written as much or more about global adaptation to climate change as anyone. Our difficulty is that the policies followed to date have been a spectacular failure and nothing which Britain or Europe can do will change what is already baked in for 2050. In these circumstances, it is worth asking whether throwing billions of pounds at an “If wishes were horses …” program is a sensible use of public or private money.
Gordon Hughes is a former Professor of Economics at Edinburgh University and was a senior adviser on energy and environmental policy at the World Bank until 2001.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Priceless.
Can anyone tell me what an associate professor is? Something that merely and correctly was once called a Senior Lecturer.
Since the word “Professor” has been so massively devalued (think Witty and Vallance for starters…..), why would anyone want to be associated with it?
Is an “associate” something or other just an apprentice?
Hunter gatherer by 2040, an Ice age looming then?
No, just civilisational collapse at the hands of a doomsday cult.
‘Carbon footprint and methane of pets’. Oh ha ha. My husband and I fart ten times more than our dogs, and their carbon footprint is shared with ours – they haven’t yet bought their own house and car anyway.
‘The NHS collapses…’ well, I thought it already had, to be honest.
As I sit indoors watching the blustery, rather chilly wind battering my poor delphiniums, I honestly wonder where summer has gone (well, it never really started) and ponder if we are in for an absolute stinker of a winter, with snow and frost like ’47’ or ’63’
Anyway I will be ordering plenty of coal asap.
England will revert to hunter-gathering by 2023 in response to the engineered food crisis.
Actually I know someone who used to go poaching for pigeons and things. I hope I won’t be needing to get tips from him…
“Moving on, Bournemouth Council deputy leader Mark Howell suggested to an environment committee in January that the “issue of the carbon footprint and methane of pets” needed to be addressed to meet a carbon neutral target.”
Blimey, don’t give the CCP ideas…
I can well believe the bartering notion; how else will those of us ineligible for a QR code (if linked to digital currency) manage to transact?
We have a water filter now as I don’t fancy the tap water. Have even started gathering herbs to make my own cough and cold remedies.
No immediate plans to snare rabbits, though – but where does the child labour come in?
Well they are using children in the lithium mining industry for all these lovely ‘green’ cars the world wants so much.
Too bad they won’t have the electricity for them. I suppose they could always go back to coal fired power stations…
Lithium is extracted from brine in South America and mined in Australia https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2020/03/lithium-mining-what-you-should-know-about-the-contentious-issue.html
It’s cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo that use child labour.
but where does the child labour come in
Medieval trait would be my guess. This means children would basically be treated like smaller adults at about 14. OTOH, they wouldn’t be working in the sense of 19th century chimney sweeps, more also go hunting (or do soldiering in auxiliary roles).
Quoting from the recent paper of the retired German professor: According to the IPCC, both humans and animals will need to stop breathing by 2100 to save the planet.
I will definitely have stopped breathing by then.
They are right, thanks to Net Zero lunacy.
And it is the aim of the Ecozealots to reduce Humanity to Hunter/gathering to be in harmony with Mother Earth.
The problem is re hunter / gatherer skills, 99.9% of the population wouldn’t know where to start. I wonder how many could skin a rabbit or a pheasant or could gut a bird or fish.
Planning ahead, I have invested in a large book off amazon with all these skills in it. I won’t be able to rely on YouTube any more on how to do this stuff. I consider it a small insurance policy. I will then barter my expert knowledge for remnant tins of beans with fellow survivors of this impending apocalypse, because I’ll be buggered if I’m eating pigeon. It tastes like shit.
Actually I enjoy pigeon. Quite liverish but very gamey and tasty if cooked nice and pink.
These meat eaters can’t agree on anything!
They have enough of a mental puzzle removing the packaging from their ready meals!
I am quite at home preparing small game for the table, and have been known to collect road kill pheasants as long as they aren’t too damaged. I suppose I could do larger animals, but you need some strength to deal with things like deer, (or some kit to lift it with), strength I don’t have.
However, I have a bit of a rare skill in that I can train a horse to harness. I used to use a horse and vehicle for local shopping and the pub in the 70s. Happy days.
The problem is re [a lack of] hunter / gatherer skills
No the problem is the exact opposite:
That the great mass of humanity is now willingly throwing away millennia worth of technological progress (especially that brought about by the fossil fuel powered Industrial Revolution) and heading rapidly back to its materially and socially hugely primitive and insecure hunter gatherer roots.
All under the auspices of the false, ultra-materialist (worshipping the physical earth instead of the non-physical spiritual dimension) and nihilistic Green religion.
99.9% of the population wouldn’t know where to start. I wonder how many could skin a rabbit or a pheasant or could gut a bird or fish.
