Essay by Eric Worrall
If only this was true. The real British conservative energy policy is a lot stranger.
Rishi Sunak has ripped up decades of cross-party consensus on climate change
Published: September 27, 2023 1.13am AEST
Tim Jackson
Professor of Sustainable Development and Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), University of Surrey…
I’d had what you might call a front row seat as a political consensus on climate change emerged in the UK. But during the long and uncomfortable 25 minutes of Sunak’s speech, I felt I was witnessing a homage to catatonia.
There was so much patently wrong in the speech that it’s difficult to know where to start. Most obviously, the prime minister’s insistence that the UK can still meet its climate commitments, despite putting a brake on policy, bucks his own advisors’ assessment of the country’s progress towards net zero emissions. It also reveals a deep misunderstanding of the science.
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As my own analysis has shown, the UK’s fair share of the global carbon budget, taking into account the development needs of the poorest parts of the world, will be exhausted before 2030. Forget 2050. The science is clear. Delay is tantamount to capitulation.
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Those costs are already being counted: fires in Europe and Canada, droughts in North America and Africa, floods in Libya. All this will keep getting worse. Homes in some parts of the US are already “essentially uninsurable” because of climate risk.
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It’s no surprise to find an embattled political party trying to draw clear blue water between itself and the opposition. Buoyed by Labour’s narrow defeat in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection (widely attributed to a backlash against London’s Ulez policy) Tory strategy is now turning net zero into election fodder.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/rishi-sunak-has-ripped-up-decades-of-cross-party-consensus-on-climate-change-214287
Back in the real world, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak did not back down from Net Zero, quite the opposite. He just pushed back a few targets, on the reasonable grounds that the current plan was unacceptably expensive for poor people – but sadly left most of the excruciatingly expensive policy package and goals in place.
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No one can watch the floods in Libya or the extreme heat in Europe this summer, and doubt that it is real and happening.
We must reduce our emissions.
And when I look at our economic future, I see huge opportunities in green industry.
The change in our economy is as profound as the industrial revolution and I’m confident that we can lead the world now as we did then.
So, I’ll have no truck with anyone saying we lack ambition.
But there’s nothing ambitious about simply asserting a goal for a short-term headline without being honest with the public about the tough choices and sacrifices involved and without any meaningful democratic debate about how we get there.
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Now I believe deeply that when you ask most people about climate change, they want to do the right thing, they’re even prepared to make sacrifices.
But it cannot be right for Westminster to impose such significant costs on working people especially those who are already struggling to make ends meet and to interfere so much in people’s way of life without a properly informed national debate.
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Read more: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-on-net-zero-20-september-2023
Why is Prime Minister Rishi Sunak so confident Britain can hit Net Zero despite backpedaling on policies which likely would already have been inadequate for the task?
This is where it gets a little strange.
Hasty changes to Sunak’s climate strategy reveal a warring Tory party
Fiona Harvey Environment editor
Fri 31 Mar 2023 04.05 AEDTMajor omissions and a last-minute refocus on energy security rather than net zero suggest a prime minister buffeted by internal factions
Rishi Sunak, the UK prime minister, headed to Oxfordshire on Thursday to visit a development facility for nuclear fusion, the early-stage concept that promises unlimited clean energy at an unspecified future point, if only some hefty physical constraints can be overcome.
He was accompanied by Grant Shapps, energy and net zero secretary, for the biggest energy and climate change announcement of his premiership, a comprehensive package of measures encompassing everything from onshore wind and solar power to carbon taxes and heat pumps.
“When global energy supplies are disrupted and weaponised by the likes of Putin, we have seen household bills soar and economic growth slow around the world,” said Sunak, of the “powering up Britain” energy package. “We have stepped in to shield people from its worst impacts by helping to pay around half the typical energy bill. But we are also stepping up to power Britain and ensure our energy security in the long term, with more affordable, clean energy from Britain, so we can drive down energy prices and grow our economy.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/30/hasty-changes-to-rishi-sunak-climate-strategy-reveal-a-warring-tory-party
British conservative energy policy appears to be a confident assumption that the rollout of commercial nuclear fusion is imminent. They’ve even started picking out generator sites.
