Prologue: The decay of politics
For several decades now, there has been a continual decline
in the quality of the political atmosphere, in the UK and elsewhere. In the UK,
I think this probably dates back to the 1970s and Old Labour; but the Tories and
New Labour have both actively helped it along. Government has lost respect for the
people it is supposed to serve. It treats us, at best, as if we were naughty
children. It takes no account of what we actually are: thinking, feeling human
beings, who need freedom and justice in order to live our lives to the full. In
consequence, many people have begun to lose confidence in politics and government,
no matter which party is in power. And among such people there is a, slowly but
inexorably, mounting sense of exasperation with the political establishment and
those in it. The Brexit referendum vote in 2016, and the meteoric rise of the
Brexit Party in the first half of 2019, were signs of this.
Meanwhile, the political class and their cohorts (such as
bureaucrats, academe, media, big-company bosses) have steadily become more and
more authoritarian, arrogant, dishonest, deceitful, untrustworthy, grasping, irresponsible,
evasive of accountability, hypocritical, hysterical, and lacking in concern for
us “little people.” It is as if they have formed themselves into a giant, psychopathic,
criminal gang; and we are their chosen victims.
You can see this in their erection of millions of cameras
to spy on us. In their tracking of our Internet and phone usage. In their obvious
desire to use any “crisis” they can drum up, such as the COVID epidemic, to take
away or restrict our liberties. But nowhere is it more clearly reflected than by
their conduct on environmental issues, such as the matter often called “climate
change” or, alternatively, “global warming,” “climate crisis” or “climate
emergency.” And, in particular, by the UK government’s Ten Point Plan for a
Green Industrial Revolution [[1]],
published in November 2020.
The Ten Point Plan
The plan sets out policies the UK government intends to
force on people over the next ten years and more, in the name of “building back
better, supporting green jobs, and accelerating our path to net zero.” It shows
just how far into the abyss prime minister Boris Johnson, the ruling Tory
party, and the rest of the UK political establishment have descended.
Under more auspicious circumstances, some aspects of this
would be quite amusing. The phrase “green industrial revolution” is lifted verbatim
from the Labour party’s 2019 manifesto [[2]].
Yet this is a Tory government that is doing these things to us! Johnson writes
in a foreword about his ambitious plans “to unite and level up our country.” That
same Labour manifesto said “The climate and environmental emergency is a chance
to unite the country…” and spoke of “levelling up across the country.” I’ve
long been saying there’s no real difference between the mainstream political parties
in the UK; and this proves it.
I’ll give some thoughts about the ten points themselves,
before descending into the politics.
One: “advancing offshore wind.” “By 2030 we plan to
quadruple our offshore wind capacity,” so they say, to 40 gigawatts. I feel a
sense of déjà vu. Back in 2007, New Labour promised
33 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2020. How many got built? Just over 10. Good enough
for government work, I suppose. They say also that the cost of offshore wind power
has fallen by two-thirds in the last five years, and is likely to fall still
further. But at least one expert says the opposite: [[3]].
Now, I do
know that the UK government has over many years been very cavalier in the way
it has treated costs and benefits of anything environmental. I know, also, that
wind power is intermittent, so must always be backed up by a reliable source of
base load power, whose costs must also be taken into account. Moreover, the ten-point
plan uses the word could repeatedly, whenever it discusses touted
benefits. Making me think, pigs could fly.
Two: “driving
the growth of low carbon hydrogen.” Which could provide “a clean source
of fuel and heat for our homes, transport and industry.” And the UK is a world
leader in “investigating the use of hydrogen for heating.” But what would be
needed to make hydrogen as a fuel work cost-effectively on a large scale isn’t
off-the-shelf technology, or anything like it. And hydrogen has problems of its
own: like cost, safety, difficulty of storage and of transport. Moreover, current
commercial means of making it also emit lots of carbon dioxide. Overall, this
comes over to me as pie in the sky.
Three:
“delivering new and advanced nuclear power.” Hooray! A half-way sensible idea
at last. Nuclear power is proven technology; the French have already been there.
Unlike wind, it can generate the base load which any industrial civilization needs.
There is plenty of fuel for decades at least, even without breeder reactors.
