Andrea Leadsom announced £1bn of extra government spending for the Green New Deal before the Tory party conference.
The sum involved is one-fiftieth of that needed. The Green New Deal Group think we need at last £50 billion a year for the next decade. And I have shown how to fund it. Others think much more is required. In other words, £1bn does not even qualify as a token gesture.
But worse, it will be expended in the most useless way possible, since it is going to be targeted on electric vehicle technology. That is, it will be spent on technology that will be largely non-renewable and that is intended to perpetuate the idea that we live apart from communities rather than in and with them.
It takes some effort to get Green New Deal spending pretty much wrong at every level, given the quantum onwards, and when there is so much to do. But Leadsom has managed it. Which is staggering.
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Andrea Leadsom is one of the most ignorant politicians I can ever remember. That’s the nicest way I can put it. I mean, she’s totally ‘flat earth’ on just about everything I can think of.
Last year a green new deal manifesto was published which included these features:
The Green New Deal would result in a nation-wide carbon emissions reducing infrastructure programme focusing on:
-Making the UK’s 30 million buildings super-energy-efficient to dramatically reduce energy bills, fuel poverty and greenhouse gas emissions;
-Accelerating the shift to renewable electricity supplies and storage, given their dramatic drop in price worldwide and increased availability;
-Tackling the housing crisis by building affordable, highly insulated new homes, predominantly on brown field sites;
-Transport policy that concentrates on rebuilding local public transport links;
-Properly maintaining the UK’s road and rail system;
-Encouraging electric vehicles for business and personal use and sharing.
This is labour intensive, takes place in every locality and consists of work that is difficult to automate. It also contributes to improving social cohesion and environmental sustainability.
This massive work programme in energy and transport would tackle many existing problems in our society.
It seems to me that it is a good idea to take baby steps over funding given what we now know about the desirability of some forms of electric vehicles. To have launched in with over £50bn of spending of which some portion would be directed to ever larger resources to support EVs and then culling those funding elements a year later would be a huge waste of engineering talent.
There is a taxation method that deals better with changing knowledge and technology – the CO2 tax. Imv of course.
I think I co-wrote that manifesto
Agree 1 billion not enough and it is not as we do not know how to make EVs. Start by investing in sustainable public transport in every region. Give people a good alternative to their cars and we will find that we improve health as a result.
Agreed
I think it much worse than you put to be honest.
The paltry £1bn will mean that it will be people buying electric cars via loans – increasing the level of private debt as well as destroying unreasonable expectations and undermining the need for green.
Today I went from the Peak District to Sheffield by train. Although I find semaphore signalling lovely to look at, why do they still have it on the Hope Valley line?
Why are there weeds in the 4 foot at Grindleford? Why was my train a clapped out ‘Pacer unit’ – basically an old Leyland bus strapped to the under frame of a freight wagon whose windows were so misted up you couldn’t see where you were? Why was the line closed for about an hour today because of flooding at Edale? Why were there floods at Edale at all?
Then on the roads back, floods were everywhere as the drainage was backing up on the roads.
We don’t seem to have infrastructure anymore in the UK; we have ‘infirma-structure’ – it all seems clapped out. It all also screams ‘under-investment’ to me.
It does not exactly encourage folk to change their ways does it? The cunning of unreason………………..?!