Climate breakdown is coming. The UK needs a Greener New Deal
Jason Hickel
Global economic growth is outstripping our green efforts. A cap must be put on consumption before is it cripples us
If you asked Jason Hickel whether cap and trade would be a decent response to emissions he’d tell you no. Because.
But to really make it work, we need to get straight to the heart of the issue: put a cap on annual material use and tighten it year on year, down to 8 tonnes per capita by the middle of the century.
But cap and trade on everything will work. Go figure….
OFFS, Tim. It’s bolx. The whole thing is a scam and a way to introduce aocialism by the back door. I misspelt socialism there, fat fingers, but I’m quite happy with the result in the green new deal context.
It’s a scam, stop this ad argumentum nonsense and call it for what it is.
WTF is ‘climate breakdown?’
Sounds skeery. Skeery enough to get the people to accept totalitarian world government.
Not.
Concur with the two posts above. Debating this nonsense only validates them. Time to call it what it is. A scam
The UK needs a greener new deal but since China and India are adding more coal fired power plants per year than the UK has ever had and even if we abolish all our ICE cars the ‘developing world’ will add as many in a month as we get rid of, we also need to bomb China, India and the rest back to the stone age.
After all, since we are voluntarily going back to being cave dwellers it’s only fair that they should as well.
I see the US department of energy have deregulated experiments with gen 4 Nuclear Energy somewhat recently…. Could be the move that saves the west from energy insecurity or “climate change”…….
Global economic growth is outstripping our green efforts
People keep getting richer and healthier! How very dare they? Don’t they know it is their duty to live five to a room in unheated hovels, eating pease pudding?
Climate Breakdown?
Is that the same as Global Warming?Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change? Climate Change?Climate Catastrophe?
Old wine in new bottles?
It is a load of lying scummy eco-freakery. The Green freakshow is the Globos plan to reduce ordinary folk to desperate scrabbling poverty. That –along with balkanisation of nations—is how they intend to leave us with no time, no resources and far too many other troubles to have a chance of fighting back against said Globo shite.
Please don’t rag on Tim about this.
I had an exchange with our host over ten years ago on the subject, and I am perfectly comfortable with him accepting global warming as a given, then pointing out that what needs to be done, at least in conventional terms, is being done.
It does not work with the lunatics and rent seekers, but they have to be dealt with separately anyway.
@starfish – you missed out Global Cooling which I think precedes all of those!
I still want someone to tell me what the correct’ temperature (average, or whatever) of the earth is. Or whether there has been any actual measurable increase in seas level that is definitely due to AGW.
I noted Guido’s little piece yesterday on the CO2 crisis (that kids are being encouraged to bunk-off from school for (and ‘educate’ them in being little rabble-rousers. Fucking lefties running these schools)): apparently UK CO2 emmissions are down from peak in 1970s to those in late 1800s (ignoring general strike blips).
Lockers,
I saw that too. However, the alarmists don’t care because they will say that the reason our CO2 emissions are down is because we don’t manufacture anything anymore. They’ll say that we are actually responsible for much of the Chinese emissions because we are consuming goods made there. That the Chinese profit from this doesn’t bother them because its all about self loathing leftists blaming the west for everything.
“OFFS, Tim. It’s bolx. The whole thing is a scam and a way to introduce aocialism by the back door.”
That’s why I support the Worstall position on this. Assume, It’s real. Best way to deal with it with simple, redistributive Pigou taxes.
Because the commies hate that just as much as denial. But they can’t go claiming you’re a denier. They have to argue in favour of why they want to centralise control over leaving it to markets. If we can get everyone to agree the simple solution is Pigou taxes, the commies will get out of environmental politics and find somewhere else to go.
@Lockers
“I still want someone to tell me what the correct’ temperature (average, or whatever) of the earth is”
Not sure what global average temperature even means and if it is a useful metric given all the jiggery pokery done to the measurements
WUWT has an interesting interview with Judith Curry https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/04/climate-sciences-myth-buster-its-time-to-be-scientific-about-global-warming-says-climatologist-judith-curry/
in particular about what she calls “environmental correctness”
I’ve commented on this article at the Guardian’s web page using Gab’s dissenter app. As my comment is critical I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be published by the G.
@Dongguan John – good point. The fuckers have an ‘answer’ for everything, don’t they?! I guess that means the protesters are going to the wrong place: they need to be outside the Chinese Embassy!
“That’s why I support the Worstall position on this. Assume, It’s real. Best way to deal with it with simple, redistributive Pigou taxes.”
The best way to deal with it is a climate futures market. The problem with Pigou taxes is that the price is set by the bureacrats instead of the market – it’s the fundamental point on which the parties disagree. A climate futures market would allow the market to set the price in a manner that satisfies everyone.
Of course, a climate futures market would reveal people’s true beliefs about global warming through the price they’re willing to pay – a case of “revealed preferences”. And that could prove very embarassing when it didn’t match public statements! So it’s not very popular as a policy proposal.