And, despite Chernobyl and Fukushima, it has a good safety record. It is
expensive, though. But much of the expense is down to long project timescales
with their associated uncertainties, and costs deliberately imposed by
government on behalf of activist groups, through “regulatory ratcheting” and
“regulatory turbulence.” Indeed, there are still ructions and uncertainties
over the proposed Sizewell C reactor development. And even Hinckley Point C,
given in the plan as a case study, has faced immense political obstacles,
including some put up by the EU and the United Nations.
Small
modular reactors stand out as a potential for the future. But these are still
at the development stage. And there is, as yet, no licensing régime to allow
them to go live.
Four:
“accelerating the shift to zero emission vehicles.” With current technology,
this means electric cars and vans. Now, electric vehicles have many
disadvantages over conventional ones. Higher purchase price. No real
second-hand market yet; and part exchange will become unviable, as petrol and
diesel cars become all but worthless. Increased weight. Short range per fill-up.
Slow charging, likely meaning long queues at filling stations. The possibility
of a very dangerous fire in the event of an accident. Potential world shortages
of materials to make the batteries. Battery disposal issues.
A major
shift towards electric cars would also require a huge and potentially
de-stabilizing makeover of the electricity grid. The roll-out of car charging
points to tens of millions of homes and tens of thousands of filling station
pumps would be an expensive nightmare. And how would those, who have to park our
cars some distance from our front doors, be able to charge them overnight?
The plan
talks of “thousands more ultra-low and zero-emission cars and vans on UK roads”
and “thousands more charge points in homes.” But they understate the problem by
many orders of magnitude. There are more than 35 million cars and vans on UK
roads today!
Moreover,
the Tories have behaved very dishonestly towards car drivers. First, they put into
their 2019 manifesto a date (2040) for banning the sale of new petrol and
diesel cars; so, they could claim that those, who really only voted for them to
get Brexit done, also voted for that. Second, in July 2020 they held a
“consultation” on the issue of “de-carbonizing transport.” I spent almost a
month writing a 58-page, reasoned response, with many good arguments why nothing
needed to be done at all, and everyone should be left free to choose whatever
form or forms of transport best suit them and their circumstances. But all the
points I, and others of like mind, made were totally ignored. This showed that
the whole “consultation” was, as I had cynically expected, just a rubber-stamping
exercise for the deep green political agenda. A rubber stamp, which they then
used to pull the date of the ban forward from 2040 to 2030.
And
then, there’s this. “We will need to ensure that the tax system encourages the
uptake of EVs and that revenue from motoring taxes keeps pace with this
change.” I think I know what that means, for those who can’t afford to buy a
new electric car. To retain mobility, they will have no option but to keep on running
older petrol or diesel cars. But the taxes on these cars will be jacked up so
high, that they won’t be able to afford to do that either. So, these people – and,
I suspect, a very large number of people, including me – will lose mobility
entirely. So much for Johnson’s “level up our country!”
Five:
“green public transport, cycling and walking.” I’m old enough to have a free
pass to use buses; but I don’t use them that much, because they aren’t
convenient. (Only one route goes within half a mile of my home; and that isn’t
very frequent, and doesn’t run at all in the evening or on Sunday). And many
buses are uncomfortable, if not also slow. There are two railway stations down
in the valley, but it’s a steep uphill hike back from either of them. As to the
bicycle, it’s a fine means of transport in its place. I know this, because I
once bicycled coast-to-coast across North America! But it isn’t a practical way
for a 67-year-old, who lives at the top of a steep hill, to get around.
Walking, too, can be pleasant and healthy; I do a lot of it. But it’s slow. And
if you have a heavy load to carry (I play the tuba!), it’s a no-no.
What
comes through very strongly here is the lack of concern for ordinary human
beings. The plans seem directed at making life even more difficult for car
drivers, with yet more bus and cycle lanes and schemes like low traffic
neighbourhoods, rather than improving anything. These schemes have already
caused difficulties for those who must travel by car, such as disabled
people. And some of them have significantly increased journey times, and caused
more pollution. Those who live in big cities or in town centres may, perhaps, think
they would be better off with more public transport and less cars. But those
who live in the countryside, in villages, on the outskirts of towns or in outer
suburbs are likely to find themselves getting an extremely bad deal. This,
again, is hardly “levelling up.” It is class war, being waged by an urban élite
against the country and suburban people.
