More Nonsense From the People’s Emergency Briefing

Audiences up and down the country have been watching the People’s Emergency Briefing, the film launched 10 months ago to great fanfare. The emergency, if you did not guess, is the so-called ‘climate crisis’.

In Part I we looked at the climate-related parts of the film. If those were little more than unashamed propaganda, the other briefings, which covered Food Security, Economics, Energy and Health, were amateur hour.

Energy transition

The section on energy, for instance, was presented by Tessa Khan, Executive Director at Uplift, an advocacy organisation set up to “create a rapid and fair transition away from oil and gas production in the UK”. Uplift is funded by the usual Green Blob, notably the notorious European Climate Foundation.

Tessa is not an energy or economics expert. She has no qualifications or experience whatsoever in the subject. She is an environmental lawyer.

Her pitch was to blame high energy prices on the cost of gas and other fossil fuels. She points out that “the UN Fuel Poverty Coalition states there are now more than 12 million households across the UK who are struggling to pay their energy bills” and claims that the evidence is clear that an energy system powered by renewables will be more affordable.

She is wrong. Our energy, or more precisely our electricity, bills are some of the highest in the world not because of fossil fuels but because of the high cost of renewables.

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, subsidies for wind, solar and other renewable energy will add £15.9 billion to bills this year. By 2030, this figure will rise to £18.6 billion, equivalent to £680 per household. On top of that, indirect costs arising from the transition to renewable energy add billions more.

Moreover, according to NESO and OFGEM, we will need to spend at least £170 billion on upgrading the power grid in the next 10 years, solely for the purpose of Net Zero. All of this unnecessary expenditure will have to be recovered from our bills eventually.

According to Tessa, “sun or wind is free forever”, which is a truly juvenile claim to make. And she wants to “structure our bills so that they reflect the true lower costs of renewable power”.

But even with the current high price of gas, gas power is still cheaper than offshore wind. She claims that “the UK Government spent £64 billion to help households and businesses after the spike in wholesale gas prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”.

The Ukraine crisis brought high energy prices for a year. The switch to renewable energy has brought high prices for many years. Since 2002, it is estimated that the renewable bill has totted up to £228 billion. Net Zero simply locks in high prices permanently.

Her lack of understanding of UK energy markets is underscored by this remarkably silly statement:

We heat more than 80% of our homes across the UK with gas and this has led to an intolerable financial crisis for countless people.

Fortunately for these 80%, gas is a third of the price of the electricity she would rather they use.

Food security

According to Professor Paul Behrens, “the increasing pressure on global food supplies in the face of accelerating climate change and nature loss affects every family and every constituent in this country”.

Which is curious, because world food production keeps hitting new records year after year. He claims that Britain has seen three of the five worst cereal harvests on record this decade, but harvests like these are not uncommon here and Met Office data show that summer droughts, and for that matter wet summers, have always been commonplace.

The same people who complain about poor harvests also call for rewilding, covering prime agricultural land with solar panels and the end of dairy farming.

There is the usual nonsense about losing a third of agricultural land, harvest failures and civil unrest driven by food supply crises.

But no mention of the catastrophic effect on food production if fossil fuels were phased out. There would be no chemical fertilisers, no mechanisation, no road transport, no refrigeration and no shipping. Millions would starve to death.

Health

Professor Hugh Montgomery OBE tells us: “In my view, climate change is the greatest threat to human health of the 21st century. I am scared – I’m 63, I’m scared for my own life and future, and I’m absolutely terrified for that of my son.”

Scared? Of weather in Britain? What planet is he on?

It is cold that kills in this country, not heat. It is the same around the world. Lancet studies have found that cold related deaths exceed heat related ones by a ration of nine to one.

Talk of four billion deaths from climate change, crumbling economies and food shortages are all just scaremongering.

In the real world, of course, the world is healthier, wealthier, better fed and longer-lived than at any time in human history. None of this would have been possible without fossil fuels and the transformation of human society they have brought about.

We put that at risk at our peril.

Economics

Angela Francis of the WWF thinks the problem lies with the free market! The WWF, of course, is another far-Left advocacy group, so its spokespeople probably would think that, wouldn’t they?

Apparently, companies resist the transition to low carbon technologies, because they cost more money.

She is another who thinks that renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels. If they are, why do we need to subsidise them?

Regarding the Ukraine energy crisis, she says: “Inflation would have been 9% lower if our food system wasn’t linked to fossil fuels through fertiliser prices, which went up 400% at that same time.” What a convoluted logic! If we did not use fertiliser at all, food output would slump and food prices would soar. Whatever happened to food prices in 2022, over the long run they have been much lower than they would have been without fertilisers.

Any competent economist knows that free markets work best – if new technologies and products are cheaper and better, they will automatically be adopted. It is only in state controlled, socialist economies that progress is blunted and wrong choices made.

But that is precisely what Angela Francis wants – more state control, taxes, subsidies and interference in markets.

National security

Lt Gen. Richard Nugee CBE thinks that tackling climate is central to our national resilience and security. He also seems to have difficulty understanding the difference between weather and climate.

Maybe the producers of the film should instead have invited the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove to speak. At his recent GWPF annual lecture, Sir Richard castigated successive governments for taking the UK to the edge of an “energy cliff after prioritising woke Net Zero policies over taking on Russia and China”. He warned that Britain’s energy policy had left the country dangerously exposed to hostile states and vulnerable to disruption.

Solutions

So, what does this motley crew suggest we do about the looming apocalypse?

It’s all boringly familiar, of course.

• Spend hundreds of billions we have not got on needless green boondoggles
• Give up private transportation
• Stop flying
• Stop eating meat (apparently, we are allowed a burger every fortnight and a chicken breast once a week!)
• Eat lentils
• Build wind and solar farms
• Spend hundreds of billions more on “creating” a million clean energy jobs
• Buy expensive heat pumps, which we can’t afford

Oh – and go cold in winter, hungry all year round and remember to thank that kind Mr Miliband!