Cost Effective : Is this policy likely to deliver much effect for the cost ?
Received by e-mail
Dear Friend,
Again, could you circulate this as widely as possible, especially to people in London and on the South Coast. Apologies for cross posting.
If you possibly can, please join a rally to save the Vestas wind turbine plant, this Saturday 11 July 2009, 12 noon, St James Square, Newport, Isle of Wight (outside Millets)
PDFs OF LEAFLETS, POSTERS AND PETITION SHEETS AVAILABLE BY EMAILING INFO@CAMPAIGNCC.ORG
As usual at these events, I bumped into a couple of political activists of various flavours and persuasions at the Fabian Society conference “Six Months to Copenhagen”, today, held in the faded-yet-still-grand setting of the Foreign Press Association, just off The Mall in London.
[ The Mall is the street that links Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace. It’s not a shopping centre ].
Bjørn Lomborg has been struggling to suppress action on Climate Change for some time now. He has reasoned that it is not such a big deal, and we would be better spending our resources and attention on other global ills.
Now, however, he’s proposing a universal Carbon Tax, in order to promote Renewable Energy – both Wind Power and Solar !
What’s gotten into the economist-man ? Has he been poisoned by teeth-whitening chemicals ? Has he finally seen the light ? Or does he think that anything is more workable than Cap-and-Trade ?
[ UPDATE : Some of you have mentioned that you thought this piece was rather biting. So I put it under Bryony’s nose and offered to change anything that she felt was inaccurate, personally distressing, or that she disagreed with or objected to on professional grounds. Changes are bolded. ]
At the The Guardian Climate Change Summit in London’s Russell Square’s Hotel Russell on Monday 15th June 2009, there was a large banner marked out with the name of the key sponsor of the event, E.On, but nobody at the large table underneath it to schmooze the attendees.
Perhaps they thought that the info pack in bright friendly red, orange and yellow colours would suffice in terms of communications. Perhaps they thought that they had enough of a hold on the event’s messaging by having their Chief Executive Officer Paul Golby speaking at one of the morning sessions.
As some of my more regular readers will be aware, I have been re-reading Nicholas Stern’s book “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet : How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity”.
He signed the book for me : “zero carbon or bust”, at his Book Launch at the London School of Economics, which, I think, shows his commitment to the “Defining Challenge of our Age” (now, who exactly said that first ? And about what ?)
Britain is not Fair. The division between rich and poor is getting wider, and the number of those at the bottom of the stack is rising. This is going to have a significant impact on the ability of people in Great Britain to adapt to Climate Change policy.
Social measures must surely include public investment in de-Carbonising each home. At costs 100 times less than the announced new Nuclear Power programme, and an order of magnitude cheaper than the Carbon Capture and Storage demonstration projects, I think this shows excellent value for money as well as ethical rectitude.
In the field of women’s clothing, fashions spectacularly come and shamefacedly go. As one of the presenters said towards the end of the Carbon Offsetting report launch this evening, she is fearful that perhaps offsetting could be just a trend, a fashion statement that will bow out after a short while, like legwarmers and chiapas :-
It is from the Business pages of The Times Online that I learn that Ed Miliband possibly cannot read, and does not seem to be able to think clearly.
https://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article6401711.ece
[ Comments on “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet” by Nicholas Stern ]
So, I might be promoting sales of Nicholas Stern’s book with this post, but actually I think we should all read this book, just to be conscious of how Neoliberal Economics hasn’t evolved to encompass reality, even if it thinks it has.
There are many statements, assertions and hopes about the progress and possibilities of technology in Nicholas Stern’s book “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet : How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity”.
[ UPDATE – part of my argument about Coal got garbled. I have bolded changes.]
Over the Late Spring Bank Holiday Weekend, I had the unintentional opportunity to spend some recreational time with someone employed by the Government of the United Kingdom. I am not going to divulge details.
This person had clearly been to Brainwashing School and was on-message consistently, even in the relaxed and non-formal setting. They repeated, almost verbatim, rationales I have been hearing for several years.
I remember the second time I saw this graph. It was shown to me by that enthusiastic young guy Guy Shrubsole, who waved a printed copy under my nose and asked me if I’d seen it and knew what it meant. I had and I did :-
https://climatechange.cbi.org.uk/uploaded/climatereport2007mckinseyapp.pdf
To answer Climate Change we must have strategies for new Low Carbon Energy investment.
The technologies we need to deploy are those that are already proven, and can be installed in the fastest possible time. What we can DO, and DO NOW.
This is DO-Tech, NOW-Tech : and it effectively rules out new rounds of Nuclear Energy, which is slow-to-grid. It also rules out the almost entirely hypothetical Carbon Capture and Storage.
Last week’s announcement by the UK Government for up to 4 “demonstration” projects for Carbon Capture and Storage [CCS] at new coal-fired electricity generation plants raises some serious questions.
Not least amongst that basket of tricky and serious questions : is CCS being used to justify the use of coal fuel, when less Carbon-intensive fuels are available ?
The green “trade show” UK Aware was held at the exhibition centre Olympia 2, West London, England on 17th April.
I was talking with the lady from Good Energy. First of all we discussed their proposal to offer a dual fuel tariff, and the fact that there is still no green gas available to domestic customers.
[ UPDATED : Someone kindly pointed out a typographical error. The correct expression is “Business as Usual”. My excuse : late night dyslexia. Thanks, o diligent reader. Keep up the good work. ]
The Old Lecture Theatre in the Old Building at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) tonight was filled with noise, as people, packed to the rafters, exchanged hot air like it was the End of the World.
And so it was, or will be. The End of the World, I mean, unless we sort out Climate Change. Nick Stern made that quite clear.
A question repeatedly occurs to me. “Why are the cigarette manufacturers still in business ?”, I ask myself, when I look at how much effort, money and time goes into helping smokers become non-smokers.
This week has seen a flurry of “Yes, We Can” news articles about the Carbon Capture and Storage technology, or CCS.
“Solution to the carbon problem could be under the ground : Hope for the fight against climate change as study finds greenhouse gas can be buried without fear of leaking : By Steve Connor, Science Editor : Thursday, 2 April 2009 : Carbon dioxide captured from the chimneys of power stations could be safely buried underground for thousands of years without the risk of the greenhouse gas seeping into the atmosphere, a study has found.”
Jonathan Leake, writing in the Sunday Times on 29th March 2009 betrays a certain ignorance, and casual disregard for sound European Renewables policy :-
https://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5992864.ece
“Consumers beware the costly spin of wind turbines”
In all the flurry of debate about how to control Carbon Emissions, it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of the goal : Carbon Control.
If we are to “keep our eyes on the prize”, we really need to check how we’re doing and where we are from time to time.
It’s no good submitting to the Uncertainty Principle.
If controlling Carbon is absolutely essential, we can’t put our efforts into policies that have fuzzy outcomes.