Another STEP towards near limitless, low-carbon energy at West Burton
FEATUREDGENERAL NEWS
8th February 2023
Updated: 8th February 2023The future of abundant low-carbon energy without the need for fossil fuels could be in sight after Science Minister George Freeman announced the creation of a new delivery body for the UK’s fusion programme, named UK Industrial Fusion Solutions Ltd.
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On the visit to the future site of the UK’s first prototype fusion energy plant at West Burton, near Retford, the minister urged energy companies and investors to recognise the vast potential fusion energy could have for both the UK and the wider world.
The Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) plant will be constructed by 2040 to demonstrate the ability to use fusion energy to generate electricity for the UK grid.
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Read more: https://www.eastmidlandsbusinesslink.co.uk/mag/news/another-step-towards-near-limitless-low-carbon-energy-at-west-burton/
And more;
Nottinghamshire’s lost mining jobs ‘could be replaced’ by nuclear site
An inquiry will look into why the UK’s former mining areas are ‘lagging behind’
By Oliver Pridmore Agenda Editor
04:00, 3 DEC 2022MPs in Nottinghamshire’s former coalfield communities say the construction of the UK’s first nuclear fusion site in the county could replace some of the jobs lost from coal mining. A national inquiry has launched to consider questions such as whether the job losses from the coal industry have been fully replaced and whether these jobs are adequate in terms of pay and opportunities.
A devolution deal to give more power to Nottinghamshire councils has also been highlighted as something which could improve long-term opportunities for people living in former coalfield areas. Nottinghamshire was home to several pits in areas such as Ashfield, Bassetlaw and Mansfield, but most of them closed in the 90s and early 2000s, with the county’s last working colliery at Thoresby closing in 2015.
Since then, studies have shown people in these former mining areas find it harder to get good jobs than in other areas of the country. A 2019 report by Sheffield Hallam University found the former coalfields have only 55 employee jobs per 100 residents of working age, compared to a national average of 73.
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Read more: https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/local-news/nuclear-site-could-replace-nottinghamshires-7877382
The British Conservative suggestion nuclear fusion is imminent is so absurd, betting the entire country on such a gamble is so reckless, there are times I wonder if their minds have snapped.
Britain has made noteworthy contributions to nuclear fusion. The British spherical tokamak is a significant advance on traditional donut shaped nuclear fusion tokamaks, the spherical configuration substantially addresses magnetic containment defects inherent to traditional donut shaped tokamaks. But so do other improvements on the original tokamak such as the Stellarator – and that was developed decades ago.
None of these fusion innovations are ready for prime time. There are still huge problems still to address, like whether they scale, how to move from a few seconds plasma stability to hours or days, research into breakthrough reactor core materials which can withstand the blast of radiation from the fusion plasma without crumbling into dust (a far greater challenge for fusion than with fission reactors), and how to make the reactors affordable if they in fact do turn out to be scalable.
Yet the British Conservative Government is giving every impression that fusion jobs are all the benefits are about to happen. Squeezing votes and continued support out of working class people whose lives were ruined by green energy policy madness, encouraging desperate voters to believe in false hopes of an imminent fusion renaissance, to say I’m disgusted with such vile political messaging would be an understatement.
The only workable solution is to abandon “net zero” and all else that goes with it, and to get fracking.
Obvious to everyone but politicians.
I think a little bit of reality may be dawning on Sunak. I’ll give him a little bit of credit for taking the first baby steps towards a more sensible energy policy.
But he needs to be a lot bolder.
The BBC et al will kick, shout, and scream blue murder but I think the electorate might reward him. Unfortunately, for other reasons, it will probably be too little too late for this government.
The following government will initially be worse until they too have to address the same impossibilities that all the parties have signed up for.
Maybe Rishi Sunak was testing the water, and the nice jump in his and the Tories’ rating has shown him that he is on an election winner if he goes full bore. A Keir Starmer government would indeed be a lot worse initially, and when they realised the impossibilities they would get even worser.
Let’s get real. Great Britain’ represents 1% of global emissions. Pretending anything they do is going to be impactful is delusional.
I think that’s the bottom line.
The politicians are destroying their country for no good reason, especially when you consider that there is no evidence that CO2 is doing anything to make the Earth’s weather more extreme. The statistics show that extreme weather is no more extreme today than in the past even with more CO2 in the air.
There is no reason to reduce CO2 emissions in the first place.
