Boris Johnson’s green agenda has been plunged into chaos amid fears that the costs of reaching “net zero” could cripple working class families in newly-won Tory seats.
A Treasury review of the costs of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 has been delayed since the spring. There are concerns the analysis highlights that the poorest households will be hit the hardest by the ambition, which will involve policies such as stripping out gas boilers and switching to electric or hydrogen cars.
The entire point is that fossil fuels are cheaper. Therefore, to have not fossil means people will have to pay more. This looms larger in the budgets of poorer people.
This should all be obvious. If fossil were not cheaper then everyone would already be using non-fossil. If price rises did not loom larger in the budgets of poorer people then they’d not be poorer people to start with. This is all so obvious that even Tories should have grasped this, no?
Isn’t it also obvious that it will all be for nothing because it is about addressing a problem that simply isn’t there? Even if the problem was real, the UK eliminating our minute contribution would make literally zero difference. Has there ever been such a demonstrably insane government policy?
No, alas it isn’t obvious.
The argument is that the sun and wind are free and don’t cause nasty emissions.
The Green zealots do not get past that stage and so arguments of cost analysis, benefits, ease of production and efficiency simply fall on deaf ears. They even believe that not paying as much tax for energy counts as a subsidy.
There is no arguing with them, because they are always wrong.
Never underestimate the politicians’ capacity for idiocy. You have only to look at the example of California.
It is interesting that GWPF has recently changed tack and is now emphasising the almost unbounded, but generally agreed as stupendous, costs of net zero to the great unwashed.
Arguing the science has been a waste of time because the zealots know they are right and nonbelievers can be safely ignored in the current media obsession with record weather (which isn’t)
This tactic has got much more traction
They also won a case requiring the Lord Deben cash consumption committee to reveal its calculations on net zero costs (£50bn IIRC) which were ludicrously low and full of unspecified assumptions
I still predict two years before the wheels fall off completely
Never mind, Allegra Stratton will sort it all out and Boris will look like a great statesman at his Glasgow COP26 jamboree.
Boris won’t even get a chance to look AT a great statesman. None of them will be at COP26. Just the usual bunch of grifters and socialists trying oh so hard to run out of our money.
Hydrogen boilers create lots of NOx pollution, the stuff which made car exhaust so political, and cause catalytic convertes to become mandatory.
This is because of the extreme flame temperature.
Of course, you can design a hydrogen boiler to avoid this, but to install and maintain millions of the things…
No problem is so bad it cannot be made worse by a politician.
And heat pumps are even more Barking. For most of UK housing stock, that’s a demolition and rebuild.
Look for a ‘social credit’ system being sneaked in that will allow house heating only for those ‘on message’.
The proles can freeze. That’s really rather the point.
If it is too expensive for lower paid people… they will tax better paid people more and ‘compensate’ poor people for higher energy prices. So net this means better paid people will pay for their own higher energy costs AND pay for everyone else’s higher energy costs as well.
What the actual? And it’s the well off who are usually supporters of this green agenda. Turkeys and Christmas spring to mind here.
Those in favour of CO2 reduction have rarely read any of the science, never mind the economics. They pronounce themselves in favour because it signals their virtue, and they kid themselves that it will be cheaper.
Support for this sort of thing will collapse once either we get weather that disproves AGWT, which is quite possible, or the costs become obvious, which is inevitable.
At that point people will become interested in questioning the theory.
Hopefully this will happen before we’ve wasted too many resources.
The problem with ‘Net Zero’ is that it is no longer a means to an end but an end in itself. Our betters have decided, (and codified into law), that we shall be net zero by 2050 and so we jolly well shall be.
It doesn’t matter that achieving net zero will not make the slightest difference to the climate. It doesn’t matter that it will trash the economy. It doesn’t even matter that the poorer peasants will suffer more than the rich. What matters is that we meet the magic target, preferably before all those other countries, so that our rulers can go to their conferences and boast about how virtuous they are. (Of course, by that time we won’t be a G20 nation, let alone a G7 one, so the conferences will be a bit thinner on the ground.)
