The Wall St Journal’s Editorial Board has written a pithy condemnation of Britain’s Net Zero obsession, holding it directly responsible for the fact that up to a third of Britons are about to be plunged into poverty thanks to unaffordable energy bills. “The underlying cause of Britain’s energy misery is its fixation with climate goals, especially the ambition to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050,” it says. No argument here.
Americans who fancy themselves net-zero climate advocates might want to take a look at Britain for a guide to the future. Household energy bills were expected to rise 40% this autumn, but on Friday the government regulator announced they’ll leap 80% in a single bound.
This boost follows a 54% rise in April and brings the average household’s annual bill to £3,549 ($4,208). The median household income is £31,400, which gives a sense of the growing proportion of each household’s budget that will go toward central heating, cooking and keeping the lights on. For the ruling Tories, this is a political calamity.
And that’s merely what households will spend directly on energy. Britain is also in the grip of an energy-price crisis for businesses, whose rates aren’t subject to a cap. Some small businesses report they can’t get any utility to supply them without paying a steep deposit up front, because energy companies are concerned that high prices will push more small firms into insolvency. Lower-income households in particular will bear the brunt of this as prices for goods and services skyrocket and companies lay off employees.
If you think this couldn’t happen in America, think again. The underlying cause of Britain’s energy misery is its fixation with climate goals, especially the ambition to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050. To meet that goal Britain has grown hostile to domestic energy exploration, banning shale-gas fracking and slapping windfall-profits taxes on North Sea oil and gas producers that will deter investment. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has hurt, but the U.K.’s policies made its citizens vulnerable to such a global shock.
The U.K. is belatedly building new nuclear plants, but those will take years to come online. Unreliable wind and solar raise the cost the electric grid must pay to balance supply and demand when the winds are still and the sun is behind clouds, and more than 80% of English households rely on gas rather than electricity to heat their homes. All of this drives up the cost of supplying power, and then the government adds about £153 in green levies and a 5% consumption tax directly on household bills.
This isn’t all that different from the energy policies the Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress, California and New York are imposing via the Inflation Reduction Act and myriad regulatory assaults on fossil fuels and favors for renewables. Britain’s inane innovation is a price cap that causes disastrous price increases to happen twice a year rather than continuously.
To adapt Hemingway, net zero drives you bankrupt gradually, then suddenly. Britain’s sudden energy agony is a five-alarm warning if the climate progressives continue to have their way.
Stop Press: Meanwhile, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey proudly claims the credit for stopping fracking.
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I feel there’s a certain level of naivety surrounding Trump and his promise to challenge the status quo, it’s just not going to be a walk in the park… the Deep State is far too powerful and I see similarities to JFK
I don’t think Trump will make it to Inauguration, tptb have too much money to lose, as this article highlights…
Eisenhower warned that the MIC was getting too powerful all those decades ago.
I think Trump will be assassinated, I sincerely hope iam wrong..
Tried to up vote you but the thumbs up button is misbehaving? You’re right to be concerned but my take is, if you are right, this will only make things worse for the deep state. It will expose their agenda even further. The game is up for now.
Do you think they care if their agenda is “exposed”…it’s all out in the open and has been for a long time …
After all they hold so much power ,they are untouchable….
People just don’t see it or want to see it
I suspect there are a lot more “conspiracy theorists” in the US than here. Can you imagine an “anti-vaxxer” being a star turn on the platform of an election winning party here, and being given responsibility for health in the administration?
Well we have Andrew Bridgen, and that makes your point.
Sadly true
Shunned by his own party and in the end by his constituents
But at least the electors had the last laugh on the dreadful Penny Mordaunt who described Bridgen as a conspiracy theorist for setting out the science regarding the covid injections which injured him.
That nasty baggage is gone from Parliament.
Too big for her own britches although her Poundland uniform suited her very well for the coronation – cheap.
Indeed
I wish I had a better memory – who was the MP who shooed everyone out of the chamber when Bridgen was due to speak. Tory I think. Despicable.
