Today on BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme, a remarkable interview took place between the presenter, Simon Jack (“SJ”), and Sir Dieter Helm (“DH”). During the interview Sir Dieter said many of the things that have been said repeatedly by climate sceptics. One can only assume that he – unlike most, if not all, sceptics – was allowed on to say what he did, because he says we (by which he means society globally – more on that below) need to “decarbonise” in order to “deal with” climate change.
The interview followed an extensive section commencing with a clip of then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, announcing his government’s plans to decarbonise electricity generation by 2035, followed by the good news that offshore wind has (according to the BBC) been “a staggering success story” and that “prices have fallen by 75% in the last decade.” “It’s cheap and it’s clean”, we were told (where are the BBC Verify Team and the climate misinformation specialists when you need them?).
There followed an interview with Conservative MP Sir Bernard Jenkin, apparently a believer in net zero, but not a supporter of putting the pylons to take the power from offshore wind farms to where it is needed, via his constituency. That was followed by an interview with EDF’s Director of Offshore & Ireland, Ryanne Burges, in which she claimed that offshore wind is competitive and that “renewables is [sic] the cheapest form of energy that we have at this point in time.”
Simon Jack proceeded from that interview to the next by asking “So are we at an impasse now between what’s possible, what’s affordable and what’s acceptable to the people? That’s the question I put to Sir Dieter Helm, Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford, and I said to him [sic] whether we’re having an honest debate, as I put to Ryanne there, about the costs and trade-offs required to get to net zero.
DH: No, I think the debate is, er, has been to date pretty dishonest. I mean, you know, the idea that well it’s, you know, all going to be cheap, er, there are going to be no costs and all benefits, you know, it’s all, er, up-side is a delusion, you know, we are er nearly 80% fossil fuel-based in this country and if people genuinely want to decarbonise the whole system, er in 25 or 28 years, and decarbonise the entirety of the electricity system in, what, 12 years, or in Labour’s case, about 6 or 7, then it, we should have a debate about what that involves, how that will actually change our landscape, er what the costs will be, and what implications follow for the intermittency and for the networks, etc., and whose going to pay those bills. And what happens is you run down a route encouraged by lots of lobbyists and others, er, for er very reasonable reasons, you run down a route without thinking through the consequences and what’s required – and Nick Winser’s report is very good on this – is a proper spatial plan. We have to know how it all fits together, what in totality is required, and how that’s co-ordinated. Otherwise you end up with people being told it’s not going to cost them anything and then discovering that switching from a higly carbonised economy overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels, on a fast track to one that isn’t, is actually going to be costly. And at the first whiff of cost, like the first whiff of gunpowder at a battle, er the edifice starts to crumble, or at least starts to be politically questioned, and that’s exactly what’s going on now. And it was all very predictable, and the spatial planning, the summation of what’s required, a proper plan to get from here to there, and honesty about the cost, would do a lot to help us address climate change, er as opposed to getting just de-railed, which is what the risk now is.
SJ: And just a final thought, on our sort of trajectory towards net zero, the Government is very keen to stress that we’ve cut emissions by forty-something per cent, and at the same time our economy has doubled in size, it shows that those two things are compatible. What do you make of progress to date? And obviously the UK has been lauded as a leader in offshore wind, and sort of getting emissions down most of any G7 country, are we at some kind of inflexion point about, in our progress towards that, is our progress going to be linear from here?