These climate alarmist politicians think they are scientists. Wrong! They are all operating on a false assumption. If you asked any one of them to give you the evidence they used to conclude CO2 is dangerous, they couldn’t do it. No doubt, they would provide something, say a Hockey Stick chart, but none of what they would provide would actually be evidence of anything, and that would include the Hockey Stick chart.
They don’t really have any evidence. What they have are the opinions of others and they are depending on that because they can’t prove anything themselves. So, they are operating on a false assumption. They are not living in the real world and as a result they are really screwing up the real world chasing their CO2 deluisons.
It will all come crashing down around them at some point if they don’t change course, and it doesn’t look like they are going to change course until a disaster occurs. That’s usually how it goes with politicians. None of them are going to stick their neck out and say, “Hey, we’re doing this all wrong!”.
Too bad for a lot of us. These CO2 delusions are going to cause a lot of pain to a lot of people.
They already are causing a lot of pain to a lot of people. Given the “stickiness” of Leftist ideology it will get worse.
Hey, not all politicians. Liz Truss got it right on fracking, and it would have worked. Pity she made a blunder elsewhere and lacked spine which made it easy for the forces of darkness to throw her out.
And Liz Truss isn’t the only one that understands. What Britain needs right now is a government run by Kemi Badenoch and Suella Braverman.
And: return to coal, the cheapest source of energy. Furthermore, coal is just as free as wind – all you have to do is collect it!
If all that new cheap energy is just a moment away then why do we have to close the old system and make energy unaffordable? Why fill the country with unreliable and expensive solar and wind energy when Utopian energy is just around the corner and would instantly make them obsolete.
It’s funny how net zero works. A new EV battery plant in Kansas needs its own coal plant to power it.
Relying on fusion is probably to deal with anti-fission fanatics. But it is currently a flying pig proposal. If one does the right sort of genetic engineering, pigs can fly!
It’s the vigorous campaigning in Nottinghamshire coal communities, telling them their kids are going to have jobs in the local fusion plant, which really got to me.
It is actually in Rishi Sunak’s power to fix their problems. The fission reactor on Anglesey created hundreds of reactor and smelting jobs.
Scaling that up with a French style nuclear program, putting a small fission reactor in every manufacturing community just like the old reactor in Anglesey, would stimulate local jobs and genuinely restore prosperity.
But instead of trying to help, the Tories are stringing working class people along with absolute BS about getting ready for the fusion plant.
How cruel and unfeeling can someone be, to be able to do such a thing?
I realize I understand British politics about as well as I understand San Francisco voters. I can tell you what they do, but have no sympathy for their motives.
The problem these days is that it doesn’t matter who you vote for. It are not those in politics who decide but those behind the curtain.
Rolls Royce have identified 16 SMR sites in the UK with the first build starting in 2030 the last time I looked on their site.
Given that Nottinghamshire suffers from small seismic events that are actually caused by underground subsidence in old coal mines, perhaps they won’t be allowed anything nuclear on safety grounds.
A cursory look at the history of Socialism around the world will show any honest person how cruel and unfeeling someone can be. When one is working for the betterment of all peoples, no excess is unwarranted.
There is clearly a huge gap in knowledge regarding basic economics in the Tory Party. That was never the case in past generations but it is today. I speak as a Tory Party member. I have attended events that reveal the core issues blocking a return to sane politics.
How does a Tory PM claim fusion derived power will bring thousands of jobs to an area working on that fusion facility?
The key point about fusion power as with fission energy is they do not require huge teams of people keeping them running. The power they produce is the catalyst that leads to jobs in manufacturing industries that can then compete with world price for energy.
There is no evidence we are any closer to rolling out a working fusion electricity generating system than we were back in the 1960 when the dream evolved,
I would love to see the day when fusion is demonstrated as a viable energy generation option. Unfortunately, so far the only achievement we have seen are moments of sustained fusion and that is it, That achievement is after sixty years engaging some of the finest minds out there.
We are roughly 96 million moles away from fusion. We have taken a step towards in after a lifetime of advancement. There is still some distance to go.
I could be wrong and genuinely hope I am.
My typos are getting ever better! Moles for miles seems some how appropriate, they dig holes too….
Homage to Avogadro. Even more appropriate.
