{"id":78039,"date":"2024-10-04T07:53:15","date_gmt":"2024-10-04T06:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=78039"},"modified":"2024-10-04T07:53:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-04T06:53:15","slug":"starmers-new-climate-policy-is-unforgivable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2024\/10\/04\/starmers-new-climate-policy-is-unforgivable\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer’s new climate policy is unforgivable"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sun reports<\/a> this morning that:<\/p>\n

The PM\u00a0is announcing a \u00a322billion cash injection over 25 years for \u201cgame-changing\u201d carbon capture technology in\u00a0Merseyside\u00a0and\u00a0Teesside.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It also notes Starmer saying:<\/p>\n

To those drum-banging, finger-wagging extremists I say: I will never sacrifice Great British industry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Apparently, industrial growth and brickies come first - and apparently, they cannot do so without burning fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

This is absurd. Effective carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has been offered for decades. We still do not have it. The number of plants operating in the world is limited. The costs are very high. The outcomes are variable, to say the least. And all this is motivated by the desire of the old companies, in particular, to keep burning their output when we know that to be dangerous.<\/p>\n

Of all the options to go green, CCS is a poor one, with arguments almost as weak as that for offsetting, which is now increasingly discredited as being entirely unable to manage or permit the further burning of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

Starmer is, in that case, sending the clearest possible signal today, which is that what he cares most about is maintaining the economic status quo, with some totally foolhardy and highly likely-to-fail projects stuck on the side of its existing destructive activities to offer the pretence that he is interested in saving human life on this planet when he clearly is not.<\/p>\n

Starmer did have a plan for green investment a couple of years ago. He abandoned it, saying it was unaffordable.<\/p>\n

Now, he can afford to provide a sticking plaster over the pollution to be generated by the fossil fuel industry for some time to come when everyone from the Climate Change Committee onwards knows that this is the wrong course of action. He's denying the science. He's pursuing lousy economics, with the likelihood that most, if not all, of this money will be wasted. And he's gambling with our security in a way that we cannot afford. That is unforgivable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sun reports this morning that: The PM\u00a0is announcing a \u00a322billion cash injection over 25 years for \u201cgame-changing\u201d carbon capture technology in\u00a0Merseyside\u00a0and\u00a0Teesside. It also notes
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