DH: Well, the important thing to always bear in mind is the word global in the words “global warming”. It doesn’t matter where the emissions are cut, and it doesn’t matter where the emissions are caused, we have to get er these emissions down. And, you know, the UK has two great things to contribute to the globe on climate change. Offshore wind – because we’ve got one of the best locations in the world for it – and, er, carbon capture and storage because we’ve got a network of depleted wells offshore in the North Sea. What we’ve actually done is fast-tracked, er, the reduction of emissions, which is not surprising for an economy which has also for the last twenty, thirty, forty years been fast-tracking the closure of its manufacturing industry. You know, we are 80% services. If emissions can’t be got down in a service economy like ours it will be extraordinarily difficult anywhere else in the world. But simply importing all that stuff, rather than producing it at home, doesn’t do much for climate change. And the question is one which I think isn’t understood in the UK, er an politicians mislead us. You know, it’s not the case that if we get to net zero in the UK we’ll stop causing climate change. You have to stop all those imports and think about all those foreign holidays, etc. Erm, you know, what we have to do is address global warming and that means that we have to think how is the best, what’s the best thing we can do with the money we’re gonna have to spend to get down global emissions of er carbon, and the sad fact is, er, for those who believe, you know, we can unilaterally do this, is that er, you know, elsewhere offers lots of opportunities as well. And we should always measure our carbon consumption, stop kidding ourselves that if we import something instead of producing it at home, somehow that makes us virtuous. Well, it doesn’t, and again what one requires is realism to get on the serious path to global decarbonisation.
Summary
Sir Dieter’s words speak for themselves, but I hope I fairly paraphrase his message as follows:
1. We’ve had a pretty dishonest debate to date. It’s not all upside. There are real costs, in terms of damaging the countryside, problems with intermittency of supply, and serious financial implications – who is going to pay for it?
2. We have lacked a proper plan. Now that the detail is having to be worked out, and the costs (financial and otherwise) are becoming apparent, the edifice is beginning to crumble.
3. Destroying our manufacturing base and exporting our emissions, by having our products made elsewhere, isn’t virtuous at all, it’s self-deceiving. This is about global emissions, and exporting emissions isn’t the same as reducing them.
4. We’re now effectively a service economy. Cutting emissions here is easier than in a manufacturing economy. It’s going to be very difficult to achieve elsewhere.
5. We can’t deal with climate change unilaterally. Others have to cut their emissions. The politicians have misled us.
6. If we’re serious about this, then you can forget your foreign holidays and your imported products.
Let’s hope at least some well-placed politicians were listening.
Climate Scepticism 
Bang on!
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sounds like a lot of old twaddle to me.
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By the way, it’s worth reading/listening to that interview in conjunction with this:
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Helm agrees with everything sceptics have been saying for a long, long time, with the exception that many sceptics do not think the Net Zero project (globally) is necessary. Naturally if “global boiling” is a massive exaggeration – and I think it is, and I know a lot of sceptics agree – then Net Zero is only worthwhile if it has net benefits in other spheres (e.g. electricity prices…).
Unfortunately, since Net Zero is almost totally downside, i.e. the co-benefits are minor and the costs enormous, there is no rational argument for it.
Helm moves the goalposts but in a rational way given the premise that catastrophic or at least very severe climate change is incoming. The unassailable point is that the UK should not shoulder the costs of action when the benefits are thinly spread globally and incapable in themselves of achieving anything unless a substantial proportion of countries join us.
So much so obvious. Pity our politicians are incapable of grasping the obvious.
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Jit, you say ‘Pity our politicians are incapable of grasping the obvious.‘
They did once. See this White Paper of February 2003: Our energy future – creating a low carbon economy (http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090609003228/http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file10719.pdf). It contains several references to the need for international action. Here are two:
From Tony Blair’s Forward:
From Chapter 1, section 1.9:
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It’s entertaining, like watching a shipwreck entertaining, to listen yo what passes for “thought leaders” admit that they are part of a huge lie. And even admit parts of the lie they are supporting. And then the brave “thought leader” looks the central lie straight on and reconfitms it. The reason all of the lies about net zero are necessary is obvious and staring us all in the face.