There is absolutely no need to harm any animals in order to sustain human existence, and it is a very positive thing that most people would find carrying out such horrible activities to be repulsive (even though most are not yet vegetarian, at least they’re heading in the right anti-cruelty direction).
You know how cows spend their entire day eating grass? You have time to do that?
Give me animal protein and iron and fat any day. Just only kill what you can eat.
‘You know how cows spend their entire day eating grass? You have time to do that?’
Not only do I not have the time, but (literally) not the stomach(s) for it…
‘Give me animal protein and iron and fat any day’
What’s wrong with non dead-animal protein, iron and fat (including milk, cheese and eggs as well as legumes, grains, nuts etc)?
‘Just only kill what you can eat.’
Well instead of getting all daubed, furred and speared up for an exhausting few days hunting down some elusive and unpleasantly bloody and internally organed living creature, why not just pop into your local Morrison’s for a tasty cheese salad sandwich washed down by a bottle of chilled fizzy apple juice?
In spite of the Stone Age vibe on this thread (one shared by the same ‘woke’ eco movement which is confusingly also being vehemently criticised) I’m not prepared to give up on civilisation just yet!
I get squeamish when my wife asks me to put a roast in the bag chicken in the oven. I’ll take responsibility for the non-hunting tasks I think; I’ll do the cave paintings.
As much as I like the idea of returning to a hunter gather lifestyle – I’ve already scoped out where I’m building my hill fort to retreat to with my loyal band of vaccine survivors – I think we will all be wiped out when the nuclear power stations melt down because we’re all too busy chasing rabbits with spears.
Does anybody believe we’d be allowed to hunt for our own food without some woke activist scaring off the prey and telling us all to be vegans?
They’ll get a flint tipped arrow in their face. I’ll be a crack shot by then.
We’ll all be dab hands with a sling given the abundance of masks that could so easily be converted.
Yes – plenty of toxic blow darts lying around too.
I am considering a crossbow. I have a niece whose partner is ex forces and I might have a word about shooting lessons.
YES! I want one of those.
Considering that animal right’s activists are the natural inverse of apex predators, I doubt these people will bother us for long. They’ll probably all get eaten by stray cats.
Just like magic one has appeared on this page already telling us we don’t need to eat animals to survive.
you jolly well will need to eat animals to survive when the shit hits the fan. I’d like to see these vegan types scrabbling around for the odd crab apple and digging for burdock roots. They’ll starve to death over one winter.
Of the few people I know who are veggie I don’t know any who have much knowledge about food and diet.
I’ve been a vegetarian for about 35 years. Now, I feel like the fourth industrial revolution has bum rushed the show and I find myself on the side of the carnivore. Won’t make me eat meat though. However, when the shit hits the fan I will feel no compunction about dispatching radioactive squirrels.
I award this thread the Thread of The Week Award, Awarded Weekly on A Week By Week Basis
Agreed! Good ones are few and far between these days!
Someone should write a sitcom about a group of liberal hunter-gatherers living in post apocalyptic Britain trying to appease the gods of climate and covid and gender politics whilst hunting for plant based meat substitutes.
A mini series – it would be implausible for them to survive six episodes.
The pilot episode will consist of 5 fresh faced graduates who’ve just moved into a flat together. None of them can cook and they’re debating about which supermarket is most likely to offer the best selection of meat shaped non-meat products (because although people don’t want to eat meat it still needs to look like a meat product).
Anyway, the episode ends with them all dead from starvation having only been able to agree, as the hunger set in, that they would be helping the planet by being dead.
Roll credits…
Under Agenda 2030 we will all be banned from the rewilded countryside, instead holed up in ‘smart cities’ in tiny boxes eating mass produced bugs and lab meat. I am a country person from birth and at 69 would rather take my own life than exist instead of live.
It’s going to be pretty difficult to go hunter-gathering the vegan burgers we’re all supposed to be eating.
‘Look at Airports across the UK. That’s the new normal, The Great Reset, that’s Build Back Better’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGF6podo7gE
Mark Steyn gives his take on the big bag build-up at airports across the UK as travel chaos ruins summer travel plans for thousands of people.
GBNews
Stand for freedom & make friends with our notorious
Yellow Boards By The Road
Friday 1st July 4pm to 5pm
Yellow Boards
Junction B3430 Nine Mile Ride &
New Wokingham Road
Wokingham RG40 3BA
Stand in the Park Sundays from 10.30am to 11.30am
make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Henley
Mills Meadows (bandstand) RG9 1DS
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
“Saffron”, a name that conjures up images of upper class airheads. “Associate Professor of Geography” a title which says they don’t want to leave school and contribute to the productive part of the economy. Together they make me think of ensuring my daughter will avoid applying to this university as its academic standards are non-existent.