My opinion piece for the EDP

From Climate Scepticism

BY JIT

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, 15^th 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 28^th 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.