Dear Prime Minister,
THANK you for approving new oil and gas projects in the North Sea, re-examining fracking potential and reducing the subsidies on electric vehicles.
I have one further idea. Instead of making these changes piecemeal, why not repeal the Climate Change Act 2008? It was based on the exaggerated claims in the Stern Review (2006) that global warming can be cured by reducing anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, or CO2. (Stern mistakenly calls it ‘carbon’.)
Nature provides 97 per cent of CO2 emissions, which lag temperature by approximately 800 years. Other than in problematic computer models, there is no evidence that the minority 3 per cent of CO2drives global warming. How could it? CO2 is plant food. It commits no harm. It’s not a pollutant. Increased CO2 is beneficial, so why chase ‘net zero’?
The effects of the Climate Change Act and resultant taxes, subsidies and regulations have been perverse. These include increasing the costs of fossil-fuelled energy when no substitutes were readily available.
Look at Australia’s current energy plight if you want to see the damage a rush to net zero has caused. Lights out, no heating, expensive energy. Self-inflicted, unnecessary national pain while natural resources are dispatched to energy-hungry countries which don’t care one jot about ‘net zero’.
Persevering with detrimental costs pursuing ‘net zero’ to mitigate unknown ‘harm’ will only make us poorer. We don’t want to mirror the Aussies.
As you’ve probably realised, some of the obscure Climate Change Act ‘green’ costs are contradictory. For example, those ‘green’ electric vehicles are essential to the UK’s ‘decarbonisation’ strategy. However, EVs are manufactured and operated using ‘non-green’ fuels. Component and vehicle assembly, and distribution and operation, rely on a combination of ‘green’ and fossil fuels.
This mix comprises energy from the National Grid (with its mix of nuclear and/or fossil or bio-fuels) and heavily subsidised wind and solar installations.
The original range of EV subsidies encouraged auto manufacturers to switch away from combustion engines, but left taxpayers subsidising rich people. This isn’t the usual Conservative ‘levelling up’ policy. Although your removal of one of the subsidies is a good start, you need to finish the job.
We should lead the world in pursuing post-Covid economic growth. Pursuing costly, virtue-signalling mitigations for unscientific, unachievable ‘net zero’ only gives net pain.
Besides, Mother Nature’s 97 per cent of the atmosphere’s 0.04 per cent of CO2 will override any UK cuts in its 1 per cent share of the remaining anthropogenic 3 per cent.
Repealing the Climate Change Act would enable the triple bonanza of energy security, economic growth and reduced inflation. Bring it on!
Yours sincerely,
Deborah Ancell
