Net Zero Will Boost the Economy? Pull the Other One
According to a recent Bloomberg article, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has urged the next Government to “put Net Zero at the heart of its economic plans” in order to achieve a “£57 billion economic boost by going green”. The article draws from a recent speech by CBI Chief Exec Rain Newton-Smith, in which she argued that “the next Government can’t be pro-growth and deliver for our people, planet and communities, without being pro-green”. This claim is in turn based on an analysis from CBI Economics, “which found that the U.K.’s Net Zero sector grew by 9% in 2023, a year when the U.K. economy fell into technical recession”.
If it is true, it is remarkable, surely, that a sector of the U.K. economy could grow at such a rate, despite headwinds. And it would indeed be an extremely foolish Government that ignored such a stark metric. But the CBI has form in making big statements about the direction that U.K. Governments should take, including most famously an injunction that Britain should ditch the pound and join the Eurozone – a policy position which Vote Leave later revealed likely to be related to the fact that “12% of the CBI’s retained income” came from the European Commission. “Since 2009, the CBI has received £7,031,797 from 140 taxpayer-funded public sector bodies in membership fees,” explained Vote Leave in 2015. Might funding sources also explain its arguments for a doubling down on Net Zero policy?
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I think all those who can see through the Green scam will be stocking up on food and supplies to see them through the inevitable energy blackouts.
Good to see greenconomics challenged.
It’s green communism masquerading as entrepreneurship. They want us to starve and freeze they are scum. Btw the Tories have actively promoted this, for those still asleep.
We should also remember the CBI have got it wrong on every major economic issue for 50 years or more.
Yes I have used the subsidy analogy many times. Except my shops were shops selling red jeans and green jeans. The red jean shop gets 100% subsidy from the government who prefer us all to wear red jeans. The government and assorted NGO’s who all approve of us all moving to red jeans then make statements in the media eg that “red jeans are now much cheaper than green jeans”. ——-people see this on their TV News and think well when I buy jeans I will make sure they are red. —-Everything to do with the GREEN agenda is a total eco socialist scam, and government know that most people simply don’t have the time or the inclination to thoroughly investigate the issue of climate and energy, and we probably all have been in a situation where we were in the company of a group of friends or family and the issue of climate came up. If you try to suggest that all might not be as it seems you immediately get people looking at you as if you are from Mars. ——-Such is the power of propaganda. —-Climate Change is the biggest pseudo scientific scam ever perpetrated, and it… Read more »
“Except people back then would not have been so utterly stupid as we seem to be.”
Indeed – they were not so ‘educated’.
The problem is more subtle than that, education itself has been stolen and now consists of indoctrination only. The idea that education allows one to think, to apply logic, and form opinion is gone. Have you noticed how the BBC operates? It announces something and then has some supporter interviewed with positive help from Naga or whoever. The subject is never even debated, yet presented as truth and rubber stamped by BBC verify! BBC verify is very corrupt, does no proper research and gets it’s opinions from the Guardian. Please do look at other sources, a little research pays big rewards.
James Delingpole’s ‘Watermelons’ (Green on the outside, red on the inside) was written over a decade ago and is bang on the money. It written factually but wittily. Highly recommended read.
I could probably recommend another 100 books as well as that one. ——“Hubris” (Michael Hart) ——Energy and Climate Wars (Peter Glover and Michal Economides) and Taken by Storm (McKitrick and Essex)————-Happy reading
I agree-Watermelons was a great contribution, and alerted me to the problem.
its a pity James appears to have gone a bit, well…
The Green economy is just a taxpayer-filled trough, and where there’s a trough there will be pigs.
What ‘Green’ products exactly are going to be produced that consumers want we don’t already have?
As far as I can see the Green economy is hydrogen projects, carbon capture, batteries, BEVs, wind and solar installations, insulating homes and buildings.
All of this is reliant on massive taxpayer funded subsidies and increases in consumer prices. It is to serve ideological and bureaucratic interests, not the interests of consumers.
None of this adds to what we have, but replaces what works with what either doesn’t or is less efficient, or nobody wants anyway.
Jobs are a cost, but if the economic activity they undertake produces a value in excess of cost, then we get wealthier. If there is just cost and no benefit, we get poorer. Green economy is all cost.
If these Green products are so good, we would already have them funded by private investors.
You got it.
An interesting thought. What is a green product? Is it a wind turbine? Is it a solar panel? Is it an electric car? Is it a heat pump? Is it even insulation materials? Strangely NONE of these are the slightest bit green, all require massive inputs of fossil fuels and mined minerals. They may over lifetime slightly reduce the CO2 produced, but not by much compared to the CO2 produced in manufacture! The most common insulation in use now is probably foamed polyurethane between aluminium foil sheets. How much oil does this take, and how much electricity to refine aluminum? One might be surprised how high both are. Then there is glass and rock fibre products. Both of these are energy intensive to produce and are made with gas or oil heat. Clearly all these products should be banned at once.
It’s very puzzling. These people are university educated, and suppose to be intelligent. However, net zero and intelligence are a poor fit. So why is it? Puppets on a string?
University educated? There you have it.
“Two things are outstanding in the creation of the English system of canals, and they characterise all the Industrial Revolution. One is that the men who made the revolution were practical men. …they often had little education, and in fact school education as it then was could only dull an inventive mind. The grammar schools legally could only teach the classical subjects for which they had been founded. The universities also (there were only two, at Oxford and Cambridge) took little interest in modern or scientific studies; and they were closed to those who did not conform to the Church of England.”
Jacob Bronowski
And…
“Too much of what is called ’education’ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.”
Thomas Sowell
“I have never let schooling interfere with my education” —Mark Twain
It is divestment from hydrocarbons, along with blowing up Coal Power Stations and looking virtuous.
Ah, I see what the CBIs problem is. A woman is in charge. Always leads to disaster. Women should not have the vote nor be in charge of anything serious because they mostly vote for welfare and steer organisations toward woke and female centric causes.
Men are grafters (and women perhaps grifters – the comment that got the Reform candidate in so much trouble, but which may be true) and push for success, victory and performance. This is a viewpoint that I will get lambasted for by feminists and femiboys. But our ancestors knew this. That is why women were never in charge of anything involving detail. Queen Elizabeth I ans Queen Anne were advised by men.
Why are these Chief Executives always of a specific type and background, on a merry go round of similar senior posts?