The Telegraph has issued an email this morning that states:
Ed Miliband's claim that net zero will create hundreds of thousands industrial jobs is vastly overstated, Sir Tony Blair's think tank has warned.
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) said investing in green technology was unlikely to reverse the long-term decline of British industry and warned that ministers must not “over-state the job opportunities from green manufacturing”.
The think tank added that it was a “mistake” to let net zero dominate the Government's entire economic strategy as it would deliver only a meagre boost to growth. It said: “It must be a pillar of the UK's growth strategy, but it cannot be the whole strategy.”
The related article is to be found here.
The whole framing of this issue - including no doubt by the Tony Blair Institute, who I am quite sure hate Ed Miliband and anything to do with the Green agenda - is deliberate.
They want growth to let the wealthier get wealthier - which is the only success criteria that Tony Blair now knows.
They like to pretend that growth is the pre-requisite for supplying better public services, which is their current chosen metaphor for trickle-down economics, which we know never has and never will deliver benefit for any person other than the global elite - of which Blair was always so desperate to be a part- because wealth always gushes upwards when this philosophy is espoused, and none goes downwards.
And we know that none of these people - from Blair to the Telegraph journalists - accept the science of climate change because the denial of science is a necessary condition for their acceptance by the far-right, who loathe everything about its rationality.
In reality, net zero has to be the epicentre of strategy for one very simple reason. Nothing else guarantees our survival. It is as simple and straightforward as that.
No ism can prevent climate change.
No think-tank talking nonsense will halt its advance.
The Telegraph and all like it can protest all they like, but the flood waters will sweep them away just as they will the rest of us unless action is taken.
It is action that matters, as I seem to keep finding myself saying.
And it is inaction that the likes of Blair perpetually propose. They will always do so, provided that inaction delivers for them the dopamine hit that an ever-bigger figure for their own personal wealth creates.
This is the battle we are in. It is action versus inaction that now matters. Everything else is a sideshow. The sideshows might be fun, but only that action matters.
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Thank you and well said, Richard.
I live a few miles from the Blair family estates (sic) and, when around there, get outraged at how he became wealthy and, during covid, treated lock down restrictions like Leona Hemsley treated taxes.
From 2007, when a friend and former colleague, then a regulator, processed his application to set up an investment firm / fund, he has been a mouthpiece for big business, including big oil, and autocrats, including from fossil fuel exporters. One should assume that everything he says is propaganda for his donors and investors.
I wonder if this is a first step towards the ousting of Miliband. Last year, McSweeney told the FT that for Labour to succeed in 2029, Miliband must fail.
Much to agree with
“I wonder if this is a first step towards the ousting of Miliband. Last year, McSweeney told the FT that for Labour to succeed in 2029, Miliband must fail.”
How does McSweeney work that out? Is he saying that labour should abandon green policies?
I assume McSweeney has concluded that labour has to make itself into Reform to win in 2029. Amazing. Anything more guaranteed to lose the election I can’t imagine. Those voters deluded/stupid/angry enough to vote Reform will want the real thing, not a party that has abandoned all it’s principles and treated its own members with contempt in a pathetic attempt to ape Reform.
And those of us who do have progressive beliefs won’t stand being treated with such contempt and tell labour to *uck off in no uncertain terms. The man is an imbecile.
I have no doubt McSweeney wants to turn Labour in to Reform
One day, when Ed M finally realises the writing’s on the wall for the green agenda under the Labour McFascists, is it too much to hope for that he may lead the LP rebellion against the McSweeneyisation of the Labour Party?
There are two “narratives” at work here.
1. The “net zero” narrative
2. The “warm comfortable homes and citizens with access to low cost energy” narrative.
This is a re-tread of “woke” replacing “fairness, justice and equality” (& providing a vector for attack).
Would B.Liar (the warmonger) say he was against “warm comfortable homes and citizens with access to low cost energy” – probably not. The problem with B.Liar & his acolytes is that we are dealing, at heart with an engineering problem (I make no apologies for banging on about this) – but B.Liar knows nothing about engineering & thus can only pronounce in the most superficial ways. “Net-zero” provides him a way to criticise. The other narrative does not. Also the other route (warm comfy homes etc), starts to disintermediate large energy companies (hiya Drax) & we can’t have that, can we?
As for B.Liars Think-Tank – I think the word “No” is missing from the front (also I notice an absence of village idiots – I guess the No-Think Tank must have hoovered them up).
