Secondly, regulation must change the investment landscape so that high-carbon activities are curtailed, and low-carbon alternatives are mandated. Private capital will follow when the rules change. It always does.
Well, OK. Impose the carbon tax, everything is now in prices and we’re done.
Bloke did get the Nobel for this.
No, it shouldn’t.
I naturally believe that the ‘solution’ to this is use nukes to generate all the power we need.
But you’d have to shoot all the leftists to do this. And those who remained wouldn’t waste their money on dumping fossil fuels.
But you’d still need fossil fuels to provide all the feed stocks for industry & tarmac for the roads. Look at the pinned tweet here:
https://x.com/refractaire1er
And here’s a translation of the original French:
<i>”They think we’re idiots!
When you refine oil, you automatically get:
– 45% gasoline
– 25% diesel
– 10% kerosene
– 5% LPG
– 10% naphtha (plastic)
– 5% tar/bitumen
So, in an “eco-friendly” world that no longer wants to use fuels… what do we do with the 85% of products that are made from them?
Impossible to store, dangerous to accumulate, and burning them would be far worse for the environment than converting them using engines.
In other words, a combustion engine car is pollution-free, since it converts these unavoidable fuels into energy instead of turning them into massive industrial waste.
Unless we want to live in a world without plastic, without paved roads, and go back to horses… but we’ll still have to ask them to stop farting.
In conclusion, we will always have to consume the same amount of fuel; if not us, then others will. All-electric is an ecological scam, and Europeans are the ones being taken for a ride, as usual.”</i>
Thanks Dave!!
Fuck off with your carbon tax. The problem’s not CO2.
+100.
Where is the due diligence that it is CO2? When is it going to be reviewed or reconsidered in the light of observations since the IPCC was founded with the assumption that there was (then) a problem?
“Private capital will follow when the rules change.”
Or people won’t invest in the UK, which looks increasingly likely.
Yep. Capital will flow to . . . Mexico, Brazil, India. Where is British industry today? CHINA.
It’s a global economy. UK has made itself uncompetitive.
As your economy slows, Spud demands MOAR rules! You aren’t dying fast enough.
Why do you so fetishise this “carbon” tax?
It may as well be a tax on breathing!
You can build a world view and imagine a “market” – and all the good that is supposed to flow – based on it, but in reality it makes communism seem like the wild west!
Imagine if Orwell had thought of such a thing and included it in 1984.
The point is that at least as of now, arguing that it’s bollocks ain’t going to cut it. “Are you a proper scientist at a university, Mark/Western Bloke/Timmy”?
So OK let’s accept it for now. What’s the best way to do it? It’s markets, and taxing external costs. Because if we can’t win on “it’s bollocks” we can at least win on ending the pet desires of lefties.
And anyone who is actually pro-eco should support this. Because you get a greater reduction in pollution with it than government trying to decide where to spend money. Lots of green stuff that is done is a mad cost for the saving. You have to spend a fuckload more money on trains per ton of CO2 saved. These electric and hydrogen buses have cut CO2 less than spending the same money on cutting bus fares and encouraging more riding.
They will not allow their luddite ideology to be torpedoed with mere logic. If it’s bollocks let’s say it’s bollocks and aim to win the undecided/misinformed by asking the enemy to prove it. They’ve been getting by on unsupported assertions since that was mooted as a tactic by the IPPR pamphlet ‘Warm words’ twenty years ago.
Agree. The problem with letting “CO2” past is that the immediate, infantile response becomes “make less of it”, which is where we are now.
Ironically, the IPCC has itself debunked the whole CO2 “greenhouse” mechanism. It concedes that CO2 reflects specific IR frequencies; that the supply of this IR is finite; that the relationship between CO2 concentration and temperature rise is exponential, not linear, requiring a doubling of CO2 for each additional degree C; that NASA satellites show that current CO2 levels are already mopping up nearly all of the available IR; and that convection exists, allowing the IR to escape to space, unlike a greenhouse which prevents it.
