Tuesday
Nov232010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Still howlin'
Nov 23, 2010 Energy Politicians Everyone believes their pet project will make an essential contribution to the recovery.
But in energy security and climate change, we have the numbers on our side.
The value of the global low-carbon goods and environmental services market is expected to reach £4 trillion by the end of this Parliament. It is growing at 4% per year, faster than world GDP.
Our share of that market is £112 billion. In the UK, nearly a million people will be employed in the low-carbon sector by the end of the decade.
How many jobs will Huhne have destroyed before even half of those illusory million "low-carbon" replacements have appeared? How many old folk will have died from the winter cold?
Talk about kicking the country when it's down.
Reader Comments (67)
@ Ausie Dan, who says:
The problem is that renewable generation doesn't create jobs. For example, the huge offshore wind development is being constructed by companies like Vattenfall using their own employees who return to Denmark when the projects are complete. Maintenance ditto. Day to day management is going to be done online - remotely - from Denmark.
Solar PV will create a boom in installation jobs for a while, but it won't last. Especially not if the government has an enforced re-think about the FIT because the UK economy cannot stand such profligate and wrong-headed interference (see what is happening in Spain and Germany, where subsidies are being hacked back).
@ DoughieJ, who says:
More like utter, living-in-a-bubble stupidity. China (and India, and the rest of the developing economies) have no choice but to use cheap coal to industrialise - so they will. This utter rubbish about the UK 'leading the way' is, as I said earlier, magical thinking.
Your green acquaintances need a crash course in economics and realpolitik. And smacked bottoms.
@ Martin Brumby, who reports that the Lib Dem manifesto said:
This is, of course, simply an anti-nuclear myth.
What astonishes me is that despite its being routinely and thoroughly debunked, it never, ever goes away. Which is why so many - Lib Dems amongst them - still believe it.
@ Chris
'More fun'. We will see more of this. It should be classed as an attack on the national infrastructure - ie terrorism - and dealt with accordingly.
Imagine if this pillocks actually succeeded? How many UK citizens would die as a result? I wonder if our selfish little eco-numpties actually even vaguely thought it through.
Fifteen years in a cell for post-facto reflection might be a good idea.
Interesting. So Huhne's main justification is that ecofascist "industry" ios growing at 4% entirely because of the massive subsidy & this ios a reason for more massive subsidy.
Apart from the obvious spiraling into catastrophe I should point out that Vritain's Space industries are, according to the government, growing at 5% a year which is clearly a matter of pride (America's is growing at 17%) http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2009/08/x-prize-foundation-act-68-billion-into.html
Our government invest virtually zero in this (we do spend £265 million but it all goes to the European space agency which achieves nothing but pork barreling). This cannot honestly be described as supporting space development.
One assumes Mr Huhne, being in some way honest, will be calling even more loudly for a real budget for space.
Or not as the case may be.
Nuclear, coal, gas generation plants? More mining and associated infrastructure? Pfft. Apart from windmills and other inefficient, aesthetically appalling atrocities, the Greens follow the BANANA philosophy -
Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything
@BBD, 11.31am.
I totally agree with your assessment that it is utter stupidity. I'm just making the point that the obviousness of our insignificance in the global climate scheme of things isn't necessarily an argument ender as far as deep greens are concerned. They recognise this fact, but say we should go ahead anyway to be, in their eyes, leading the world. It's a deeply embedded religious belief.
DougieJ
Oh you and I are in agreement, certainly.
The green 'argument' for aggressive, world-leading decarbonisation (destruction) of the UK economy is a showcase example of the breathtaking combination of arrogance, naivety and basic economic ignorance embodied by much green dogma.
It should never be tolerated. These maundering idiots can ruin their own lives and believe whatever rubbish they please, but they are now operating under the conviction that they have the moral right to inflict their half-baked nonsense on the rest of us.
And that will never do.
"If we don't act now.."
Isn't that what Uncle Gordon said? IIRC, he gave it 50 days, and since that is long past and we are still on dry land, maybe he was exaggerating? I only ask...
Error in earlier rant: Vattenfall is of course a Swedish company, not Danish (although it does business in Denmark).
Apologies to all.
I found Brownedoff´s "Pearls of Wisdom" quite depressing. How long will it take to the suppliers of this wisdom to change course, even when faced with overwhelming facts to the contrary? There will be a need for arguments which makes it possible to reverse with grace. "I have been fooled" is not good enough. Any suggestions?
Gösta Oscarsson
Stockholm (where the politicians produce pearls of equally dubious quality)
Neil Craig @ Nov 24, 2010 at 12:07 PM
One assumes Mr Huhne, being in some way honest, will be calling even more loudly for a real budget for space.
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As a space cadet you'd think Huhne would be very keen on this.
The essential point here is that Huhne is completely ignorant of the fact that all those "jobs" are the cost of his grand scheme, not a benefit.
It's that old Milton Friedman anecdote all over again:
While traveling by car during one of his many overseas travels, Professor Milton Friedman spotted scores of road builders moving earth with shovels instead of modern machinery. When he asked why powerful equipment wasn’t used instead of so many laborers, his host told him it was to keep employment high. If they used tractors or modern road building equipment, fewer people would have jobs was his host’s logic
"Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?” Friedman inquired.
Huhne is proudly telling us how many spoon-wielding jobs he's creating by wrecking our diggers.
Hmmmmm
"Come back Guy Fawkes - All is forgiven!"
Meanwhile, back in the "real" parliament.....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1332803/EU-pay-rises-Extra-3k-year-MEPs-judges-ruling.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
http://www.cfr.org/publication/23037/russell_c_leffingwell_lecture.html
William Hague at the Council for Foreign Relations in September:
September 27, 2010, before the mid term elections, he was asked the question:
"given that there's likely to be a change in the construct of Congress after this election -- and I doubt it is going to be one that is going to have an -- a renewed appetite in climate change, given what I know of some of the races that are out there -- what's that going to do to the impetus in the European Union, in the United Kingdom, to continuing to be at the forefront and making these kinds of very, very substantial investments?"
HAGUE: Well, it won't change the impetus in the United Kingdom and the European Union. We are determined to go ahead whatever is happening in the rest of the world.
Actually, we have passed a climate-change act designed to reduce our emissions in the U.K. by 34 percent by the end of this decade, by 80 percent by the year 2050.
We will do that, and we will press our EU colleagues to do the other things I have described -- unilaterally; we will do that irrespective of global deals.
The real reason Copenhagen did not deliver on high expectations was a lack of political will. Many in developing countries saw a gap between the words and the deeds of the industrialized economies. They questioned whether we really believed our own rhetoric. And to answer those questions, we each need to start at home.
That is why the coalition government to which I belong has committed itself to being the greenest government ever in the United Kingdom, and why, with others in Europe, we are calling on the European Union to commit to a 30-percent cut in emissions by 2020 without waiting for the rest of the world to act.
And that's why I work hand in glove with Chris Huhne, the British Energy and Climate Change secretary, and Andrew Mitchell, the International Development secretary, to ensure that our domestic action reflects our level of international ambition.
Magical thinking.
Gösta Oscarsson:
"There will be a need for arguments which makes it possible to reverse with grace. .. Any suggestions?"
There's an implicit argument in any account of the last days of Nicolae Ceauşescu or Benito Mussolini.
Jane Coles
I rather think that they will disappear with a whisper than with a bang. But that will take time. There are too many linked to the correct creed. There are very few political parties which have consistently been skeptical and thus can benefit from an open show down.
Gösta O