Climate change: doomed

By Richard North - November 5, 2022

Sushi, it seems, has been talking to The Times – his message skulking behind the paywall, which seems a less than effective way of trying to reach people.

For what he has to say, though, it is hardly worth the bother of trying to tease out the details but, for those gagging to know, we can reveal that the prime minister is warning people that they cannot expect the state to “fix everyone’s problems”.

I don’t suppose, given recent experience, that there are many who still believe that the state is the answer to our problems. Rather, we might be more reassured if Sushi undertook, at the very least, to minimise the damage it does.

Yet, without conceding that as a priority, he apparently believes that his statement of the bleedin’ obvious is part of the route to regaining the trust of voters, on top of being honest about the scale of the economic difficulties ahead.

Having admitted that trust in Tories had been damaged by Miss Trussed’s “sugar-rush” budget, he sees part of his job as restoring economic credibility and is “confident” that the public will judge his autumn budget on 17 November to be “fair and compassionate”.

He says he recognises the “anxiety” that millions of people had about soaring mortgage repayments, although he could hardly do otherwise, given the amount of publicity on the subject. But, never fear, he promises to do “absolutely everything” he can to “grip this problem” – short of actually doing anything, of course.

Instead, he wants to be “honest” about the trade-offs we face – not that he has to face any trade-offs. “You have to prioritise”, he adds – dropping this “we” stuff rather quickly.

“You have to make sure that as you’re doing things, you’re doing it in a way that’s fair and being honest with people”, he says, adding once again that no government can fix every problem. “Life is not that simple”, he tells us.

This might actually be more convincing if he hadn’t spent part of yesterday at Buck House sucking up to Charles, praising him for his “longstanding and far-sighted leadership” on climate change.

On the eve of the beanfest of CoP 27 at Sharm el-Sheikh, we can see exactly where this is going, as the new prime minister turns out to be just like the old ones, buying into the “net zero” schtick and selling the country down the river.

This comes just as the BBC helpfully reports that the cost of “decarbonising” UK public sector buildings is estimated to be £25-30 billion, a sum us mere plebs will have to pay if the government is to meet its “net zero” commitments for its own estate.

As if we didn’t know already, Dr Sarah Ivory, director of the Centre for Business, Climate Change, and Sustainability at the University of Edinburgh, tells the BBC: “Responding to the impacts of climate change in the UK is going to be an expensive business”.

We are then told that, to get an idea of the challenge of decarbonising buildings in the UK, the Climate Change Committee says there are 28.5 million homes in the UK and 1.9 million other buildings such as offices, shops and hospitals. The majority are heated by gas boilers, it says, which would need to be replaced to decarbonise homes and buildings.

The Committee has estimated the total cost of decarbonising residential properties would require an investment of £250 billion – equivalent to £9 billion a year from the late 2020s to 2050.

With this figure in mind, I’ve checked on the cost of “decarbonising” my own house. The external insulation to bring the solid walls up to standard would cost at least £20,000 and we would have to find as much again to fit a heat pump and replace the radiators. Something tells me this ain’t going to happen.

Interestingly, we’re seeing similar reluctance on the motoring front, as The Times tells us: “Drivers’ fears over electric vehicle costs push car sales to 40-year low”.

Car sales, the piece tells us, are on course for their worst year in the UK since 1982 after the sale of plug-in vehicles stalled amid consumer fears over buying and recharging costs.

New registrations in October rose by 26 percent to 134,000 but in reality that is simply a reversal of a disastrous October 2021, when sales crashed by nearly 25 percent. That leaves car sales down by more than 5 percent in the year to date at 1.34 million. There is little hope of matching the 1.65 million cars delivered in 2021.
The expected outturn of 1.56 million deliveries for 2022 leaves the UK market down by 44 percent on its most recent high point of nearly 2.7 million in 2016,

As to the breakdown of types, Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) figures for sales to the end of October show sales of diesel and petrol cars at 656,163 while pure electric cars trail behind at 195,547.

With electric sales about a third the rate of cars powered by internal combustion engines, decarbonising the private vehicle fleet has a long way to go, and 2030 (when ICE sales are banned) is not very far away.

The trade has warned that consumers are counting the cost of buying EVs, which are routinely up to double the price of a petrol equivalent, during a time of sharply rising interest rates and inflation eroding spending power.

They are also worried that the soaring price of electricity does not make them that cheap to run. Then there is the as yet unfit-for-purpose public recharging network.

At the start of October, the UK had 34,637 public standard, rapid and ultra-rapid electric vehicle charging devices. In the first nine months of the year with 249,575 new plug-in registrations (including hybrids) just one new standard public charger had been installed for every 50 new plug-in EV. At this rate, we are told, it is unlikely that government’s ambition for 300,000 public chargers by 2030 will be met.

One might have more confidence in the system if it weren’t for cretins such as Ed Miliband – author of the Climate Change Act – bleating that the use of 100 percent renewables and nuclear energy “is the route to cheaper bills”.

It is barely credible that anyone could be so moronic as to believe that the electricity base load can be provided by renewables with the back-up provided by nuclear, but when Labour’s shadow climate change secretary is offering such nonsense, one has to be seriously concerned about the competence of the opposition.

With Sushi’s administration being not much better, we are confronted by a reality which tells us that, whatever the management of the economy looks like, our politicians are set to drive us into penury in pursuit of their ruinous climate change policies.

Needless to say, though, with CoP 27 starting on Sunday, we will be saturated by climate change propaganda for the next few weeks, all pushing the unchanging message that we are all doomed
unless we subscribe to the warmist cult.

And with Sushi having caved into the pressure to attend, we can also expect the prime minister to forget all his good intentions about managing the economy, state intervention and restoring trust, as he consents to more insanely expensive and ultimately unattainable targets in a bid to assuage the anger of the climate gods.

We truly are doomed.