I remember having this discussion with my Uncle (RAF Retd) Tory and Telegraph reader several times.
Clearly he didnt support ‘Net Zero’ BUT having served through WW2 he recognised the ‘strategic, economic and defence’ implications of the UK reducing or eliminating its dependence on energy imports.
Its ironic that The Conservatives and ‘Conservative’ organisations dont see this.
“the flood waters will sweep them away just as they will the rest of us unless action is taken” – what a beautiful statement. Richard, and fellow likeminded people here, this prospect is what gives me any sense of hope or at least satisfaction that the b*stards who are ruining all of our lives will suffer as well. Cheers
When it comes to climate change there is one major elephant in the room, that all political parties ignore. The pursuit of perpetual growth, goes hand in hand with an increase in global emissions. The “green deal” and all the rest of it is merely window dressing to disguise this fact. Any suggestion of “de-growth” will be ignored, because it requires the wealthy, to share more of their wealth, which is unthinkable to them. So, from my perspective, nothing will be done other than window dressing, until the impacts of climate change bring the global economic model to its knees.
And then there is the potential shift in ocean currents, that no climate model can predict with any accuracy, and the risk of bringing much colder weather to the UK and europe. Which I would describe as a flustercluck.
I hope you have had a relaxing coffee by the time you read this…………….
Rightly or wrongly I am systems thinker (or I try to be), which to me is a holistic way of thinking about inter dependencies, and thinking about problems means also dealing with cultures which dominate which are a result of the ‘isms’ you rightly point out that are a problem.
The other day I was on site looking at a building and inscribed in the sandstone was a homily to a public corporation now long extinct celebrating that it had created something useful in the public realm. I think it was an old reading room. A reading room! Imagine!
So then I got thinking about ‘corporatism’ (no, I’m not trying to wind you up at all!!) and how a lot of the early ones were publicly orientated corporations working for the common good, the common wheal to sort things out like diseases created by poor sanitation and whatnot for example.
And then I got thinking about what has happened to corporations as an idea; that they have become a useful vehicle for personal and private greed and power to influence and rival government and have even been given the status of a citizen in law. Think how pubic corporations have been stripped away over the years, denuded of capacity. Local authorities that once were big and had enough capacity to do pubic works themselves are now clients to privately owned corporations and reduced to contracting out and getting ripped off.
Contrast the public corporation set up to run our water and sewage properly with the private corporate performance of Severn Trent or Thames Water today and the ‘isms’ that have driven that.
All I’m saying is that the ‘isms’ are in my opinion always going to be there as a composite fact. You will not be able to change or challenge unless the ‘isms’ are included. They come with the territory, like a seaside town’s name in a stick of rock.
Where the ‘isms’ are most important is in the subtle border between public and private. There does not need to be one of the other as you rightly point out. But that is where the most hotly contested ‘isms’ thrive and endure Richard in this smash and grab age we live in.
And therefore the ‘isms’ will still need to be dealt with. And controversially, even maddeningly, we might need some better ‘isms’ to work with on this side of the fence!
My point is, they are an excuse for inaction
The left has to promote action. There is no way it can recover if it doesn’t. Discussing isms wastes time when we should be discussing what to do, and how to fund it.
Mainstream economists are winning Nobel Prizes (Nordhaus 2018) for papers that say things like this while climate scientists warn the 3 degrees would be catastrophic
“damage from a 3℃ warming is likely to be ¼% of national income for the United States in terms of those variables we have been able to quantify…
my hunch is that the overall impact upon human activity is unlikely to be larger than 2% of total output.”
And even more recently, a 2022 report for the IPCC said that
“With historically observed levels of adaptation, warming of ~4°C may cause a 10–23% decline in annual global GDP by 2100 relative to global GDP without warming, due to temperature impacts alone.”
Even though climate scientists predict that 4 degrees would be an existential crisis for the human race.
I’m not suggesting that we should let the politicians off the hook, but it can’t be helping their decision making process when they and their advisers are being fed this kind of reckless drivel.
They and their advisers are all playing the same game.
The economist Steve Keen has done some good work exposing the flaws of mainstream economists on climate change.
OK, so let’s say it’s true, and that a green transition won’t create jobs. Adaptation to climate change would. It would be the biggest infrastructure project in this countries history, possibly, but there is no sign even of that. All I see is protection of corporations at our expense. Let’s ignore the fact that green energy is high investment low return, and so only makes sense when done in the public sector. Are the wealthy scared they will be cutout of the energy market by not owning the assets that supply power?
