Last week, the Eastern Daily Press was kind enough to print an opinion piece of mine. This was written in response to another opinion article, one which bemoaned the lack of progress at COP28, and how damaging this was for Norfolk.

I don’t think my opinion made it to the online newspaper, so I’m posting it here. Naturally it is aimed at a different audience than my usual offerings at Cliscep, one whose members are probably only peripherally aware of things that we obsess over. I skate over a lot of points very rapidly because I only had 600 words to say everything. My original draft was 1000 words, and whole paragraphs had to be sacrificed to reach the word limit (the piece I was responding to was longer).

My goal was to state things that I believe to be true, in a style accessible to a general audience, in a polite way, with none of the snark that sometimes decorates my posts here.

I encourage readers to engage with their local newspapers in a similar manner. It is our duty not to abandon the field to those whose noble aims but incoherent thinking would doom our civilisation.

Finally, much respect to the EDP for airing views that are forbidden in some quarters.

Here is the opinion piece I was responding to.

Net Zero is more damaging for us than climate change

[Title slightly modified by the EDP]

Charlie Gardner (Opinion, 15th January) says COP28 failures are bad for Norfolk. That may well be the case. But failure was eminently foreseeable. The clue is in the name: COP28. This was the 28th such shindig, and after almost all of them, global emissions of carbon dioxide have increased – exceptions being the financial crisis year and the Covid year.

The reason is the different aims of guilt-wracked Western democracies like the UK, and growing countries like China.

China is willing to watch and even applaud as we destroy our manufacturing and are therefore increasingly forced to buy their goods. They are willing to sell us wind turbines and solar panels, especially if it makes our electricity, and our manufacturing, yet more uncompetitive. For China, it’s a win-win scenario. It becomes richer by selling us stuff we can no longer afford to make. And if our reductions in carbon dioxide emissions really do help the climate… why, then the benefits are spread all across the globe, among those doing the work and those sitting in the shade alike.

Dr. Gardner exhorts us all to make individual efforts to save the climate. Such efforts are noble, but pointless. The UK’s per capita carbon dioxide emissions are already now, quite surprisingly perhaps, at or around the world’s average. Compare that to the United States, which is fond of lecturing us about any backsliding (e.g. in respect of the Cumbrian coal mine), but whose own per capita emissions are now about three times ours. Most people in Norfolk really do not have a large enough ecological footprint to feel guilty about.

The UK’s Net Zero policies are biting Norfolk far more than climate change is – which is rather ironic. The UK has the second most expensive electricity in the world – and no, it is not due to over-reliance on fossil fuels! Rather it is because we have installed so much generating capacity that cannot be relied upon to produce when we need it. Prime farmland is carpeted with solar panels – and produces a big fat nothing at five p.m. on a winter’s evening. Wind turbines occasionally produce too much, and we have to pay them for electricity we can’t use. Often they produce too little. Meanwhile the grid has to do a furious juggling act to keep the lights on. Anyone who tells you that renewables are the answer is not thinking it through. It doesn’t matter how many renewables you install. At points in time, they will still produce nothing. And battery backup won’t help. It will help its operators make a quick buck every time supply is tight and the cost of electricity is high. But providing durable power over time? No chance. Anyone who opposes nuclear is not serious about Net Zero. (The RSPB absurdly opposes Sizewell C, while supporting wind farms that will kill beautiful seabirds like kittiwakes.)

With Net Zero, every year, the screw tightens. Prosperity is growing in countries that are using more energy, and consequently emitting more carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, cuts in carbon dioxide emissions for countries like the UK become harder and harder year by year, and erode our wealth and freedoms. And thanks to the stitch up between the major parties in Westminster, nobody asked whether you and me were on board with the project. The technocrats simply declared it was happening and that was that.

The problem with Net Zero is that, noble in aim, in practice, it will be ruinously destructive. Sooner or later the UK’s rush to Net Zero will go off the rails. Then we will all be looking at one another wondering how we got here.

Come the election, I’ll be asking any candidate who knocks on my door: Are you for Net Zero? If their answer is yes… my answer to them will be a firm No.

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17 Comments

  1. Well said Jit!

    I have a simple motto:

    Net Zero means we are paying for the destruction of our economy and society in pursuit of an unachievable and pointless policy.

    Liked by 3 people

  2. Ah, the joys of Newsquest. I thought it odd there were “No Comments” until I clicked on the link and found eight, with one concerned individual still trying to flog the flooding nonsense from Climate Central.

