By Jo Nova
Instead of the conservatives being torn apart by climate change, now it’s the left side of politics
Politicians finally seem to realize the voters don’t want to spend money on climate change.
Once all players in politics realize that their climate policies and green pledges paint targets on their backs, it’s the beginning of the end.
The UK Labour Party has bragged for two years that it will spend £28bn on green investment if they get elected. But their Green Prosperity Plan has become a target for conservatives to shoot down, and apparently the Labour party is now publicly falling all over itself to distance itself from the number £28bn. They’ve delayed it, added qualifiers, and reduced it from a “pledge” to an “ambition” but nothing seemed to work. Finally, they have had to declare that the spending target has been dropped.
A spending target was always a stupid thing, on any issue. What organisation, company or billionaire pledges to throw money for the sake of hitting a spending target, as if spending itself was the goal? It’s a vanity gig — only for those who want to show off their wealth (or in this case, your captured wealth). Surely the government should be bragging about achieving things as cheaply as possible, not about throwing more money than the next guy?
One target is gone but the boondoggle lives on
Labour still promises to set up a new publicly owned energy investment creature called GB Energy and a national insulation program. The word is that these will cost about £10bn. And there are already £8 – 10bn in green projects that the conservatives are already funding, so if the Labour party keep those, that will still amount to about £20bn. So far too much green gravy will still keep flowing but make no mistake — For an industry levitating on green fairytales, and entirely dependent on government largess, this is bad news. It’s a big shift, a giant deflation.
Naturally Big Green industry are worried. The head of Seimens is now on the back foot: ““Don’t let populism unsettle you,” ” he told the Labour party, which was his coded way of saying “Please keep giving us money”.
Britain risks a steep decline without a £28bn green economy pledge, Labor warned Green economy
Becca Roberts, Fior Reports
Jürgen Maier, former British boss of Siemens, the German industrial giant and major investor, said massive investment was needed to rebuild the British economy and make it fit for the future and that it should focus on low-carbon energy, transport and industry .
“These are the growth areas of the future,” he said. “The £28 billion is not a cost, but an investment. “Don’t let populism unsettle you,” he urged the doubters within the party.
In the EU, the German Greens themselves are putting the brakes on
The German Greens suffered a major hit in popularity polls after they tried to foist “low emission” heaters on the public last year. The next elections are coming up in June, and the Greens look like shrinking from 21 seats to 14. So now they are trying to water down, slow down and take out the sting from their Green policies. It’s almost like voters matter?
German Greens push to water down EU party’s climate targets
By Max Griera and Nick Alipour | EURACTIV
The European Green Party is set for an internal battle over climate targets at a party congress this weekend (2-4 February), with the German Greens pushing to postpone the climate neutrality goals by five years and scrap parts of the gas and oil phase-out policies.
The Germans are also pushing to remove calls to end the use of fossil gas by 2035 and of oil by 2040, keeping only the draft’s target of phasing out coal by 2030, as well as a call to prohibit financial services “for coal, oil and gas extraction, coal-fired energy projects, and the companies that develop them”.
The disagreement reveals that the national Green parties remain split on how moderate or radical their targets should be.
The German Greens have been looking to moderate their messaging, as the party is aiming to strengthen its social and economic profile and reconcile more business-friendly rhetoric with the Greens’ traditional stand on climate change.
Image by Дмитрий Бирюков from Pixabay
Rian (Ree) Saunders – UK Flag.
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All Leftist Governments do this because they love spending other people’s money, which as Mrs Thatcher famously said, sooner or later runs out.
How many times have you heard Lib/Lab/Green Unipary politicians in Australia pledge a certain amount of expenditure on “green” nonsense without stating the true high costs of consumer prices for “green” products like electricity, the subsidies payable to the Elites, the extra national debt and the extra tax burden?
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As Rush Limbaugh would often opine-
the left’s excuse for failure is
we had good intentions but not enough
money
the longest war in US history is the “War on Poverty” declared by LBJ in 1964.Over $20 T expended with meager results (arguably none) but it will continue to be funded
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It makes sense, but you probably don’t have the best perspective for analysis. The motto of every polician (except for the rare handful trying to make smaller government) is “Vote for me and I will steal for you”.
