Net Zero. It sounded a noble objective. As Chris Skidmore, the Government Minister who introduced the bill to the House of Commons in 2019, observed, it would mean Britain becoming the first major economy in the world to make a legally binding commitment to eliminate greenhouse emissions. But what did it really mean, what was it going to cost, and did any of the MPs who had just nodded it through actually understand the implications?
The Government’s case was based around a claim made some months earlier by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) – which advises the Government on climate policy – that achieving net zero emissions by 2050 would cost between 1-2% of GDP per annum by 2050 – roughly equating to an eventual bill of £1 trillion by that date. But this, said the Minister, was before you took into account the many benefits, such as increased air quality and what he called “green-collar jobs”. Moreover, he implied that falling costs would reduce the bill further. Forget the bill, in other words; it will be a modest fee given what we will gain.
Not one MP pointed out the folly: how can you possibly estimate the cost of doing something when you have no idea how it can be done? By 2019, Britain was well on its way to phasing out coal power and generating around 15% of its electricity from wind farms and solar farms. A small proportion of electric cars were already on the road. But fossil fuel-free aviation? Decarbonisation of the steel and cement industries? Satisfying an enormous hike in demand for power as cars and domestic heating were switched from oil and gas to electricity? Energy storage to cope with the intermittent nature of wind and solar energy? These were among the many technological problems with which the country had hardly begun to grapple. While in some cases solutions might exist in theory or have been demonstrated on a laboratory-scale, no one knew whether they could successfully be scaled up and at what cost. As John Kerry, the U.S. climate envoy, was later to say, half the technology which will be required to achieve Net Zero has yet to be invented. The U.K. Parliament, however, had just approved a law obligating the country to Net Zero with no idea of how, when or whether that technology would be developed – and not the faintest idea of what it would really cost.
When National Grid ESO – the company which runs the electricity grid in Britain – attempted to calculate its own estimate of the cost of reaching Net Zero by 2050 it came up with an answer dramatically different to that of the CCC. In 2020 it presented four different scenarios of how Britain might attempt the transition, involving different blends of renewable energy, changes in consumer behaviour and so on. Its estimated costings in each case came out at around £160 billion a year of investment, eventually reaching a total of around £3 trillion. That was three times the figure which the CCC had touted just a year earlier – and National Grid was only trying to price up the decarbonisation of the energy sector, not agriculture and difficult-to-decarbonise sectors such as steel and cement. To MPs who had treated the CCC’s figure as gospel, and nodded through the 2050 target, it was a sharp reminder that they had committed the country to an open-ended bill, the eventual size of which no one could reasonably guess – other than to say it was going to be huge. Those MPs knew full well the Government’s lousy record on estimating costs of things we do know how to do – such as building a high-speed railway in the shape of HS2 from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, whose estimated costs nearly trebled from £37.5 billion in 2009 to £107 billion in 2019. Yet they had swallowed whole an attempt to put a price on doing something which had vastly more unknowns and which involved technologies yet to be invented or proved on a commercial scale.
It took two years for the Government itself to come up with some kind of plan of how it would reach Net Zero. Britain could do it “without so much as a hair shirt in sight”, wrote Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the foreword to his Net Zero Strategy, published in October 2021. “No one will be required to rip out their existing boiler or scrap their current car.” By 2035, the document went on to say, the U.K. would be powered entirely by clean electricity “subject to security of supply”. To this end it was going to invest in floating wind farms and, by 2024, make a decision as to how to fund a large nuclear plant (yes, just one, and it was only the decision that would be made by 2024; it would take another decade or so to build). There would be investment in hydrogen, so that hopefully by 2035 we might have a public hydrogen supply to replace the gas supply (although a decision on whether to pursue this was delayed until 2026). Also by 2035, the price of electric heat pumps might have come down – might – to make them a practical replacement for new gas boilers which would by then be banned. New petrol and diesel cars would be banned from 2030, hybrids from 2035. There would be £750 million of investment to plant new woodlands and restore peat bogs.
But the Net Zero Strategy left more questions unanswered than it answered. How are we to establish security of electricity supply if we come to rely even more on intermittent renewables? How is one nuclear power station going to solve our problems when it – along with the one currently under construction at Hinkley in Somerset – won’t even replace Britain’s seven existing nuclear power stations, all of which are due to reach the end of their working lives by 2035? Does the Government really have confidence that it will turn out to be economical to produce hydrogen by zero-carbon means – as opposed to manufacturing it from coal and gas, as almost all the world’s hydrogen is currently produced? You can order us all to buy electric cars, but how are you going to make sure that the cars are themselves zero carbon, given that a hefty proportion of a vehicle’s lifetime’s emissions are tied up in its manufacture? If we are going to cover the countryside with woodland, where does that leave food production? Are we going to be even more reliant on importing it from overseas, with the consequence that our food might end up with a higher carbon footprint than now?
