The government is heading for failure on its plans to commit national suicide, its official advisers have warned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) says that unless policies are radically improved, the government will need to use far more draconian measures to curtail normal people’s lifestyles.
Simply insulating everyone’s home would have defrayed £40 of the £1400 that bills have increased by lately.
The CCC also said the environment department Defra was guilty of “magical thinking” over its plan to farm unicorns, for which there are as yet few firm policies.
Unless freedom and unicorn farming are tackled urgently, the UK won’t achieve its target to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, the CCC says.
The committee is an independent body advising on climate policy. This report is an annual review of progress to MPs.
It does praise ministers on the government’s renewable energy programme, saying it will cost people £1250 a year on bills by 2030.
In response to the report, the government noted that over the past three decades the UK had driven the knife in faster than any other G7 country, and that it had clear plans to push it in further.
“The UK is forging ahead of most other countries with around 40% of our power now coming from resource hungry, unreliable, non-dispatchable, environmentally destructive and costly renewables,” it said.
‘Scant evidence’
The committee agrees that carbon-cutting policies are now in place for most sectors of the economy – but it says there’s “scant evidence” that these goals will be delivered.
And it warns that ministers need a back-up plan, including measures they may prefer to avoid such as ordering the public to change behaviour by eating less meat, giving up their cars, turning off the heating and flying only by toadstools.
The chairman, Lord Deben, told Cliscep that recent warm weather in the UK was “very, very worrying”. He continued: “The public should be proud of the UK setting a target to kill itself but I’m very worried that there’s no convincing programme to put the knife in the rest of the way.
“It’s all very well drawing blood, but you can’t just sit there with the knife half in and half out. You have to get on with the job.”
The Committee calls for a public engagement strategy on national suicide and wants analysis from the Treasury explaining how the crippling costs of the low-carbon transition will be kept away from the super-rich.
This year’s report runs to 600 pages – three times longer than usual. That’s because the committee’s budget has risen by 200%, according to a spokesperson. “In any case, no-one will ever read it. We think of it as part of our carbon capture and storage scheme. We just print out 5000 copies and put them in the basement.”
Coal mine plan rejected
In a briefing, the committee again rejected proposals for a new coal mine in Cumbria, since after the nation had killed itself no new steel would be required. But, without any trace of self-awareness, it said there would only be a tiny increase in emissions if old coal stations were used to keep the lights on in the winter.
In the interest of balance, Cliscep found someone more extreme than the CCC to comment on the report in order to make its crazy ideas sound mainstream.
Greenpeace spokesperson Ami McCarthy said: “It’s ironic that the CCC has named this a Progress Report when the government’s progress on national suicide is grinding to a standstill.
“The longer this government drags its feet on greening our homes, delivering renewables and moving our food production system away from meat, the longer we will have to wait until the peasants start revolting. I want to see it burn! All of it! Now!”
==
With apologies to Roger Harrabin
The original is here.
Climate Scepticism 
Superb. Thanks for starting my day with a smile (though I suppose it should be a scowl, given the plans to commit national suicide).
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The ‘scant evidence’ is appropriate coming from the CCC (P), as they have been completely unable to provide any evidence of their AGW cult dogma. I provide their responses, and those of other Gov’ Departments (more have been collected since) in a round up video of the evidence in a video called ‘Are We The Baddies’: https://rumble.com/vt1fax-are-we-the-baddies.html
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I wonder if Harrabin has read your spoof of his article? The heading to his piece has now changed so as to give a totally different emphasis.
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Do we now think JIT should change the title of his spoof to match the change made by Harrabin?
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I don’t know…
I get the impression that both Boris and Lynne Truss are heading in the same direction.
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I meant Liz Truss not Lynne of that ilk.
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Thanks Mark:
Original headline:
Stealth-edited headline:
A completely different spin on things.
The comments are stunning.
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I don’t understand why you apologised to Horrorbin – prize pillock!!!
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Jit, in some ways that elusive headline is changing all the time. The BBC do a thing of using one headline as clickbait, then it morphs into another when you click on the link. This morning the clickbait headline is “UK must insulate to reduce energy bills – committee”.
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Mark,
Yes, the BBC has the bad habit of over-egging its headlines. Take this article, for example:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61976937
The headline says ‘worst heatwave ever recorded’, and this claim is repeated at the head of the article. Only half way down the article does one find that it is the worst for June. Still significant, but not significant enough, it seems, to qualify as a headline for the BBC.
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“Energy industry trade body chief to head UK’s climate watchdog
Emma Pinchbeck will take over as chief executive of Climate Change Committee next month”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/09/energy-industry-trade-body-chief-to-head-uks-climate-watchdog
The government’s official climate watchdog has appointed the head of the energy industry’s trade association to lead its work helping to drive the UK’s emissions to net zero by 2050.
Emma Pinchbeck, the head of Energy UK, will take up the role of chief executive of the Climate Change Committee (CCC) from early next month after four years at the helm of the trade association....
I suppose there was a certain inevitability about this. Here’s Energy UK:
https://www.energy-uk.org.uk/our-work/
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Pinchbeck is, if anything, even more of an ideological fanatic than Milibrain – and she promotes the idea of loading electricity generation costs (subsidies) onto gas, in order to artificially level up the cost of each fuel, which would of course mean that heating your home with gas becomes much more expensive whereas electric heat pumps start to look economically viable.
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We are being run by a largely unelected ideologically driven oligarchy, a group of intimates who move from one highly-paid powerful job to another, with precious little meaningful oversight. We are in a sorry state indeed.
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From Paul Homewood: “Emma Pinchbeck is best known as Deputy Chief Executive at Renewable UK, the lobby group for renewables. Prior to joining RenewableUK, she was head of the Climate Change team at environmental watchdog WWF-UK.”
According to a couple of comments, she does not have any scientific background or experience.
From Energy UK when she became CEO in 2020:
“Biography: Emma Pinchbeck is an expert in whole-economy decarbonisation and the energy transition. From 2016-2020, she served as Deputy CEO of the trade body RenewableUK, in which role she also sat on the Board and on the Board of Scottish Renewables. She holds several board advisory positions, including with Imperial College and Innovate-UK, and is a regular commentator on climate change and renewables in the media. Prior to joining RenewableUK, Emma was Head of the Climate Change team at WWF-UK; in this role she led a team campaigning on the Paris Agreement, on international aviation emissions, and on the UK’s Coal Phase Out. Emma strongly supports efforts to improve diversity in the energy sector and improve working practices in industry, and has been a mentor to various young professionals around her work. She has an MA from the University of Oxford.”
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Ben’s assessment of her:
https://x.com/clim8resistance/status/1843918870509477994
So, she’s an expert in whole-economy decarbonisation. Well, shit us not, because anybody can appoint themselves as an expert in this area, because it’s never bloody well been done before and it probably won’t ever be done, certainly not within the timescale these self-deluded eco-spivs are pretending it can. Expect riots when this “green airhead” doubles the cost of gas fired central heating and domestic water overnight.
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I loosely transcribed an interview with Pinchbeck at Cliscep under The Bill Gets Bigger. This seems to confirm her as a know-nothing who speaks fluently. At the time, her leadership of the National Destruction Committee was a rumour.
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