Having spending targets is a way to emphasize the amount of money redirected from the people who worked for it, over to the political interest groups. The politician is advertising how much value he offers to his customers.
You probably think this should be about outcomes … but that’s wrong, because if problems ever get properly solved then the politicians would be all out of work, so they much prefer looking busy and making sure they don’t fix much.
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“The European Green Party is set for an internal battle over climate targets at a party congress this weekend (2-4 February)”
Hmm! I wonder whether they will meet in an unheated venue?
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The trouble is if you keep WASTING borrowed money on TOXIC W & S you’re just painting yourself into a corner and wrecking your environment at an even faster pace.
Then in about 15 to 20 years you have to rip it all down, bury it in landfill and WASTE even more money for NOTHING. Certainly ZERO measurable difference for the climate , temperature, just ask China and the fast developing NON OECD countries.
Decade after decades are wasted, when we should’ve built BASE-LOAD generators like COAL, GAS or NUCLEAR that should last for 60 years or more.
Certainly a lot cheaper and a lot cleaner than TOXIC, UNRELIABLE W & S and with more co2 the Earth is GREENING and crops are also reaping the benefit of the extra co2 plant food.
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Hopefully so called “Developed Nations” are fast approaching “Peak Insanity” where they will hit the “Green Wall”.
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“… the Labour party is now publicly falling all over itself to distance itself from the number £28bn. They’ve delayed it, added qualifiers, and reduced it from a “pledge” to an “ambition” but nothing seemed to work. Finally, they have had to declare that the spending target has been dropped.”
But we should acknowledge here that leftists may SAY they have dropped a proposal or no longer support it, but they’re lying. They absolutely NEVER give in on any of their demands. Exhibit 1: The Voice.
So when the UK’s Labour party say they’ve ditched the GBP28 billion plan, they don’t mean it really. I have no doubt they will go ahead with it in some form should they win the next election. I also firmly believe that Labour will take the UK back into the EU. The defining characteristic of the left for me is that they are relentless and never give up.
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“I have no doubt they will go ahead with it in some form should they win the next election.”
Not only go ahead with policies that were supposedly dumped during election campaigns but then “claim” a mandate from the people even though said people specifically DID NOT vote for woke, green, unrealistic ideas and thought bubbles.
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A possible future Labour government – remember what is said to a pollster is not the same as how a ballot is cast on election as that has a consequence so don’t expect a big win for Labour – will find itself in the strange position of inheriting a near bankrupt economy. Usually Labour leaves this for the Tories to pick up but our leftie-Tories have overspent and overtaxed just as much a Labour would have. So there is no spare cash which seems to have got through to the shadow chancellor Rachel ‘I plagiarise’ Reeves as well as seeing what happened when Liz Truss rushed through a growth budget and the markets reacted badly to the uncosted changes. Labour borrowing to spend will create a crisis in no time.
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When asked this question by polsters most voters answer “Yes”?
When asked “How much are you willing to pay for Real Action on Climate Change” – most voters answer:
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A national insulation program! I know just the people to run it. They have a track record of delivery in the sector, Kevin Rudd, Peter Garrett and Mark Arbib!
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imo the only use of solar panels is as ‘insulation’ over my north facing roof. With a tin roof the over-the-ceiling insulation doesn’t cope on hot days. Subsidised solar panels might just do the trick.And it would be energy saving as well.
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What would £28 billion provide?
A wind only power grid (with a small about of solar in mainly overcast Great Briton)?
What would be the cost of “firming batteries” to replace coal and natural gas back-up generation?
The UK produces 50% more electricity than Australia and if the cost for Australia for a full battery back up is around A$10 Trillion then for the UK it will be around A$15 Trillion or around £8 TRILLION.
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Perspective on Green goals, courtesy Dr. Thomas Sowell:
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.”
“What exactly is your ‘fair share’ of what ‘someone else’ has worked for?”
“It is so easy to be wrong-and to persist in being wrong-when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.”
“No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems – of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.”
“Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true. But many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly—and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.”
“Those who cry out that the government should ‘do something’ never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing.”
“The real minimum wage is zero.”
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