On top of that was left dangling the biggest question of all: what is it all going to cost us, and who is going to end up paying the bill? On the same day that the Net Zero Strategy was published, the Treasury produced its own assessment of the costs of Net Zero. Did the Treasury agree with the Climate Change Committee’s assessment that it would cost no more than £1 trillion, or National Grid’s estimate of £3 trillion for the energy sector alone? It couldn’t say. It offered no estimate of the cost of Net Zero; arguing, rather, that it wasn’t possible to make such an estimate at this stage. As for who will pay, that was at least becoming clear. We were all going to be paying, either through our taxes or through supplements on our energy bills.
Britain, in short, is to embark on an experiment unique in human history, in which it voluntarily rejects whole areas of established technology which currently make society and the economy function, and tries to replace them with novel technologies, some of which do not currently exist and others of which may exist on a demonstration level but have not yet been scaled up. And the whole project has to be completed in just 27 years, no allowances, no wriggle room. It will be an industrial revolution to put all previous periods of human progress in the shade – if it can be achieved. But there is a very, very big and expensive ‘if’ there. It is generally good to be ambitious and optimistic. There is a point, however, at which it becomes foolishness.
Is there even a Plan B in case technology disappoints and it proves not possible to decarbonise Britain without causing huge damage to the economy? I asked the Business Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, this in October 2021 and he denied there was a need for such a plan.
No minister seems brave enough to say that the 2050 target may have to be revisited. Asked in July 2022 whether they were committed to the 2050 target, all five remaining Conservative leadership candidates confirmed that they were – although one, Kemi Badenoch, had previously suggested the target might have to be moved out to 2060 or 2070. All objection to the Net Zero Strategy has been brushed aside by Government ministers who insist there really is no alternative: so dire is the climate emergency that we simply have to decarbonise everything we do – fail to do so and we will be lashed by ever more dramatic weather: tossed, boiled, frozen and drowned. Behind it, though, lies a Little Englander fantasy: that somehow we can tackle climate change on our own, even if other countries do not follow our example. Yet Britain accounts for less than 1% of global emissions (or a bit more if you count them on a consumption basis rather than emissions basis).
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, China, which accounts for 33% of global emissions, is addressing climate change in its own way – one which isn’t going to put constraints on its industries or involve the impoverishment of its people. And many other countries are adopting the same attitude.
Not Zero: How an Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (and Won’t Even Save the Planet) by Ross Clark – of which this article is an extract – is published by Forum on February 2nd.
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The article makes a fundamental error in the first paragraph. It is increased prosperity and inventiveness which have improved the lot of the bulk of the people. This has been done by individuals alone and in voluntary association doing what Adamn Smith said they would do.
Capitalism, free enterprise or entrepreneurship (call it what you like) has produced a huge increase in peosperity and along the way many useful new products and methods have been developed. I struggle to think of a single one which has come about due to state run institutions.
For a useful account of how health has improved as income has improved this site provides a great deal of information in an accessible form:
Vaccines Did Not Save Us – 2 Centuries Of Official Statistics
“In addition to the extensive static graphs below, the following superb BBC FOUR broadcast by Professor Hans Rosling shows how health improved in step with wealth over the last 200 years “200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers – in just four minutes“
The article assumes some very egregious and religious gospels which are false:
-viruses (flying) exist – they don’t
-DNA/RNA can survive outside a host – they can’t
-viruses cause measles et al – they don’t
-quackcines reduced death from diseaese – they didn’t
Too much disinformation which negates the obvious reality that your health, diet, your lack of imbibing toxins, your mental state, is your wealth.
Ferdlll, I am in general agreement with many of your posts but I am a bit thrown by your opinion on flying viruses. Are you saying that airborne viruses are not a thing, and illnesses cannot get passed on through the air?
I read a paper showing that the Spanish Flu, which did go around the world, beat any of the transport ships at the time. The Flu appeared to follow the natural climate circulation. It seemed a convincing argument. I also noted that Covid got into some Antarctic research bases despite stringent checks on staff health. Again an airborne spread seems feasible.
I suspect what got in to Antarctic research bases was a shed load of PCR tests and nothing more.
Please forgive me, but if a virus does not cause measles, what does?
Yes, a virus.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-measles-guidelines/measles-factsheet
” A reduction in inequality and evidence-based health policies have been central to this success”
Well there certainly has been a reduction of ‘evidence based medicine’. Probably to do with the power of Big Pharma and vested interests!
“most deaths during the Spanish Flu, before modern antibiotics were invented, were likely due to secondary bacterial infections.”
Some say most of the deaths were associated with the mass vaccine program at Fort Detrick. And the malnutrition from WW1.