Six:
“jet zero and green ships.” When I looked for details on zero-emission aircraft,
I didn’t find much. My expectation is that they will, when (if?) they arrive,
be smaller, slower, more expensive to run and with a shorter range than today’s
jets. That would price many people out of the market for air travel, as well as
raising the costs of long-distance trade, and so increasing the cost of living
for everyone. The plan does mention “battery and hydrogen aircrafts.” But batteries
have orders of magnitude less energy density than conventional jet fuels. And a
vice-president of Airbus says that “the road to widespread hydrogen adoption in
aviation is still long.” As to ships, electric container ships seem to be a
non-starter, and large hydrogen powered ships look a long way off.
Seven:
“greener buildings.” Heat pumps seem to be the proposed method of choice for
future heating. But they are hugely expensive up-front, and installation is
difficult. You may need new, larger radiators, too. But what if you don’t have
the space for them? And, so I’m told, heat pumps are noisy, and more expensive
to run than gas heating. And they stop working in the coldest weather; exactly
when we need heat the most. In any case, how can you afford to install a heat
pump if you don’t have the money? And what are older people to do, who have
barely enough to live on anyway? How can they afford to “improve the energy
efficiency of homes and replace fossil fuel heating?” They can’t. Nor will they
be able to move, since the government plans to make selling or renting out
older, unimproved homes “illegal!”
Tucked
away at the bottom is a promise to “improve energy efficiency standards of
household products so they use less energy and materials.” I think I know what
that means; less and less effective appliances. Remember the EU directives that
gave us expensive light bulbs that don’t deliver enough light to see by, and
vacuum cleaners that don’t clean our carpets properly? This sounds like more of
the same, in spades.
Eight:
“investing in carbon capture, usage and storage.” If CO2 emissions actually
were the problem that they’re made out to be, this might be a good idea. But it
looks horribly expensive. The idea of storing the stuff under the North Sea
sounds dubious. And there have been failed projects of this kind already in
Germany, Norway and the USA, at least. Oh, and look at who the big players are
in this pseudo “market.” I googled “carbon capture technology,” and the first
three hits I got were ads from Shell, Aramco and Exxon Mobil!
Nine:
“protecting our natural environment.” “We will safeguard our cherished
landscapes, restore habitats for wildlife in order to combat biodiversity loss
and adapt to climate change.” Despite that twee sentiment, this is actually one
of the few half way sensible sets of ideas in this plan. Better flood defences
and planting more trees, indeed, are two of the very few ideas here that could
actually bring genuine benefits to real people.
But I
still can’t rid myself of the thought that all the pap about humans damaging wildlife
and biodiversity is really just a smokescreen. Whenever I ask a green supporter
to name a species to whose extinction I have contributed, and to say
what I did, and when, to contribute to that extinction, I never get a factual
answer. And when I ask for hard evidence that humans are causing a
biodiversity problem, all I get is links to alarmist reports from the World
Wildlife Federation, or from the UN’s IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy
Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) – see [[4]].
IPBES is, almost exactly, the equivalent on this issue of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the global warming one. And its chairman is
one Sir Robert Watson, who was also chairman of the IPCC from 1997 to 2002!
Ten:
“green finance and innovation.” Aha, I knew the money men would get their cut! The
big question, of course, is where will the money for all these schemes come
from? “Green bonds” may sound like a great idea. But I wonder whether realistic
investors may not choose to stay clear
of projects so big and complex that, even if well run, they would be very
likely to tank. With politicians involved, that becomes absolutely certain to
tank. Moreover, it’s clear from phrases like “mandatory reporting of
climate-related financial information” and “ensure an equitable balance of
contributions across society” that huge tax rises are planned to finance all
this. And these taxes won’t go to help the poor; no, sir. These taxes will
re-distribute wealth from the politically poor – us ordinary people – to the
politically rich. The beneficiaries will be those, including the politicians
and the big-company bosses, that want to profit from forcing us into an unjust,
unfree, nightmare “green” world.