Avogadro, the breakfast of the illiterate woke elite
At 1.69E9 kJ per mol He formed in a D-T reaction that’s about 45,000TWh, or about 150 years electricity supply for the UK.
Bojo started it, he talked like a fusion enthusiast – maybe he fixated on something an advisor said, and it all blew up from there. But surely there is someone on the team who knows imminent fusion is nonsense. Maybe they are so desperate for a repeat of Bojo’s blue wave, they don’t dare tell people it was all a big mistake. Either way, whether it’s breathtaking ignorance and incompetence, or a vile deceit, it must be set right. The people whose lives were ruined by Nut Zero deserve better than to be deceived a second time.
In some ways it is the mirror image of the climate thing. Politicians love to talk and make policy about something projected well into the future, well beyond the end of their expected political careers. Very convenient.
Yet they refuse to take the decisions which are important now. It feels like a couple of decades since they announced a serious return to nuclear (fission) power but what have we actually commissioned in those years? Nothing.
I agree with the sentiment about not relying on a future technology that is unproven (well a bit of an understatement when it comes to fusion). Same goes for wind and solar, there is no situation where it works for modern life styles without a large amount of short, medium, and long term storage. As of now the hope is that this will be sorted out “soon” before there is a disaster in the energy sector (looking pretty unlikely to me at this point). I don’t think it is entirely accurate to say though that we aren’t any closer than in the 1960’s. In my understanding in particular one pretty large leap forward is with the magnetic containment. The newer superconducting magnets are orders of magnitudes stronger, so much so that ITER is already outdated before it is even finished being built because it uses older technology for the magnets. SPARC is the project spun out of MIT based on these new magnets which has already broken ground on the test reactor which *Should* prove engineering Q>1. Of course, there are other designs like Helion using a pulse which takes out some of the complexity of keeping the fusion reaction going, and also would directly create electricity using the protons released from the Helium3 + Hydrogen fusion (rather than spinning a steam turbine using neutrons from H+H fusion). Again, I know this is unproven (and that helium 3 is only available in minute quantities), and I don’t expect they will be ready in time for their Microsoft contract that is signed, just that I do think there is real progress which may or may not lead to a viable solution “soon”. As I stated at the beginning though I completely agree hedging your bets on unproven technology (whether renewables or fusion) is not smart, particularly when there is proven technology that works, even if you want it to be low carbon.
Unfortunately fast neutrons are not contained by magnetic fields, yet are capable of inflicting serious damage on the containment vessels over time.
FYI: https://www.helionenergy.com/news/
It would not make Britain more competitive because all countries would build them so all around the globe the price of energy would go down.
Of course all those jobs in solar and wind would be lost.
What, both of them?
We are in much more trouble than we realise. Scientifically ignorant making political decisions based on their need for one more day in office by pretending they know what science even is will destroy us. Their running dogs in the media are just whores and we seem powerless to stop any of them. Democracy isn’t living up to its promise.
“Democracy isn’t living up to its promise.”
To quote Churchill, I believe: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
True: I keep hoping (less and less so, admittedly) that I will live to see some of it. Of course, Churchill also told us about prospective Parliamentary candidates – they are asked to stand, hope to sit, and are expected to lie.
At the end of the 18th Century the new United States of America began the experiment of a republican form of representative democracy. It worked for a couple of hundred years, until the mob found they could vote themselves an endless stream of goodies provided by an all-powerful central government that could run endless deficits.
“We have met the enemy and he is us.” Mark Kelly’s Pogo.
NO!
It is NOT correct to say that the UK government (or the US, or most other Western governments) have a policy, credible or otherwise.
They do not.
Power nowadays lies in the unelected hands of bureaucrats and activists. These are the people who have policies – typically woke and green ones.
The politicians are simply the front people – the salesmen for these policies. When they go wrong, as they will it is the politicians job to divert attention. In this case by pointing at a nuclear proposal. Tomorrow, it could be a dam. What it is and whether it will work does not matter – it is just a diversion….
It is the politicians who make the decisions. Not the bureaucrats.
We have rubbish civil servants who can understand Latin but not statistics. And we have rubbish politicians who can understand Latin but not statistics.
That’s just the failing of Oxford University and Eton. Both failed institutions, not fit for the 20th century and certainly not for this one.
But we are still a democracy. Even if we do not have great choice to pick from.
