{"id":260495,"date":"2023-06-03T19:01:27","date_gmt":"2023-06-03T17:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=260495"},"modified":"2023-06-03T19:01:30","modified_gmt":"2023-06-03T17:01:30","slug":"dominic-lawson-lower-tax-revenue-and-higher-co2-emissions-what-starmers-financially-illiterate-plan-to-stop-north-sea-drilling-would-really-mean-for-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=260495","title":{"rendered":"Dominic Lawson: Lower tax revenue and higher CO2 emissions: What Starmer\u2019s financially illiterate plan to stop North Sea drilling would really mean for\u00a0Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Paul Homewood<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Which is worse: the economic illiteracy or the pretentious boasting?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


My question is provoked by the news that the Labour Party proposes, if in government, to grant no new licences for oil and gas production in the North Sea, describing this as part of its plan to turn the UK into \u2018a clean energy superpower\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Does it even know what is meant by the term \u2018superpower\u2019? Properly understood, the word describes a nation that can project power on a global scale.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


We could, once. Nowadays, only the U.S. \u2014 and possibly China \u2014 qualify. But perhaps Labour\u2019s policy-makers mean we would be influencing others to go down the same path of abandoning their own fossil-fuel resources.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Reality check: at the 2021 UN climate change summit in Glasgow, the British chair of the event, Alok Sharma, was reduced to tears after the U.S., India and China all refused to sign up to any date by which they would abandon coal \u2014 the most carbon-intensive of all fossil fuels.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


And the U.S. continues to strengthen its real global power (via cheap energy for its industry) through unconstrained production of shale gas and oil.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Poverty<\/strong>
To be fair to the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, such vacuous \u2018green\u2019 boasting has also been the style of recent Conservative governments, notably under Boris Johnson: hyperbole is his mother tongue.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


In 2020, the then Prime Minister declared that the UK would become \u2018the Saudi Arabia of wind\u2019. He was oblivious to the fact \u2014 or pretended to be \u2014 that the Saudis were a true energy superpower because they were able to export their oil globally (at colossal profit).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


The other boast made then by Johnson, and now adopted by Labour, is that we would set in motion \u2018a green Industrial Revolution\u2019. This claim becomes no less absurd however much it is repeated.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


The real Industrial Revolution, which saw wind power replaced by the massively more energy-dense coal, transformed this nation and the lives of its inhabitants by dramatically increasing productivity. The one thing even economists can agree on is that the only way to increase a nation\u2019s wealth is through rising productivity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


The Industrial Revolution \u2014 roughly the 100-year period 1760-1860 \u2014 meant, as one historian put it, \u2018the difference between the grinding poverty that had characterised most of human history and the affluence of the modern industrialised nations\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


This is well understood by the Chinese government, which is why they are determined to bring the living standards of their own 1.4 billion people up to those of the developed West, and why that vast population is expanding its coal-generated energy output at a rate which renders futile (in terms of its effect on global CO2 emissions) our own Government\u2019s decision to shut down our coal-fired power stations.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Now Labour envisages a similar process with oil and gas. One of its policy-makers was quoted in yesterday\u2019s Sunday Times saying: \u2018We are against the granting of new licences for oil and gas in the North Sea. They undermine our energy security and would drive a coach and horses through our climate targets.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Presumably it would suit those \u2018climate targets\u2019 better if we did indeed revert to using coach and horses instead of cars \u2014 reverting to the era when only the richest could afford to travel other than by foot.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


That would certainly be the future willed by the fanatics known as Just Stop Oil, whose well-to-do university-educated shock-troops have so enraged working men and women trying to earn their livings by car or van, but are prevented from doing so because of obstruction of the roads by these demonstrators. In fact, Labour\u2019s proposal is to do exactly what Just Stop Oil is demanding.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Here is where the economic illiteracy comes in. Despite the already vast investment in \u2018renewable\u2019 energy \u2014 which has involved huge subsidies \u2014 this country still relies on about two-thirds of our energy from oil and gas. Wind and solar provide less than 10 per cent, mainly because their production is intermittent, relying on the \u2018right sort of weather\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


It is an unfortunate fact that the coldest days \u2014 requiring the most amount of domestic energy use \u2014 tend to be the stillest. That is why Labour\u2019s claim that we would lose \u2018energy security\u2019 if we keep producing oil and gas is actually the opposite of the truth. Deranged, even.<\/em>
Full post<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Which is worse: the economic illiteracy or the pretentious boasting?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":260501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818056,691818076,691818610,691819931],"class_list":{"0":"post-260495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-co2","10":"tag-north-sea","11":"tag-oil-and-gas-production","13":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/00-North-Sea-drilling.jpeg?fit=2235%2C1479&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-15Lx","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":325130,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=325130","url_meta":{"origin":260495,"position":0},"title":"Britain must spend \u00a330bn to strip CO2 from atmosphere and hit net zero, experts\u00a0warn","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"01\/05\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Britain must invest \u00a330bn in a network of massive air cleansing\u00a0systems designed to strip CO2 from the atmosphere\u00a0if it is to reach net zero, a government-funded report has warned.","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate Change Committee\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate Change Committee","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change-committee"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0Carbon-capture-storage-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C628&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0Carbon-capture-storage-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C628&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0Carbon-capture-storage-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C628&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0Carbon-capture-storage-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C628&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/0Carbon-capture-storage-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C628&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":332652,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=332652","url_meta":{"origin":260495,"position":1},"title":"Vaclav Smil On The Two Cultures And Our \u201cFully Post-Factual World\u201d","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"12\/06\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"In 1959, British novelist and physical chemist C.P. 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