Andrew (plebs) Mitchell
Ah yes. Sadly still an MP.
I was shocked at that Bridgen result at the GE. Its now emerging that some odd things happened in connection with election oversight/counting etc. I don’t recall the details but as the Americans say ‘go figure’.
Yes I remember reading about that. I think it’s plausible that the result does not reflect who people actually voted for, but equally or maybe more plausible that most voters just vote for a party and the “right leaning” vote was split between him, the Tories and Reform, and just as elsewhere lots went over to Labour.
I used to nod absent mindedly when people in the UK went on about how terribly polarised and uncivilised the US political scene was. I now suspect what those people mainly meant was that there was real opposition to the Uniparty there – an idea they didn’t like.
They may be about to get exposed in a major way.
About what exactly?? ‘
The corruption has been blatent for decades..
What makes you think Trump is naive and underestimating the opposition against him? How would things look different if, in your opinion, Trump wasn’t naive and wasn’t underestimating the opposition against him?
I used to think Trump was stupid, I don’t think so any more. And I think he has learned a lot from his first Presidency when he was understandably naive.
Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear, not Trump but the general public, media et al
The MSM is in its death throws, it least I hope it is.
Throes
I have exactly the same fear myself – with the difference that he has assembled a great looking (especially Tulsi!) team which will caryy on the good fight in his name if the worst were to happen.
He has doubled up by pairing Elon with Vivek. Smart.
I am pretty sure we have witnessed an important turning point.
Moderator here. Uptick button is working normally for me?
I, too, find it increasingly hard to imagine that all this will come to pass.
However, should by some miracle Trump and all his team do get to enact their agenda, I am worried that we are going to spend our time being distracted by all the shiny things that get thrown out on JFK, UAPs, Covid etc, whilst in the background, the technocracy ploughs on underneath with biometrics (‘think of the border’) and trackable stablecoin.
Could this be the beginning of the end for Big Pharma’s magic bullet approach to health care? It would be wonderful if it is. While he’s at it I hope RFK Jr closes down all Biotechnology warfare labs conducting Gain of Function research that Fauci funded. He should also instigate a moratorium on all Genetic Modification of plants and animals (and humans) until long term research establishes absolute safety and efficacy. It’s anti life and and the only motivation is money and control.
Absolute safety? No. If we take no risks then we will not progress at all.
Efficacy at what? Pest resistance? Nutritional content? Crop yield?
The downsides are many but there are upsides too. Downsides include lock-in to corporate supply and control, monocultures, as well as the Frankenstein fear.
Absolute safety? No. If we take no risks then we will not progress at all.
This is a false dichotomy. That progress is only possible by taking risks doesn’t mean that any risk-taking will lead to some sort of useful progress. Especially, it doesn’t mean taking the risk that the Nature’s far too benign! Let’s try to make more dangerous viruses! madmen and -woman could eventually succeed will lead to anything useful.
Ah well, no discretionary rise in my tiny Pfizer pension for now…
Oh wait. No, they already announced that months and years ago. The Trustees asked for a discretionary rise while Pfizer was riding high on the markets after 2021. Pfizer said no then.
The real powers that be won’t like that one little bit.
All power though to RFK probably mankind’s last hope in preventing bigpharma’s maiming and killing.
We must return to a more holistic approach re health.
No profit in that though.
yes although hopefully the profit will instead go to the organic small family farmers themselves now selling healthy food direct to the public . and herbal remedies.
rfk jr is a hero is amazing after all he has gone through to finally be able to do this and so glad i got to vote for trump nd rfk jr!
Oh yes, focus on prevention once again. Jubilant cheering of the anti-smoking and anti-drinking crowds despite — according to their own claims — none of their measure have done anything to improve public health in any way so far, sigh of relief from the vaccinators as vaccination is, too, a prevention instead of cure measure.
A preventive health system is necessarily one which dicates how its victims are supposed to live their lifes instead of helping then with actual problems. And this despite our knowledge of most health issue which affect us is less than puny. Otherwise, we could cure them.