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I believe this is a ‘must read’ article. It’s full of quotable material – for example:
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Robin – thanks for that link.
followed up Kenichi Ohmae link 1st out of curiosity – seems his claim to fame is the 3 cs model.
wonder what that novel insight might be – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3Cs_model
“Clients are the base of any strategy according to Ohmae. Therefore, the primary goal is supposed to be the interest of the customer and not those of the shareholders for example. In the long run, a company that is genuinely interested in its customers will be interesting for its investors and take care of their interests automatically. Segmentation is helping to understand the customer.”
profound & don’t think I’ll read any further.
well he/she has a “There is also a new 3 Cs model emerging which centers on sustainability”
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David Turver, as usual, is spot on, and highly amusing with it:
“Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’
Bob Dylan
Last week’s article about the pillars supporting net zero crumbling was mainly about the scientific observations, failed predictions and poor strategy. However, as I was researching and writing the article, I could not help but notice that something had changed. A dam had burst, the Rubicon had been crossed and lines in the sand had been washed away. A steady stream of senior figures had started to cast doubt on the Net Zero agenda.
Temper Tantrums from Net Zero True Believers
However, the true believers are not going down without a fight. There has been an outbreak of temper tantrums among the true believers in the Net Zero agenda.
Chris Skidmore who recently conducted an “independent” review of Net Zero said Rishi Sunak was on the “wrong side of history” to announce the new drilling licenses in the North Sea. This is slightly odd because it might give a bigger market for the Emissions Capture Company, who pay Skidmore a hefty salary. Naturalist Chris Packham also hit out at the decision to allow new drilling licenses in the North Sea as a “dark day for life on earth.”
Tory peer Zac Goldsmith said that Michael Gove “must be a monster to attack green policies.” George Monbiot, who has yet to find a hair-shirt that is uncomfortable enough, raged that Rishi Sunak will “sell out the planet to the dirtiest bidders.”
Perhaps the biggest catastrophist is UN chief Antonio Guterres who was perhaps detecting a change in the political wind when he declared that the world has moved to the era “global boiling.”
Note how all their arguments are emotional, talking about selling out, the wrong side of history, dark days and even boiling. Such extreme rhetoric is surely counter-productive, particularly as bad case of asymptomatic global warming seems to be afflicting Britain this summer.
It is certainly encouraging that the political wind has changed direction. It is also interesting that now it is socially acceptable for mainstream commentators to cast doubt on the Net Zero agenda. However, no action has yet been taken to dismantle Net Zero policies or legislation. So far, it is simply a softening of rhetoric and not an actual change of policy. In fact just a few days ago, the Government announced a £22m increase in the budget allocated to renewables in Allocation Round 5 (AR5). Plus, granting new North Sea licenses is not the same as actually approving an exploration or development programme.
However, now that the cracks are appearing, it is important that we drive wedges into the cracks and hammer them home so that the Net Zero edifice collapses. It is surely untenable that any Government can continue with these policies in defiance of such strong public opposition. Eventually, physics, economics and democracy will triumph over political dogma. We can only hope the eventual victory comes before too much more damage is done.”
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/political-support-for-net-zero-cracking
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‘It is surely untenable that any Government can continue with these policies in defiance of such strong public opposition.‘
Especially so in the run-up to a general election. A great article – thanks.
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Good article by Fraser Myers at Spiked.
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Yes, an excellent summary. That sort of thing is why I wrote this:
And this:
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An interesting piece by the ever-thoughtful Douglas Fraser:
“The great energy transition: Who pays the bill?”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-66422273
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Speaking of Spiked, these are the stories on the front page at the moment:
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Agree with Mark. An excellent summary of the Net Zero democratic mandate which also exposes the truth behind Thatcher’s rapid conversion to climate catastrophism – her government used it as a convenient excuse to start closing mines.
Fraser Myers was in my bad books awhile back; something related to Covid I think, but here he is clearly damning of efforts to ‘follow the science’ regardless of democratic legitimacy.
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The retreat starts slowly at first…
“Plans to phase out fossil fuel boilers in Manx put back to 2024”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-66429662
It will be interesting to see if the date is pushed back again.
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