Is that
all? Hell, no. The final section, “the race to zero,” says: “In the coming
year, we will set out further plans for reducing emissions across all the UK’s
major economic sectors.” The pain and fall-out from all this for the ordinary
people of the UK are only just beginning.
Comparison with the Industrial Revolution
The title “green industrial revolution” invites comparison
with the Industrial Revolution, which began in the mid to late 18th
century, and is arguably still in progress today. Now, the Industrial
Revolution, in the UK at least, was an organic, bottom-up revolution. It was
not initiated, or controlled, by government. Indeed, government didn’t even do that
much to help it along. I can think of only three helpful things it did. It
suppressed the destructive Luddites. It decided where new railway tracks could
be built, over the opposition of the local landlords. And it introduced the
idea of limited liability, under which honest investors in the new projects were
protected against losing more than they had invested.
For consumers, the Industrial Revolution was also an era of choice;
of take-it-or-leave-it. While companies were often forced by competitive
pressure to adopt the new technologies, individuals, families, towns and cities
didn’t have to make use of them if they didn’t want to. (Though they usually chose
to do so, whenever there were clear benefits.) Moreover, if things went wrong,
and the benefits did not come or could not be sustained, they always had the
option to go back to the old ways. A case in point is my own town; the first
place in Europe to have electric street lighting (in 1881). By 1884, the supplier
decided they could no longer deliver the electricity at an affordable price.
So, the town had to go back to gas lighting, and electric lighting did not
return until 1904.
These green plans, on the other hand, are not a natural,
organic revolution. They are mandated, from the top down, by a political class that
seeks to mould the UK economy into a command-and-control system reminiscent of
the Soviet one. They are eagerly supported, not only by green activists and
their academic and media comrades, but also by the money men and the big-company
élites, who stand
to gain billions and more from all these projects. They are supported by church
leaders, too – about as establishment as you can get. But they take no account
of the many, for whom the policies will cause severe pain and expense, without
any corresponding benefits. This is no less than a takeover of the economy by
an élite, that
seems to have no interest at all in the well-being of ordinary people.
And if things go wrong and goals set cannot be met, will there
be any option to back out, and return to the old methods? If world-wide shortages
of materials to make batteries, for example, were to slow down the roll-out of
electric vehicles, would we be able to continue for as long as necessary with petrol
and diesel cars? Even if the carmakers had not already dismantled their
assembly lines, I very much doubt that the politicians would let that happen.
The little people, they would opine, will just have to do without.
For these reasons, I find it very dishonest to try to liken this
supposed green industrial revolution to the Industrial Revolution which began
250 or so years ago. I can think of two far better analogies. One was Stalin’s
“Great Turn” of the early 1930s, which rapidly “modernized” Soviet Russia using
a top-down, communist model; and in the process, committed genocide against the
kulaks, and caused the Holodomor famine. The other was Mao’s
“Great Leap Forward.” And we all know how that turned out. It is because of
this analogy that I have dubbed the green industrial revolution plan the “Great
Leap Backward.”
Indeed, I see this plan as part of a reactionary counter-revolution
to the Industrial Revolution. You can’t get any idea much more conservative or
reactionary (or, indeed, ridiculous) than “stopping climate change!” (Words of Alok
Sharma, minister, on page 4 of the plan.) For the climate changes, irrespective
of anything humans do. Always has done, always will. Yet these reactionaries
want to freeze (no pun intended) the climate, so it never changes again!
The Industrial Revolution gave humans the power to take
control of our physical environment. It has allowed us to mould our environment
to suit ourselves, and to start making our planet into a home and garden fit
for a civilized species. Yet those that promote this plan want to throw away
everything we have so laboriously built over the last 250+ years. They want to scrap
the foundations of all economic progress; the free market, and honest business
and industry. For the sake of virtue signalling like “restoring habitats for
wildlife,” they want to destroy our habitat – the natural habitat of
honest human beings.
They don’t want the world economy to grow. They don’t want ordinary
people to have freedom of choice in how we live our lives. They don’t want
people to be prosperous – except themselves and their cronies, of course. And they
are so dishonest, that they disguise their intentions, and make out that they want
to lead us to a better world, not the dreary, depressing nightmare they
actually have in mind for us.