Some say that masks made the situation worse, by providing a breeding ground for the secondary bacterial infections, which allegedly can be more problematic for the human body than the primary virus. Perhaps we should consider that respiratory viruses are pretty delicate little rubber dinghies with SAS operatives on a mission: they need exactly the right cells to invade and subvert into making more viruses; bacteria are more like aircraft-carriers that carry an entire food manufacturing machinery and weapon repair stations. The whole idea of humans being constantly at war with respiratory viruses rather in symbiosis with them might be a notion put about by BigPharma to boost sales.
Good point.
Yes. I believe that around 3 million Us soldiers were “vaccinated” against smallpox, ostensibly because the military were worried the Germans would use smallpox as a bioweapon (same as the military allegedly used it against the native Indian).
This trashed many immune systems leading to a prevalence of bacterial pneumonia.
Good old uncle sam again.
The real genius was getting it to be known as “Spanish Flu”. Fort Detrick Flu doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
” taxpayers in the U.K. and elsewhere have been working hard to fund the 100-day vaccine programme” – how to work hard without noticing it.
That picture: Where’s the meat and dairy? Not a balanced diet.
That’s the diet that health fascists will
force on us
Excellent article. It demonstrates well that our health is (largely) within our own hands. None of which is rocket science, good diet/exercise/sleep etc. However it does need repeating to push home the message that pharmacology shouldn’t be the first port of call.
An appalling article. The author misunderstands most things. Improved health followed improved prosperity which was caused by individuals being allowed the freedom to pursue their own interests rather than following the diktats of the local lord or bishop. ‘Public money’ does not exist; it is simply money extorted by the robber state. Different people value health differently and choose to make different trade-offs.
The author is a coercive collectivist out to impose his version of what is good on everybody else. ‘I’m from Public Health and I’m here to help’ are some of the scariest words in the English language.
I agree with some of your comments though I think it’s harsh to call it an appalling article. The analysis of the deeply corrupt “public health” industry is correct – it’s the remedy we disagree on.
You and I probably agree that we can do without a “public health” industry, the author thinks it could be replaced with something actually helpful. But I think we’d just end up with mandatory broccoli eating (I love broccoli with garlic, Mrs ToF does it very well).
I think this illustrates what we are up against- even people who saw the “Covid” scam for what it was think that everything can be made better if only more sensible and honest people were put in charge. Hardly anyone wants to just get rid of vast swaths of public bodies.
Amen!
Could not have put it better myself.
Also we should not forget the whole surveillance industry setup to monitor infectious diseases around the globe. A lot of people would be out of jobs, including a lot of people working for the WHO.
Vaccines are killing millions. Autism now one in thirty-six post kids immunisation. Ask any parent with an autistic child when it started. They can pinpoint the day! mRNA covid poisons are currently killing millions but first causing horrific adverse events. Please wake up.
Over 7% of UK school age boys are autistic. That is 1 in 14. That is based on official statistics in England and official statistics for Northern Ireland. The NI stats prove it is nothing to do with better diagnosis or greater awareness. They show that 60% of the boys are non-verbal which means they are impossible to miss.
How about just admitting that vaccines NEVER solved any problems and NEVER helped reduced illness? On the contrary, the first vaccines were totally poisonous (just read the history of how the first smallpox vaccines were created and distributed) and modern day vaccines have their famous adjuvants, which are often poisonous on their own.
The immune system is amazingly complex and we have a very, very long way to go before we (if ever) completely understand every implication of attempting to modify or “assist” a minute part of it.
In the meantime, we are surely all aware of the dangers of mRNA vaccines. I cannot believe the author wrote the following, so maybe I misunderstood something:
We don’t yet know the long term consequences of causing inflammation and cell death in the ovaries of young girls, or the results of stimulating inflammation and probable cell death in a foetus in a pregnant woman. However, having given these injections to a lot of children and pregnant women, we should understand this better in the future.
The too typical argument of the medical profession: vaccines are a modern marvel and you have to be really very unlucky to die or become permanently disabled from them. Smile.
In my simple mind, the body has two main defences against pathogens: the respiratory system and the digestive system. Also, if I should have an open wound, the body is quick to seal the wound and “disinfect” the area, thus also acting to prevent pathogens entering the body.
But a vaccine directly injects a pathogen of sorts into the bloodstream, thus bypassing all bodily defences. The idea is to provoke some sort of advance warning inside the body so that, when I eventually am exposed to a particular disease, my body will react immediately to conquer that disease. But what is the difference when I encounter a disease without prior vaccination? Will my body not also immediately respond against that disease?
I think the whole idea of vaccination is completely flawed and, with it, the whole idea of the human race being eradicated by some modern “Pandemic”.
I’d be more comfortable believing in flying viruses if someone could isolate the little devils.
Saying, “If viruses don’t cause disease, then what does?” is rather like saying, “Well, if she’s not a witch, then why did the crops fail.”