No, I think you will find it’s the bureaucrats.
The billionaires.
Sir Humphrey says, “Is that so, Minister?”
The politicians make decisions, then expect the bureaucrats to faithfully execute those decisions.
Unfortunately that almost never happens.
I think (hope) Sunak gets it. Bu he knows he cannot declare the whole thing a bust (yet)
So a few morsels are thrown out to test the water. The rest will follow – as the gap between power needs and power generation grows wider, it will become existential.
Hope so. Would like to think so. But a couple of giveaways in the speech suggest that he really does believe CAGW and is committed to a UK Net Zero on the original time scales.
Remember, the original Climate Change Act was proposed by Labour, Ed Miliband, and passed almost unanimously. The main objections in the Commons was that it didn’t go far enough or fast enough. The amendment to make Net Zero stronger and faster was proposed by the Conservatives, Theresa May, and was passed without a vote. There is still a consensus in all political parties on doing it.
Sunak repeats the usual idiocies of the activists about random weather events:
No one can watch the floods in Libya or the extreme heat in Europe this summer, and doubt that it is real and happening. We must reduce our emissions.
Nonsense, of course, the Libyan disaster was due to not maintaining the dams, so they failed after a weather event of a sort that happens regularly, if infrequently, to that country.
He also kept repeatedly asserting his commitment to the Net Zero time scales. And when he announced the ICE/EV changes he carefully did not make clear that in any case by regulation on the manufacturers, 80% of new sales will have to be EVs in 2030. Next yea, 22% of new sales must be EVs, rising every year to 80%. There’s not much difference between 80% and 100%. Nothing much has changed.
The sad fact is that the UK political class is in denial about intermittency. They really do not understand or accept that its going to be impossible to get gas out of the generation network and still meet current demand from wind and solar. They don’t understand that if you then more than double demand by mandating EVs and heat pumps it becomes doubly impossible. They mostly still think wind and solar are cheaper than gas and coal. And this is in the face of the recent bidder’s strike on wind licenses.
Fusion is just another in a long series of energy fantasies that the British political leadership has come up with. The Qatar of hydrogen (Johnson). 25% of Europe’s wind potential (the SNP – the real number is under 5%). A proliferation of small local nuclear generating stations. Now fusion. None of it is going to happen. Its either build more gas (or alternatively coal) or blackouts.
The most optimistic scenario is one in which a lot more gas is quietly installed without any reversal or any publicity and demand is met. In this scenario there will be real problems, the heat pumps won’t work well and will cost a bomb to run, and the cars will have short range and take 5 times as long to refuel. And because of the continuing build out of the useless wind farms, prices will rise a lot. But there will be enough power.
The more likely scenario is one which the UK is drifting to at the moment: a situation in which the EV mandate will go through, and the attempt to get gas out of the generation network will also be made. Heat pump installations will be subsidized and will rise. Demand will rise, and the result will be blackouts. They will not understand in time, and if they do they will not have the guts to react sensibly in time.
I think, given the record, that’s by some distance the most likely outcome. No-one will have the guts to admit that UK Net Zero is impossible, until it turns out that its only result has been to wreck the UK electricity supply.
It’s not just the UK. USA, Germany & most other EU countries are similarly run by Green zealots who are either amazingly stupid and ignorant or, most likely, purposely want to destroy our societies.
Theresa May was and is not a conservative.
I have been thinking along the same lines.
Indeed.
michel : –
“No-one will have the guts to admit that UK Net Zero is impossible, until it turns out that its only result has been to wreck the UK electricity supply.”
And the UK economy – so also wreck the means the UK has to feed and defend itself.
And China will continue to burn 12,000,000 tonnes of coal a day.
Every day.
And anyone fondly imagining the yoomin rites lawyer nominally heading the Labour Party even understands this should have a quick lie down in a darkened room.
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From his profile page=
All you need to know about Tim Jackson:””, he is an award-winning dramatist
i.e. Full of Self promotion = Zero content and Hysterical exaggeration = Zero credibility
It’s implicit in his writing, the guy has all the charm of a fart under the duvet.
haha quote:”The British spherical tokamak is a significant advance on traditional donut shaped nuc….
There’s no other shape a ‘UK anything’, let alone a tokamookamoke, could be but Pear Shaped
Yes, loops were not my best thing to fly–they were never “round.”