Imagine thinking upgrading UK buildings in the UK with proper insulation, double glazing, solar panels, heat pumps, etc., won’t generate required labour i.e. jobs.
It is bizarre….
My point exactly, but put better. I would also add, imagine wanting to build another runway at Heathrow, when the ones we already have melted in the heat in 2024. We will have three runways we can’t use.
Once you understand the terrible cost of doing nothing, climate action is a bargain
Critics balk at the cost of getting Britain to net zero, but the alternative is so much worse
From the Guardian
In 2019, the then chancellor, Phillip Hammond, wrote a letter to the prime minister claiming the cost of the UK getting to net zero would exceed £1tn. Then, in July of this year, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimated the investment needed for net zero by 2050 was £1.4tn. These figures are the source of much of the counter narrative.
Getting to net zero avoids the terrible costs and suffering that unrestrained global heating is beginning to wreak on the world, as starkly laid out in the week’s IPCC report. Cutting fossil fuel burning also brings benefits such as slashed air pollution, which still kills about 40,000 people a year in the UK.
Let’s put some of that into numbers. Once the fuel efficiency savings are included, the OBR’s cost estimate falls by about 75%, to 0.4% of GDP a year. The OBR also said delaying decisive climate action by a decade could double the cost to the government.
Chris Stark, head of the government’s advisers, the Climate Change Committee, estimates that the cost of getting to net zero by 2050 would mean a mere four-month delay in economic growth over 30 years, even without considering the wider benefits to society. Given the alternative – climate chaos – Stark says: “I would argue we can’t afford not to do net zero.”
Swiss Re, the insurance giant whose business is risk, agrees. It calculates a 10% loss of global GDP by 2050 without further climate action now, similar to other recent analyses. Another study suggests that breaking the 1.5C temperature limit outlined in the Paris agreement will cost far more than acting to hold temperatures down, even if rich nations have to pay for action in poorer nations. Basically, climate action is a bargain
Thanks
Meanwhile, the Labour MP for the next constituency here has posted how proud he is to have been appointed Labour’s Business Champion for Net Zero and Defence.
I did point out that defence companies cannot certify Scope 3 net zero (thank you, Richard), and that he must not have heard of cognitive dissonance.
But Labour continues to expect growth from business’s boot-straps.
Good one.
On the contrary, doing nothing about green transition will create a lot of work: cleaning up after floods, rescuing trapped people, delivering emergency food and water, making temporary shelters and all that work trying to provision food on an Island that uses hectares outside the country to grow its food, and these countries will be in trouble too.
The problem is, that all that work won’t have any company willing to pay for it.
Los Angeles already has some private fire-fighting companies. Also, there are lots of private ambulance/hospital services. All you need is insurance
And? The inference is?
There is always someone to do dirty work for money. But, the time has already come: much of LA can’t get insurance against fire loss for any money.
I will bet a pound to a penny that the insurance firms are watching UK flood plain housing projects very closely with a view to increasing premiums and/or denying cover at all. And not only in the UK.
So the inference is, unless the state acts against climate change, it will be the insurer of last resort.
On the substantive point, we are very rapidly moving towards three degrees and probably well beyond. Things are going to get very much worse and quickly.
Hurricanes, typhoons, floods, droughts, famines, bitter cold and deadly heat, fires, and the consequent wars for food and water. When we lose the Arctic sea ice, when a large Antarctic ice shelf collapses, when the Gulf Stream slow and stops, it will be too late.
China is taking great steps to introduce renewables. But they are also opening coal power stations not shutting them down. India is making little progress. The US will be going in the wrong direction for at least four years.
Carbon is not priced properly so the market will continue to ignore it. States are obsessed by growth and now defence and the environment will take a back seat. This is a problem that require cooperation around the world and very little is being done and certainly not on the timescale we need.
My parent and I did pretty well in our two postwar generations, but I fear for my children in this uncertain world.
Me, too. I share your fear.
I agree wholeheartedly, except that the emerging alliance between Trump and Putin may divert a lot of (European and south Asian) money into defence. I think (hope) there will be a general recalibration of the costs of oligarchy and personal consequences for those responsible for creating this current shitshow,
I wish sometimes we as in the UK burnt our own coal, oil, gas. Made our own manufactures, grew all our own food, etc, etc. And controlled our own corporates. Then perhaps we could devise a path forward to reduce our harmful emissions in total and not ineffect export them as we continue to behave as we do. Wishful thinking I know.