    I do, though, like the fact you’re allowed some basic formatting and direct links, unlike the bare-bones approach at the Hereford Times. But at least John Wilson (HT Editor) didn’t ban me, as one irate individual demanded.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Ah yes, opinion. I remember it well.

    It’s what used to exist on both sides of an argument. Now it only exists on one – the other side being occupied by the ‘new denial’:

    “Third of UK teenagers believe climate change exaggerated, report shows”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/16/third-of-uk-teenagers-believe-climate-change-exaggerated-report-shows

    “The report published on Tuesday shows a shift from the “old denial” – that climate change is not happening or not anthropogenic – to the “new denial”. These new denial narratives that question the science and solutions for climate change constituted 35% of all climate denial on YouTube in 2018, but now represent the large majority (70%). Over the same period, the share of old denial has dropped from 65% to 30% of total claims.”

    So you see, Jit, being a misinformer, you are not entitled to calling your position an opinion. I could have you arrested for that digital hate alone.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. “Ignore the French: Net Zero is destroying British industry, not Brexit
    Our fixation with decarbonisation will be economically ruinous. On the continent, it could be even worse”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/31/ignore-the-french-net-zero-is-destroying-british-industry/

    …it was Net Zero that killed off steel making in Port Talbot. The government decided to give Tata Steel £500 million to close down its traditional blast furnaces, and replace them with electric ones, which, while they generate less carbon dioxide, also employ far fewer workers. If there was more flexibility in the target, and some recognition that the UK was the first major developed country to halve its emissions, the plants would have been perfectly viable for many more years. At the same time, sky high energy prices, demented planning rules, and very soon carbon taxes as well, all demanded by the Net Zero fanatics, are making the operating environment tougher for industry than at any time over the last 50 years…

    …It is easy to blame Brexit for anything that goes wrong. But in reality, it is Net Zero that is killing off British industry, and very soon it will be killing off what remains of French industry as well.

    Liked by 2 people

  5. Jit, your opinion piece is in Newsbank at EDP (and at Norwich Evening News) but not, as you said, at EDP’s website (or NEN’s). A bit odd, that.

    Newsbank also has a response to your piece that was apparently published today. It’s by James Harvey, a Green Party councillor for the Plumstead ward. I can supply a Newsbank link but you’d need a suitable library card to view it, so perhaps it’d be simpler (if illegal?) if I just quote the whole thing.

    Jit Thacker, in his response to Dr Charlie Gardner’s letter of January 15 wrote and [sic] Opinion column on January 24 about Net Zero, COP28 and Climate Change.

    I prefer the expression Climate Breakdown.

    I don’t agree with his sentiment on Net Zero, although it does have its flaws.

    We need ‘Real Zero’ policies, or at least more stringent accounting and reporting on what counts towards Net Zero. We cannot afford reductions in net emissions which rely upon initiatives such as carbon capture and storage, ‘sustainable’ aviation fuel, or dubious tree planting schemes, all tantamount to green-washing.

    The target of 2050 for Net Zero is far too late, and puts the burden on future generations to solve something that will be irreversible by then.

    To suggest that Net Zero targets and UK action on reducing emissions are damaging the UK more than climate breakdown is at the very least irresponsible, and shows a lack of empathy for the dire straits many are in.

    Perhaps it’s calculated misdirection given Dr Thacker works for a company paid by road schemes and HS2; one wonders at his motivations. Has he looked out of the window recently and seen the flooding impacting large parts of Norfolk, or the harvest failures? Farmers and many Norfolk residents are having a hell of a time of it.

    Last year we saw record average temperature across the globe, and this year is set to be even worse. Come summer Norfolk could be frying, with water shortages and wild-fires.

    The UK’s carbon emissions are not insignificant, especially when one takes into account historic emissions, as well as those from the manufacture of goods and services we outsource abroad, and shipping and aviation.

    The richest 10 per cent on the planet are responsible for 49pc of lifestyle emissions, the poorest 50pc for just 10pc (source Oxfam’s Confronting Carbon Inequality report). Guess which bracket the UK sits in.

    The China argument is an emotive one, but again laced with misdirection. China has the fastest growing renewables programme in the world, and it’s a travesty the UK hasn’t kept up.

    We had the opportunity, but instead have squandered money on subsidising oil and gas companies to the tune of £236m a week. Imagine what that money could do for creating new jobs in the renewables industry and powering the UK with secure, green energy, not to mention helping the NHS and welfare services. We have the solutions, we just lack the political will.