Even the threat of losing their hold on power when the Northern peasants kick up a fuss will only cause them some slight discomfort. I mean, who are the plebs going to vote for? All the other parties are into the green crap even deeper. I suppose they could vote for that actor chappie but really he’s got no chance.
No, I fear this will have to be played out to the end, and it will be an extremely bitter end for all of us.
“I mean, who are the plebs going to vote for?”
The “populists”.. Which can as yet still be “safely excluded” in most places because they tend to fragment regularly. Until they won’t..
And there’s always a farm implement and a torch or two to be had at your local DIY. Messy, but effective.
This pleb isn’t going under social credit. Or freezing or giving up my car and being reduced to peasant status.
I am willing to fight–and if the state escalates so must we.
Start mildly– make me 2nd class citizen cos I wont take the vax shite–no more council tax. And no more green levy payments on leccy/gas bills.
An interesting point is HOW you transition to hydrogen gas boilers.
Clearly, you must shut down a district’s gas network from methane, then change all the boilers and otgher gas appliances in that district, then start up with hydrogen.
You cannot possibly permit hyrdogen to be suppleid back into that district network until you have removed all methane appliance, and shut off every single non-compliant household in a tamper-proof way.
So there will need to be a compulsory entry and inspection of every single premises in that district, to ensure New Boiler Compliance. That will of course be resisted, so the inspection troops will need means of entry and self defence.
I wonder what colour the uniforms will be?
@TtheC
Reminds me of the switch from town gas to natural gas, which at least was done by locality
Sounds like this is much bigger
What could possibly go wrong?
Ecksy, I thought you told us a year or more ago you were stopping paying council tax for some other reason (lockdown? Or was it some other outrage?). I was looking forward to an update sometime on how your brave campaign for change was going. But now I can’t tell – are you currently all paid up and in good obedient order, and threatening to stop paying if whatever, or on double strike, or what?
In the 60s people just accepted that it needed to change and let the gas guys in to change all the burners in the stove. I got an extra Bunsen burner out of that exercise!
Going to Hydrogen is a whole other ballgame. It’s not just a slightly different burner design.
‘This is all so obvious that even Tories should have grasped this, no?’
Even the Greens have figured this out. The pamphlet the young lady gave me points out that they’re going to place a 5% tax on billionaires to pay for it all.
As for the hydrogen, I’d still argue that there’s plenty of CO2 around, so simple 19th century tech should allow it to be turned into methane, or at least town gas. Of course you could say this’s just for the duration of the emergency, but I think it was Bismarck who said nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution.
“Hydrogen boilers create lots of NOx pollution”
Yes.. Extremely irritating how the laws of physics refuse to adapt to Modern Thinking!! 😉
Never underestimate the politicians’ capacity for idiocy. You have only to look at the example of California.
Idiot politicians are not the problem, it’s the idiot people who keep voting for idiot politicians. And in the case of California the idiot people can and do vote directly for idiotic policies. I feel sorry for the rural folks who get crushed by the urban morons, but on the whole the state deserves all it gets, good and hard.
The UK isn’t too far behind.
I found a government report on the logistics of change-over, and didn’t get past “Welded (soldered) copper…”
If they can’t even get the difference between welding and soldering – even implying it’s the same thing – then I have absolutely no hope for the remaining 57 pages.
napsjam–I have never said I was on council tax strike cos I haven’t yet. I have suggested it as an option a very large number of times tho. As yet I haven’t been declared a second class citizen. Bogus j is hoping to force his vax pass in by voluntary business co-op. I don’t think so. But if Bogus uses legal bullshit I will stop council payment. I am hoping to be one of many but as with this blog likely most will go along with vax pass as they have with vax. And the state will end up owning you.As any who go along with it deserve.