Those, that promote or support policies such as these, are
traitors to human civilization. They deserve to be expelled from our
civilization, and denied all its benefits.
Economic recovery from the COVID virus
All this, so we are told, is to enable us to “build back
better” once the COVID-19 virus is gone. Yet it seems, to me at least, to be an
extremely risky way to go about building anything. There are the risks that arise
in any command-and-control system. There are risks that technologies may not be
ready when they are needed. There are risks in rolling out projects on such a
large scale. There are risks of de-stabilizing the electricity grid. There are
risks of high-profile accidents. There are financial and budgetary risks. And
the likely loss of mobility, and exorbitant cost of adapting homes, for many
ordinary people make the idea that the end result can possibly be “better” into
nothing but a sick joke.
For how to bring back to life an economy that has all but
died, look at what the Germans did in the 1950s. So effective was it, that it
has acquired its own name, Wirtschaftswunder. It was based on low taxes,
free market principles and fair competition; three indispensable components for
building prosperity. For my taste, there was far too much government control
over the process. But there is no doubt that it worked. The Wirtschaftswunder
would be a far better model on which to base any country’s economic recovery
from COVID, than this top-down dirigisme masquerading as a “green
industrial revolution.”
And yet, responses to this reactionary, freedom-killing plan
appeared, in the first few days at least, overwhelmingly positive. On the
Internet, I had to wade through several pages of “it’s great” and “it doesn’t
go far enough” responses, before finding any that were even slightly critical.
But when you look at who has been making these comments, they turn out to be
the expected suspects; exactly those that will most benefit from these
policies. Government departments, politicians, academics, quangos, companies
angling for green contracts, and the like. The only early negative responses I
found were a couple of articles in the Daily Mail. Since then, there have
been on the Internet many articles pointing out negative aspects and
impracticalities of the plan. But no-one seems to be taking any notice. It’s
plain that this is all a giant stitch-up. Of which we, the ordinary people of
the UK, are victims.
Where do we go from here?
It’s hard to see us making any progress against bad green policies
through the current political system. In the UK, all the mainstream political parties
have “gone green.” The only potential exception is the former Brexit Party,
recently re-badged as Reform UK. But I am not sanguine that Nigel Farage is radical
enough to want to tackle this issue head on, despite the enormous vote potential.
(More than 60% of the UK electorate are car drivers!) There are a few climate
realist parties in Europe, but many of them carry unpleasant far-right baggage.
In the USA, the Republicans seem to be wavering on the issue; and there’s
nobody else.
Besides which, this is not a “left” versus “right” matter.
Nor, from what I see, does it have anything to do with any of the prevalent
social divides, like race, skin colour, birthplace, nationality, social class, gender,
sexual orientation, culture, religion, ideology or lifestyle. To me, it looks
more like the divide which German Jewish sociologist Franz Oppenheimer
identified in his 1908 master-work, The State. This separates users of what
he calls the economic means – “the equivalent exchange of one’s own
labor for the labor of others” – from users of the political means – “the
unrequited appropriation of the labor of others.”
To a first approximation at least, supporters of the green
agenda, like politicians, public sector employees, state funded academics, mainstream
media, and politically oriented or subsidy craving company bosses, tend also to
favour the political means. And we ordinary people, who by our nature utilize the
economic means, are the victims of this agenda.
I sense that the mounting anger and vexation with politics,
which I and others feel today, is a sign of a penny starting to drop in the
minds of more and more people; a dawning sense of just how badly politics today
is screwed up. So, I think that a change of party at the helm, or a new
political party, or some other kind of movement within the current political
context, is not going to achieve the necessary level of change. What we need,
in my view, is to ditch politics as it exists today, and replace it by
something better. What we need is no less than a new and better way of looking
at how we humans should best organize ourselves for what Aristotle called “the
common good of all.”
I am among those, who are working towards a better way for
us human beings to co-exist with each other. And I expect that to reach this
goal will require a fundamental re-think of who we are, how we ought to behave,
and what we are here for. I hope to be able to publish some draft ideas in the
next few weeks or months. But today, I’ll leave you with a quote from author
and activist Bryant McGill. “Revolution starts in the mind. Question
Everything!”
