Nice piece. But the position is hopeless in the face of a massive Green lobby spin campaign, over many years. Comnservative governments have been complicit in this (in fact, actively encouraged it), as has the civil service. The majority of the public and most of the honourable members have now comprehensively drunk the Cool Aid. Finding the truth is difficult. In this instance, people will only start seeking it when the UK's energy situation becomes intolerable.
Super article - very well reasoned and written. But inertia will prevail until there is an actual crisis. The roots of our problems are cultural: complacency, selfishness, greed and short-termism prevail, and we are (in majority) too willing to vote into power lightweight chancers who make unrealistic promises and who paper over the cracks with borrowed and printed money. We will learn the hard way.
Given the way the green lobby push for technologies that simply don’t exist, I suspect the actual target they have is de-growth. The answer for this country has been obvious for 20 to 30 years, we need to switch to plentiful electricity from Nuclear power. But that represents an actual solution,hence the green lobby, conservative and labour governments and HMT have been absolutely set against it.
Professor Henrick Lund (Denmark) identified pretty much all the practical issues you alluded to above in papers and books in the early 2010s. And yet there policy keeps going in the same direction without addressing the issues.
Similarly Dieter Helm did the same from the monetary point of view - and policy keeps going in the same direction.
Despite both technical and monetary issues being well documented - policy remains captured by an ideal that is very difficult to deliver without serious economic and social side effects that seem to be ignored.
Your first conclusion is a need for a wider conversation these trade offs. What are your thoughts on who has what role in leading the conversation?
Nice piece. But the position is hopeless in the face of a massive Green lobby spin campaign, over many years. Comnservative governments have been complicit in this (in fact, actively encouraged it), as has the civil service. The majority of the public and most of the honourable members have now comprehensively drunk the Cool Aid. Finding the truth is difficult. In this instance, people will only start seeking it when the UK's energy situation becomes intolerable.
Parliamentary questions, lots of them.
Super article - very well reasoned and written. But inertia will prevail until there is an actual crisis. The roots of our problems are cultural: complacency, selfishness, greed and short-termism prevail, and we are (in majority) too willing to vote into power lightweight chancers who make unrealistic promises and who paper over the cracks with borrowed and printed money. We will learn the hard way.
Given the way the green lobby push for technologies that simply don’t exist, I suspect the actual target they have is de-growth. The answer for this country has been obvious for 20 to 30 years, we need to switch to plentiful electricity from Nuclear power. But that represents an actual solution,hence the green lobby, conservative and labour governments and HMT have been absolutely set against it.
Professor Henrick Lund (Denmark) identified pretty much all the practical issues you alluded to above in papers and books in the early 2010s. And yet there policy keeps going in the same direction without addressing the issues.
Similarly Dieter Helm did the same from the monetary point of view - and policy keeps going in the same direction.
Despite both technical and monetary issues being well documented - policy remains captured by an ideal that is very difficult to deliver without serious economic and social side effects that seem to be ignored.
Your first conclusion is a need for a wider conversation these trade offs. What are your thoughts on who has what role in leading the conversation?
Absolutely splendid assemblage of facts and common sense. Thank you.