I share your concerns. If RFK manages to make the relationship between “Public Health” and Big Pharma a good deal less cosy, I think that is a positive, but I would not want my tax money spent on trying to stop people eating doughnuts or whatever.
Agree. What we want is a healthcare and food supply system that is transparent so that we can decide what we put in our bodies – good or bad. At the moment we have a system that lies and coerces us into consuming more and more unhealthy foods and drugs. The processed food manufacturers and drug industry thrive by corrupting research, political and media oversight. Ultimately our consumption of addictive junk food and drugs is unsustainable. We have to reign back on that, insisting on transparency and accountability.
I’ve just eaten a bowl of salad composed of
Nobody on this planet could give a comprehensive list of the kinds and relative quantities of chemical element atoms in this bowl, let alone about the chemical reactions which have occurred among them before I started eating this.
Wrt to “health”, I think it’s important to keep in mind how extremely limited our scientific understanding about the world around us still really is and that If in doubt, be extremely conservative regarding what you eat or otherwise ingest
is a very prudent piece of advice.
When it comes to healthy eating I go along with the idea of studying what our ancestors ate and hence what we are likely to tolerate if not thrive on. Also studying the diets – and associated health and well-being – of various indigenous peoples around the world can be very informative. I’m always wary of dogma, i.e. when people say with certainty that something or other is “good for you”.
Reminds me of the Amish community, When asked in 2020 how they beat Covid, the reply was along the lines of….We have no Television!
I hope RFK will put a stop to their persecution, because their alternative app free lifestyle is a threat to their Globalist agenda. I hear they are persecuted in Canada too.
ivermectin too the wonderful amish farmers i buy from know about ivermectin . i read the amish voted some for first time and helped to win pennsylvania and alot thanks to rfk jr. some farmers had been persecuted by the democrats , of course!
“… to a preventive healthcare system that tries to stop diseases emerging in the first place.”
Such was the premise of the NHS in 1948. Prevent diseases, reduce need for medical intervention… save lives, save money. And so we are where we are.
Most disease is the result of the aging process: diabetes, dementia, arthritis, chronic renal disease, cardiovascular disease, cancers.
Saving someone from disease A means they live on to get disease B, and so on. Save granny from CoVid, granny dies a few months later from something else. We bankrupted ourselves over this ignorance and addled thinking.
A good start would be to get the State out of medical care, stop freebies like the NHS, Medicare and Medicaid, so that people buy their own insurance (not company schemes) or pay direct.
I think everyone will be amazed at how few people need medical care and how quickly people improve their lifestyles to avoid having to seek it.
I hope he starts investigating the rise in autism and whether the multiple v seperate jabs might be the cause.
Not one of the childhood vaxxes in the US have been subjected to placebo-controlled trials – and there are no long term safefy data collected. Even the “father of vaxxines” Stanley Plotkin has now admitted this. If I were a parent I would not allow my child to have any jabs until there is full testing and transparency.
Speaking to BBC’s Newsday programme, APHA executive director Georges C Benjamin says Kennedy has no health background and has “already caused great damage in health in the country”, referring to Kennedy’s scepticism of vaccines.
And what is the health background of Bill Gates in vaccines and agriculture, because I don’t remember the BBC complaining about him, but they wouldn’t when he gave them a bunce of millions.
Who cares what the deep state/big pharma delete as appropriate say?
That is the whole problem- the abrogation of knowledge to a corrupt establishment.
All RFK Jr has ever asked for is the evidence: the data that shows vaxxination are a net benefit to society. During the 1980s there was some public discussion about safety but nowadays people questioning the vax programme have been pilloried and gaslit.
It seems commenters did not appreciate that I was exposing BBC bias.
Make no mistake, God sent President Trump
RFK Jr is one, very significant, reason why I’d have voted for Trump if I was American. If he really goes after Big Pharma he will have done the world a huge favour.