@starfish; “Not sure what global average temperature even means and if it is a useful metric given all the jiggery pokery done to the measurements”
Indeed, I agree – so how would we *know* that the climate is going wrong? I’m open to being convinced, it’s just that the evidence / arguments always seem to have a problem when you drill down – and if they are climate alarmists best arguments / pieces of evidence then the rest of it must be shite. Which means no (good) evidence or argument.
I think
the reason our CO2 emissions are down is because we don’t manufacture anything anymore. They’ll say that we are actually responsible for much of the Chinese emissions because we are consuming goods made there.
They make a good point. For the sake of the planet we must bring manufacturing back to the UK and make the cunts pay three grand for their smartphones.
“If we can get everyone to agree the simple solution is Pigou taxes”
NO! Pigou taxes do nothing but enrich the state. They DO NOT solve problems. The state exploits the crisis to get people to accept more taxes, taxes they couldn’t get otherwise.
“the commies will get out of environmental politics and find somewhere else to go”
That they will. They’ll just find a new tool to support communism. It will be as if 30 years of Man Made Global Warming never happened. National Geographic Magazine will never apologize for 25 years of attributing everything that happens in nature to “climate change.”
“we also need to bomb China, India and the rest back to the stone age”
Exactly. If the Left actually believed this shit, they’d demand we destroy China/India. That they don’t is quite instructive. In fact, the Paris Accord told China/India they could keep on adding emissions for another 15 years. “Climate change” is just an implement for beating the West.
‘But cap and trade on everything will work.’
Wut?
Global warming cockrot is one of Tim’s blindspots. It is a Marxist ploy. Action is needed against the liars and scum behind the bullshit.
The Left: we must reduce or eliminate economic growth because it is destroying the planet.
Also the Left: today’s forecasts of reduced growth are appalling, and the Conservative Government is to blame.
@niv,
How will climate futures work?
“WTF is ‘climate breakdown?’”
It’s (probably) what follows the “Climate Emergency” that some nutters are trying to get councils around the country to declare. Fortunately, not all of them are stupid enough to do so:
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/politics/climate-emergency-call-turned-down-at-council-meeting-1-5910923
“Janice Single said at the meeting: “I’m really worried, angry sometimes and I’m scared for the future”
Aw, didums…
“@niv, How will climate futures work?”
So glad you asked!
The basic idea is that you can issue bonds whose value depends on climate outcomes. For example, you offer to seel a bond that returns 10%/year on face value on the day sea level rise passes 1 metre, but is null and void in the year 2100. Or vice versa. You can issue a bond that returns 10%/year in 2100, but becomes null and void if sea level rise passes 1 metre. The bonds can be bought and sold, the obligation being passed on to the new owner.
You thus get a negotiable financial instrument whose estimated value varies depending on whether you believe in global warming or not. To a believer, it’s highly valuable, to a sceptic it’s worthless paper. So sceptics are happy to pay their carbon taxes in climate bonds, and believers are happy to receive them. Or for the vice versa case, sceptics can be bribed to stop emitting CO2, and believers are happy to pay them climate bonds they consider worthless to do so.
Whoever turns out to be wrong pays the price of whatever mitigation action was taken. Both sides can pay what they believe to be the appropriate price, despite disagreeing on what that price should be. The market sets the price of carbon emissions based on their best collective knowledge and belief about what is going to happen.
Futures markets are how the market brings the predicted costs of future uncertainty into the present, and funds the action to mitigate it. For example, if the grain harvest is expected to be poor next year, futures in grain rise in price, which farmers can sell to raise the funds to buy extra seed (for example). The market’s predictions about the uncertain future drive current prices, which raises the funds to (profitably) respond to them. It makes it profitable to invest to prevent disaster. It’s a powerful and general mechanism for dealing with the future.
I can think of a few issues with it, but in my opinion market-based solutions are always better than MOAR TAX. Pigou taxes are fine if everyone agrees on what the collective cost is worth, they just don’t want to pay it. But if people fundamentally disagree on whether there is even a collective cost at all, climate futures are a much better option.
Interesting. Thanks.
An indication of people’s willingness to voluntarily offset their carbon dioxide emissions is the take up of offsetting for flights which apparently runs at about 1%.
It is NOT true that China is emitting more just because it’s doing our manufacturing. Top reason: China emits *eight* times a much CO2 per $ of manufacture as Japan. Second reason since 1965 China’s CO2 output has increased by more than the whole OECD CO2 emissions in 1965. However much manufacturing China has taken from OECD cannot be more than 100% of the OECD total.
The lefties love mega-murderer Mao so much they invent excuses for China
Global average temperature is a non-physical quantity. It makes absolutely no sense in terms of thermodynamics. You can take time series data at discrete locations and look for a trend, but that’s it, and removing systematic errors is insanely hard, even without the warmists’ attempts to put their thumb on the scale.
Not true, BiCR.
The U.S. has been taking satellite measurements of atmospheric temperatures since 1979.
Re NiV’s ideas on “climate futures”… ISTR that there was a “carbon market” set up to trade in indulgencies, but that the Chicago (?) market went tits-up. It would appear that the greenies are only willing to put other people’s money where their mouth is!