Reports in newspapers this week revealed that Britain’s domestic production of energy has reached a new record low. The news comes from trade group, Offshore Energies U.K. (OEUK), whose analysis, far from unexpected, details the pressures on investment in conventional energy production, such as the windfall tax on oil and gas companies. Since the turn of the century, U.K. production of energy has fallen by two thirds, whereas consumption has fallen by a third. The difference has been met by an increased dependence on imports. Yet neither the report itself, which is at best agnostic about renewables, nor the stories that cover it, seem to have taken seriously the harm that Net Zero and adjacent agendas have done to our industries, businesses and economy – and are set to do worse.
The U.K. ceased being a net energy exporter in 2004, amid a flurry of green policymaking, culminating in the Climate Change Act 2008, and its increased ‘Net Zero’ target adopted in 2019. Over the duration, coal-fired power stations were demolished, but not replaced with equivalent (i.e. reliable) generating capacity, shale gas exploration was abolished before it had even started. Energy investors in the U.K. and across the continent, lured to attractive guaranteed profits by subsidy regimes, and dissuaded from conventional energy by rising costs of capital, lost interest in oil and gas. Despite promises of ‘green jobs’, a ‘green industrial revolution’ and ‘green economic growth’ and lower prices being the constant chorus of energy ministers of all governments and their so-called ‘opposition’ counterparts, domestic energy prices tripled. So if these new data on Britain’s energy production do not prove the expensive and dangerous folly of more than two decades of U.K. climate policy, what could?
It is as if the entire political establishment had at once decided to forget that there exists a relationship between scarcity and price. Yet, the effect of abolishing coal is just that: it creates scarcity. So too, do policies that either restrict the exploration of oil and gas, or increase the cost of capital, create scarcity. Politicians, lobbied by green billionaires’ ersatz ‘civil society’ organisations who pump false claims into the public sphere, then claim that the problem all along was ‘dependence’ on oil and gas. Green energy will lower prices and diminish the power of dictators, who turn energy into a ‘weapon’ that terrorises Europe, they claim. So successful are they in their policymaking that, since 2019, the Government has capped energy prices – a policy they stole from Ed Miliband in 2017, before taking us into Net Zero. If ‘green’ means anything at all, it means acute cognitive dissonance.
At stake, argues the OEUK report, is immense value that could be unleashed from the North Sea. But investment is being held back by policies, “having big impacts on the profitability of U.K. offshore energy”’ worth one trillion pounds of exports and £450 billion domestically “within the next 15 years”. However, though the bulk of that potential lies in oil and gas, the report includes in its analysis, wind power, CCS and hydrogen. Even oil and gas executives, it seems, have swallowed the green Kool-Aid. And that is a missed opportunity to reflect on the failures of the green agenda, as well as a disappointing failure of an industry to properly stick up for itself, and to defend industry in principle.
And it needs defending. The fig leaf that has concealed Britain’s shameful industrial decline, and blinding politicians to reality in recent years has been the notion that green policies have successfully caused GDP growth to ‘decouple’ from fossil fuel use. However, this conceit requires us to believe, in turn, that the 79% increase in GDP that coincided with the halving of emissions over the same period was not driven by funny money, tricksy policies and analytical sleights of hand, and that the deindustrialisation underpinning it has left us better off. Does anybody, other than green energy hustlers, actually feel better off? Who? How?! What better position can we claim to be in, now that we know that we produce less and import more at a higher price? How much of that ‘growth’ is just higher prices?
The embrace of green economics, at the expense of established economic orthodoxy, leads to regressive disdain for industry. It seems not to have bothered many that we are less capable of producing things and sustaining ourselves – an issue which would have once sent a modern government into a tailspin. It is as if using less energy was a ‘good thing’ in itself, not a reflection of rising prices and stagnant (or worse) productivity. As if to make my point for me, following OEUK’s report, the half-truthfully named Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the obedient press put a different spin on the matter. “The U.K. recorded the highest ever share of electricity generation by renewables last year”, declared the Standard.
As greens rejoice our production of less for more, U.K. energy market regulator, Ofgem, announced its “discussion on the future of the price cap”, which is “so customers remain protected as the energy market evolves to a smarter, more flexible system”. Why would customers need ‘protection’ from a ‘smarter, more flexible system’? It is, of course, doublespeak. The ‘dynamic price cap’ is time-of-day pricing, more honestly known as rationing. And ‘flexibility’ means using prices to force customers to organise their lives around the ‘smarter’ system, rather than the energy market meeting people’s needs. And it is made necessary by the scarcity created by green energy policy and green ideology.