All written by proper scientists at a universities.
‘at a universities’
And you can’t have too many of those!
Richard Lindzen makes that point in a discussion with Jordan Peterson. He said when the climate doom mongers came out with their theory decades ago it was riddled with errors, which proper scientists were quick to point out, but by doing so gave the overall theory a credence it did not warrant.
Call them out on their bollocks every single time, otherwise you tacitly agree with them and they will continue to push the ratchet their way forever.
I’m not trying to torpedo them. I am never trying to get the “them” to change their mind. “Them” are either religious zealots of have self-interest. The RMT are not going to say “by jove, you’re right, let’s shut down half the railways as a complete waste of money” and lose half their membership.
It’s the uninvolved people I talk to. Mr and Mrs Average who might change their minds.
The leftists are spouting a stream of assertions that are all false, but the last in the chain is “regulate this”.
OGH is arguing only with the last in the chain saying “instead, put in a tax”.
But the whole chain is false. Arguing only with the last in the chain allows the rest of it to go unquestioned.
It doesn’t matter if it’s false. What matters is what people believe. If you can’t prove to people that it’s bollocks, just saying “it’s bollocks” isn’t going to work.
“It’s bollocks”
“prove it”
“um”
And now they’re going to accept communist solutions. Pigou based is the least worst option if people believe it.
Appeal to authority.
And a lot of people believe it. So, what are you going to do to change that?
And they should support nuclear too, but they don’t. And there are plenty of scientists who have argued against the net zero madness, but that doesnt matter either.
Right, at which point, you can point out that supposedly pro-carbon reduction people don’t support sensible energy production, so what is this really about?
You’re not trying to convince Greta, or even some daft teenage hippy girl. You’re trying to convince normies that it’s bollocks.
“Are you a proper scientist at a university…”
No, but I do understand what science is and is not. I understand the scientific method. I also have a proven track record spanning three decades of making sound predictions regarding the effects of a small increase in the level of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere. Those proper scientists would predict that X would happen, I would predict that it wouldn’t, then a couple of decades later I would be proven correct.
“It may as well be a tax on breathing!”
Well, exactly! If you want to stop people breathing, the simplest way is to make it expensive, not to scream and stamp your foot and try and outlaw it. Similarly, if you want to stop people emitting CO2, simply make it expensive.
Economist Tim’s only tool is a hammer.
We need to build nuclear power plants. Hard to get the nation to support it. But i think there is a way. The public will support any infrastructure project provided it is related to sport. Just look what happened with the London Olympics.
Just say that any new sporting stadium must be build with a nuclear reactor.
The price of nuclear is around the same as renewables i.e. hellishly expensive. That’s thanks to the cost of compliance with ever more complex regulations, and the decades of navigating the compliance minefield before a single spade meets a single sod. Compare that with China where it takes about seven years.
Yep. Britain is in early collapse in the prosperity-decadence-collapse cycle. You can no longer afford windmill games.
And Spud is a sod who mightily deserves violent contact with a spade – blade first.
The luvvies at The Guardian luv carbon tax, so it must be the answer.
“Are you a proper scientist at a university, Mark/Western Bloke/Timmy”?
The head of the IPCC between 2002 and 2015 (arguably it’s most prolific time in terms of reports and warnings) was Rajendra Pachauri, a railway engineer.
Seen this, everyone? It should be Yuuuuuge.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2026/05/01/bye-bye-rcp-8-5/
Well, OK. Impose the carbon tax, everything is now in prices and we’re done.
Except it isn’t, is it? You have the “prices”, and then a fucking huge chunk going to government to piss away FOR NO GOOD REASON AT ALL. The “prices” are entirely artificial.
Pigou, get fucked. All this does is subsidise the very people tearing our country apart.
There is little elasticity in energy priceing, anyway. It takes huge price increases to lower consumption. Life takes energy.