    Renewable energy could power the UK through a combination of wind (onshore and offshore), tidal and solar, and perhaps even geothermal; the latter is being explored in old coal mines in the south west, and other parts of the UK.

    Renewables are cheaper, cleaner, mean lower bills, and are quicker to come online than oil and gas projects.

    The argument that sometimes the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine is out-of-date and completely solvable through long duration energy storage including battery technology, upgrades to the national grid and grid balancing, and a reduction in energy consumption via initiatives such as better insulated homes.

    We have enough existing oil and gas reserves to see us through a transition period without the need to grant new licenses, which the current government is intent on doing; more sick profits for fossil fuel companies at our expense.

    We need rapid de-carbonisation now, to not do so would be ‘ruinously destructive’. We need to set an example, take responsibility for our historical actions and actually become the world leaders the government keeps falsely claiming us to be.

    No more new road building (fix our pot holes instead), no more new oil and gas, no more destruction of our wild places and rare species; we’re the most nature denuded country in Europe.

    Invest instead in public and active transport, and renewable energy.

    The clock is ticking, and future generations will hold us to account.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Wow. I would suggest that contains quite a bit of “calculated misdirection” or – to be generous – misguided optimism and belief in statistics that I suggest he would struggle to justify. Where to start?

    Renewables aren’t cheap, that’s simply wrong, as is the suggestion that they mean lower bills.

    The China statistics he quotes may be true, but are irrelevant. China’s per capita CO2 emissions are more than 50% higher than the UK’s, and China’s population is close to 20 x greater than the UK’s.

    We don’t subsidise oil and gas companies to the tune of £236m a week.

    I agree with “no more destruction of our wild places and rare species”, so let’s stop building wind farms in such places, shall we?

    The intermittency of renewables most certainly is not “completely solvable through long duration energy storage including battery technology, upgrades to the national grid and grid balancing, and a reduction in energy consumption via initiatives such as better insulated homes.”.

    What is to be done in the face of such blatant misinformation? I have no doubt Mr Harvey sincerely believes what he wrote. But he could hardly be more wrong.

    Liked by 2 people

  7. Thanks Vinny – I think! Nice to see that the first resort is to question my motives. Mr. Harvey might be surprised to find out that I voted for his guys at the last council election. Why? Because they were the only ones who knocked on my door and asked for my vote. I had a nice chat with their councillor. We disagreed about nuclear and wind power, but on good terms.

    Needless to say, I won’t vote Green in the national election.

    And thanks Mark for answering some of his points.

    I should get in touch with him and buy him a latte.

    Like

  8. Bravo JIT for a well balanced article aimed at Joe Public.

    It will take time, but bit by bit as the dire realities of NZ hit home to the UK public this is a useful & needed step.

    Like

  10. Dougie, WordPress has made updates lately that have changed commenting behaviour. However, I have not noticed anything different within the past month or so. Has something changed for you?

    Like

  12. Hi JIT, my comment appeared ok, but only after a new WordPress box appeared.
    will see what happens when I post this comment.

    Like

  15. There is no need whatsoever for net zero. Earth’s climate has always changed and always will change. However, the minuscule amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (just 4 molecules out of every 10,000) – 97% of which is emitted naturally and which is vital for all life on earth – is not a pollutant and is NOT the driver of temperature changes, being long since “saturated”. There is NO climate crisis, as easily available scientific data (rather than regurgitated pseudo-science scaremongering nonsense and political propaganda) will readily evidence. Doubters might like to start here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/680720179063150/

    Like

  16. “Germany’s Net Zero dogma ‘absolutely toxic’, industry boss warns”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/02/06/ftse-100-markets-latest-news-net-zero-germany-bp/

    You have to scroll down quite a way to find it, but here is what was said:

    …a top German industry chief despaired that Olaf Scholz’s net zero policies are “absolutely toxic” in a stinging criticism of the chancellor’s leadership.

    Siegfried Russwurm, head of the BDI, said his country’s climate agenda is “more dogmatic than any other country I know”.

    He warned that Germany was being placed at a disadvantage because of the government’s phasing out of nuclear energy and switching to renewables from coal and gas.

    “Nobody can say with any certainty today what our energy supply will look like in seven years’ time, and that’s why no one can say how high energy prices will be in Germany then,” he told the Financial Times.

    “For companies that have to make investment decisions, that is absolutely toxic.”

    Germany’s economy shrank by 0.3pc last year, while the OECD said its gross domestic product would expand by just 1.1pc in 2024…

    Like

  17. It occurred to me the other day that CO2 may be Gaia’s way of greening the planet to support the growing population.

    Like

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