It would be all for the better if regulators, industry associations and, of course, politicians simply admitted that they have made a catastrophic mess of the very industries that were pioneered in this country. Putting green political ambitions before any other practical consideration has made us poorer, and is going to create a problem far worse than climate change.
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And when attending a gathering in Australia, with a Victorian Liberal MP among others, a group of black shirted “Nazis” turned up, confronting the women.
Because of this, the MP’s own party is trying to expel her; every media outlet has branded the group “Nazi sympathisers”.
So, our conservative party is trying to expel a woman MP whose crime is attending a rally to fight for the rights of women to not be exposed to naked men in toilets, gaols, etc, or in sports, and that is considered to be “Nazism”.
Can someone explain to me what I’ve missed?
I suspect that just like in the UK, politicians, judges, senior police ranks etc are all drawn from the same liberal elite clique. The colour of rosette they wear when it’s time for an election is the only difference.
Groupthinkers like this usually wear the same colour rosette
How can anyone expect the liberal elite clique to change tack when it is not in their career interests to do so? Besides, the liberal elite clique are far more fearful of the displeasure of the Left than the centre Right. The former are active, well organised, well funded, committed and successful in driving their agenda. The latter are disorganised, poorly funded, rarely if ever politically active and invariably find it easier to yield than fight their corner.
They get away with it because they can, and the police are effin useless. Even if they weren’t useless, they’d be on the wrong side.
One thing. The majority of young people supporting woke, trans ideology are girls.
Trans ideology is not the anti-women movement it is being portrayed to be.
Having said that, the world’s biggest and strongest lobby, the feminist lobby, seem to be having the most success at pushing back trans ideology.
My money.is on the feminists winning this one. They outnumber the trans and they have so much more experience self victimising.
In my opinion you have a chip on your shoulder about womens’ rights and Feminism as a whole, and your responses are getting rather predictable. Feminism has sought the political, economic, personal and social equality of the sexes.Of course, equality does not and has never meant ‘the same’, just as 2+2=4 the way 3+1=4. Different but equal. As a principle I would think Feminism is difficult to argue against,The radical outliers of the Feminist movement do not represent the whole well at all, and in many cases do a great dis-service to us all, regardless of sex. If you only look to them to decide what Feminism is, you will not see the deeper difficulties the radical trans movement poses to women.
Hear hear, regarding your entire post! It’s like if people judge all Muslims by the tiny minority who like to go around wearing suicide vests and blowing up civilians in crowded places. Utterly idiotic, nonsensical and shows a great deal about the bigotry the uninformed and ignorant person continually insists on spewing. And you’re spot on, there is certainly a chip there, as evidenced by the predictability we’ve all come to witness. I just scroll on by now. Some people are just pathological lost causes.
So true
Well said
“The majority of young people supporting woke, trans ideology are girls.”
You may well be right but where do you get that info from?
Assuming true, any theories as to why this might be?
My pet theory – women are nicer than men, less disagreeable, and wokeness attracts people who want to feel and be seen to be “nice”.
How about After 78 years of relentless German-bashing, Nazi has turned into a general expletive which means nothing but Someone of whose loathsome opinions I really disapprove of? With loathsome meaning different from mine.
Rona taught me that 80% of the sheeple are morons.
Transgender fascism has simply confirmed the above.
Mentally ill perverts, sick whackjobs, chromosome-DNA-mitochondria denying half wits.
Witch hunt indeed.
If Posie was Black, Muslim, or spouting Rona gibberish, she would be left alone.
So now the new witch is the normal, white, heterosexual female?
The Enlightenment –> To the Age of Stupid. Straight. Red. Line.
I said the same in my comment on the linked article. Imagine if a similar mob had done this to a speaker calling for taking in unlimited refugees for example…
Love the last line.Ferdlll. Puts me in mind of Clemenceau’s quote: “America; the only country to have gone from barbarism to degeneracy without the usual interval of civilisation.” And getting truer by the day.
It’s called ‘bullying’, plain and simple. The gang gets off on feeling empowered and goad each other on. It’s a tribal ‘Lord of the Flies’ thing.
