Britain, moreover – as Government reports show – has the best renewable resources in Europe, not so much in solar power admittedly, but in wave, tidal and (particularly offshore) wind power. But instead of exploiting this natural competitive advantage, it has – under successive governments– been near the bottom of the European league for exploiting them.
A resource is something you can exploit and make a profit from. Given that these energy forms are more expensive than others they are not a resource are they? Nor, of course, a competitive advantage.
Tim,
You make this mistake a lot when taking on the left. You’re talking about Resources, which has a specific meaning. He’s talking abut resources, which in the left’s Humpty Dumpty world means exactly what they want it to mean, and it definitely isn’t what neo-liberals* like you say it means.
There was a similar spat over Public Goods and public goods earlier in the year.
This is why the left are so difficult to argue with, they won’t allow anything they say to be clearly defined.
*And there’s another word they won’t define for exactly the same reasons.
Is it more true to say we have “reserves” of renewable energy?
Hahahaha.
Lean should sit down.
North Dorset is right, the centre-left and the left really don’t play by economic definitions or by the known realities of economics.
So I know a socialist party full timer who on bbc North said that the closure of the knottingley mine ‘does not make economic sense’ due to the close locale of some form of coal treatment plant near by. The fact that the mine wasn’t msking a profit and it was cheaper to import coal from abroad instead of mine it here didn’t enter into his mind that what he believed was false.
I think the centre- left and left largely believe that political will and legislation is the only thing you need to remake the world or run things differently. That is why the shallowest people and discussions occur on energy use. They believe it’s simply a matter of saying ‘no’ to fossil fuel companies and switching to renewables and that’s all there is. And if you object you are a right-wing: denier; troll; ignorant idiot etc etc.
Tim
Why don’t you start writing your own press releases and send them to Lean; give him something new to copy word-for-word.
So I know a socialist party full timer who on bbc North said that the closure of the knottingley mine ‘does not make economic sense’ due to the close locale of some form of coal treatment plant near by.
Somehow the more demented sections of the British left have ended up simultaneously championing coal mines and opposing hydraulic fracking in much the same locations. It’s like protesting the closure of a car factory while railing against the opening of an aircraft factory.
Tim Newman – “Somehow the more demented sections of the British left have ended up simultaneously championing coal mines and opposing hydraulic fracking in much the same locations.”
There is a famous Development economic joke which begins with an American engineer being brought in and recommending replacing thousands of coolies with a truck and ending up recommending taking away their shovels and giving them tea spoons.
The Left is remarkably conservative these days. Existing jobs, and social ills, are to be protected at all costs. Future benefits are an evil to be avoided.
Not a joke: really said (as a joke of course) by Milton Friedman.
BiND: See also austerity. Most of us think bare bones; without luxury; you know, austere. The new economics definition is any policy designed to reduce deficit…
Tim, I don’t know why you give this old soak from the Telegraph airtime.
Everything he writes is bullshit.
His job is to be the environmental court jester for the Telegraph so that they can tick a box, and he is very successful at that.
They are proxies for the real, renewable resource they are all after: taxpayer cash.
A resource is something you can exploit full stop
We do have resources for hydro-electric and intermittent onshore wind-power (e.g. for grinding corn for green communes) but the Blair government chose to ignore them and make unachievable commitments.
Bloke in North Dorset
Absolutely spot on as you nearly always are.
It’s often considered either a mark of a ‘foaming Tea Party loon’ or ‘Godwin’s Law’ when people use the Nazis in an argument but the Goebbels phrase ‘The big lie’ is evinced every time one reads an article by Murphy, Seamus Milne, Owen Jones, Polly Toynbee, Laurie Penny etc – and in this case by Lean – ‘Black is white’, ‘strong is weak’, ‘Left is right’ – All about repeating the idea so that simpletons will take it in and due to a complete inability to think through second or third phase consequences, in their minds, it becomes true.
Sorry to disappoint. There are no prizes awarded for adding to the list of things Geoffrey Lean doesn’t understand.
“[…]best renewable resources in Europe, not so much in solar power admittedly, but in wave, tidal[…]”
Nobody has ever—ever— demonstrated wave power generation beyond the level of a lab curiosity. I’d love to see how a line of those big green rubber duckies Tomorrow’s World breathlessly showcased in the 1970’s would fare during a decent winter storm. As far as I can tell there hasn’t been much advance in the field since then.
As for tidal: as soon as a worthwhile system were proposed the likes of Lean would be jumping up and down shrieking so hard about habitat loss they’d spontaneously combust. Never mind the silting and the obstruction to navigation a barrage would entail.
Fuckwit.
@ TomJ
Austerity – I think of what is was like under Attlee. And we were middle-class … the working class boys came to school in patched hand-me-downs – come to that we wore hand-me-downs as far as possible into the mid-fifties because it was patriotic to do so.
Hand-me-downs? Looxury!
Bloke in Costa Rica – “As for tidal: as soon as a worthwhile system were proposed the likes of Lean would be jumping up and down shrieking so hard about habitat loss they’d spontaneously combust.”
Actually every time someone mentions the only project in Britain worth doing – the Severn Barrage – I jump up and down about habitat loss so hard I am at risk of spontaneously combusting.
The real risk is that the Greens might panic a government into doing this. It is a spectacularly bad idea.
Amusing as it would be to see fratricidal skirmishes between different factions of Ecofreaks, I think a barrage has little or no chance of being built. It’s too costly, too risky, and probably too long-term to get a government to commit to it (look how close the Channel Tunnel came to being scrapped). The problem with Lean and his ilk is they don’t really want solutions as they diminish their power to aggravate, impede and co-opt. Simultaneously agitating for and against hypothetical projects that will never see the light of day is cost-free for them. It’s not that they want to have their cake and eat it; they are determined that there shouldn’t even be a cake.