RE: Time to get serious19 Sep 2023 10:53
"Decarbonisation is a massive national project, on a scale not really seen since rearmament in the run-up to the Second World War. This time we are turning a carbon-intense economy into a low-carbon one; then it was a peacetime economy into a wartime one. It is huge national undertaking. The UK economy, like the rest of the world, is around 80%-dependent on fossil fuels, and decarbonising this in just 28 years is a massive undertaking.
No one would argue that, faced with a war, prices should equal costs. Keynes certainly did not. There would be burden sharing – between customer classes, and between taxpayers and consumers. All citizens would be carried along, and the ability to pay would be crucial to the degree of social and political coherence necessary to push this all through. (Keynes argued in his 1940 paper that universal benefits should be introduced, compulsory savings, and a capital levy on the rich, amongst other things.)
Arguably some of that is where we are now. Years of half-truths about the costs of net zero are being revealed for what they are. The far right is starting to have a field day. They can point to the costs and say that the UK citizens are being asked to pay the costs of mitigation and at the same time will face the costs of the climate change over which the UK has very little influence. They can point to the inconsistencies and inefficiencies of reducing carbon territorial emissions but not applying the same measures, costs and carbon prices to imports, and thereby undermining the UK economy and weakening or even perversely increasing climate change in the process.
This backlash is coming. Opinion polls may show that the public broadly wants to tackle climate change and cares a lot about it, but only when it will not cost them much. They have been repeatedly told that it will not, that renewables are already cost-competitive, and that fossil fuels are going to get ever more expensive. Indeed, the backlash is already surfacing, and cannot be disguised by blaming the energy costs all on Putin and the war in Ukraine. The Conservatives have their Net Zero Group, with Farage in the wings.
For those of us who do care about climate change, and recognise we have an historical responsibility for quite a lot of the carbon concentrated in the atmosphere, the risks of this backlash are all too apparent."
Professor Sir Dieter Helm - https://dieterhelm.co.uk/energy-climate/energy/how-to-pay-for-energy/
*He is also on record for saying that it is not clear if offshore wind is cheaper than Nuclear
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