It’s a pity there appeared to be no sane folk at the gathering to support/aid Ms Keen.
Disturbing though these scenes are, is there not a common factor linking them back a decade or two? Or even centuries? That factor is the bullying of dissidents in attempt to get them to comply with the party line, or “consensus”. Twenty years ago if you were working in an academic environment and expressed the slightest doubt about the issue of the day, you would find your life made uncomfortable, miserable and would wind up either leaving voluntarily or being defenestrated. The issue of the day mutates: twenty years ago it was “global warming”, ten years ago it was “reparations for the Slave Trade”, two years ago it was the persecution of the covid-sceptics and today it is gender identity. Centuries ago it was the Spanish Inquisition or Salem. The difference is superficial, concerning whether the soup is literal or metaphorical, and details of the heretics’ opinion, and the dress-code of the inquisitors. If anybody says that the Earth is warmed by the Sun and not by the oxidation of carbon, or that gender is set at conception, they will be excommunicated. The commonality runs deep, the message being “comply or be crushed”.
This is where woke ideology leads.
As Elon Musk observed:
“At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary and hateful. It basically gives mean people a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue.”
The rent a mob nasties turn up at the behest of the state to infiltrate & function as a useful tool to legitimise the woke mob’s cries of far right/na$i & the bile which they spew against whomever is standing up against the mob.
Every group which threatens the blob is at risk of being infiltrated by the blob.
I guess the BBC would call this A mostly peaceful witchhunt conducted by the innocent victims of a well-known hateful extremist. Ye shall know them by their fruits.
I just finished writing an email to friends and family describing how [a certain country that the Daily Sceptic seems not to like very much] found anti-Christian woke /CRT/ trans ideology unacceptable, degenerate and perverted … and considered the West to be doomed. I then clicked into today’s DS and found the first two articles amply describing how people with orthodox Christian views are today’s heretics for ideological zealots (woke being the new religion for both fanatics and the STATE (+ THE WHOLE OF THE WEST ) it would seem.
I then received a TikTok video of Nigel Farage amply describing in the EU parliament 8 years ago how it was going to cause war war with Russia in Ukraine. “Have you taken leave of your senses?” He asked.
The vilification of good, truthful people is one of the most disturbing features of life today.
I leave you with an image of Vice President Biden shaking hands with Prime Minister Putin in 2011…. rejecting, nevertheless, Putin’s proposal of visa-free travel in order to foster better relations.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-usa-biden-idUSTRE7293LQ20110310
I have it on good authority that Putin was once anxious to repair relations with the west – even to the point of joining NATO. All that is now gone and the West has been consigned to what the Russians would probably describe as ‘the intellectual and spiritual dustbin’. They are looking elsewhere for sanity.
I have it on good authority that Putin’s stooges blurt about again planting a red flag on the Reichstag in Berlin and reconquering and renslaving the Germany that’s rightfully theirs. To which I reply “Good luck, chaps! You have only about 1120 more miles to go and this time, you’re not allied with all of the world but have to rely on your own merits and abilities.” And we know how that ended in 1917.
Thats horrendous, these people deserve to be on the periphery of a society, spores.
The fruits of Ardern’s labours.
So what was the point of International Womens Day?
”And what is Parker’s crime? What did this witch do? ”
She took on the role of stating that ”the Emperor is not wearing any clothes” and of course this whole thing relies on everybody accepting the ludicrous and preposterous proposition that mammalian male and female are interchangeable.
In a way the people protesting against this lady are pitiable stooges of the insidious and horrendous racket that is working to undermine our society and destroy any sense of living in a rational and reasonable world.
“Put 100 women and 10 men on a deserted island and in 100 years you will have a thriving community of men, women, boys and girls.
Put 100 Trans women and 10 men on a
deserted island and in 100 years you will find
the skeletons of 110 men.”
Like it
I might borrow that one. Very good.
Does the mob’s behaviour have anything to do with the behavioural characteristics resulting from living at the arse end of the world with sheep and rugby vying for the nation’s attention?
Imagine plod’s reaction if this were a BLM rally and a bunch of goose steppers showed up with whistles and megaphones and tomato soup. They’d have been kettled, assaulted and banged up in swift order. But waive a tranny flag and of course it’s all good. I hate the 21st century mostly because there’s nothing I can do to change this insanity.