He is also an eco-fascist.
So, Sunak is threatening the dictatorially imposed Green Agenda by making it a topic for democratic elections? Shocking, isn’t it?
How dare you!?
A topic for elections?
They all want the same thing, so where is the choice? A slight delay won’t stop the madness
And, since the EV sales mandates remain, prices for ICEs will rapidly move upwards as manufacturers have to cover the fines for lower than target sales of EVs. The Cons will then blame greedy manufacturers for the price rises: nothing to do with us, guv!
The cost of EVs will also increase with the EU policy of imposing a 10% tariff from January 2024 on any EV made in both the UK and Europe which is less than 45% made in either locale. All UK and European car makers are years behind China in battery technology and production capacity and will be reliant on China in these areas for some time to come.It is estimated it will cost manufacturers 4.3bn euros over the next three years.
Rosebank gets the go-ahead
Everything else remains locked into self destruction
Who decides what’s “right” a coterie of zealots in academia and Whitehall or the electorate?
The ‘net zero’ policy was never put to the UK electorate and was adopted by the UK parliament without any costings and yet it is hard to imagine a policy that is likely to have a greater impact on ordinary voters lives.
Net Zero is built on the delusion that the UK would lead the world to salvation, remember Boris’s ‘UK will be the Saudi Arabia of wind’, as well as the policy itself being impossible without a descent into an extreme form of corporatism or eco-fascism, that seems to be what the author is advocating.
Re costings
“The government has unveiled a plan without answers to key questions of how it will fund the transition to net zero.”
“The government has no reliable estimate of what the process of implementing the net zero policy is actually likely to cost British consumers, households and government itself”
House of Commons Public Accounts Committee report ‘Achieving Net Zero: Follow Up’ April 2022.
Not an iota of change in the intervening 17 months, it appears.
‘They’ wish the end.
But have not a scooby about the means …
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‘Scooby’
Rhyming slang.
Scooby Doo – clue.
My ‘leaders’ [sensu lato] are clueless.
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I have recently written a critique for our quarterly on the Parliamentary Defence Committee’s report on Decarbonising the Military. I’ll pass over much of its drivelling nonsense, noting that military effectiveness comes out of funnels, jet pipes, vehicle exhausts. But the Pentagon accepted one of UK’s climate policy papers! So we have become a Thought Leader according to the Committee. My heart swells with pride! We may have no ships, aircraft or tanks but we are a Thought Leader!! Tuck that away to keep you warm.
Did you manage to submit it as written evidence to the Committee? For now, such submissions are published as part of the record of proceedings. You can then link to the submission which is particularly handy when tackling MPs.
No I’m afraid not – I don’t know how to do that. I assume the topic is now closed
Almost certainly is. – they are awaiting the government response. You have to watch for notices of enquiries from particular select committees. Here’s the Defence Committee and its list of current enquiries.
https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/24/defence-committee/
Several are open to written evidence by the quoted deadlines. Click through and you will find guidance on submitting, and on the questions they are interested in (always use them as hooks to make your points). Draft your reply as a .doc or .odt or .rtf file which then can be uploaded. Be careful when submitting replies that include graphics – they need to be in uneditable image file form when included in you file.
They are likely to mess with your submission by including paragraph numbers and other things that may upset formatting a bit, so allow for that. Many submissions avoid non text items.
It may help to look at submissions made by others in the past. Here are the submission on the Defence Climate Change issue:
https://committees.parliament.uk/work/6684/defence-and-climate-change/publications/written-evidence/
There are a lot of people likely worried that they wil be out of a job if we don’t need directors of sustainability and purveyors of “Just” policies.
Fingers crossed that Sunak realises he is on to a (election) winner here and gets even bolder with his push back.
Fusion is silly. Many of the Tory policies are silly.
In fact, the best that can be said of them is that the execution of their policies is so inept that they will never become reality.
It does not matter to the Tory Party.
They have seen the polls. They know the anger over the Lockdown hypocrisy. They have failed to make Brexit work. It’s over for them at the next General Election.
There’s no money left and nothing works properly.
So it’s scorched earth time. Put in place policies so bad that Labour is firefighting and failing for the whole of their first term. Then hopefully, when Labour has fixed this mess, the Tories can come back.
That’s the usual Tory plan. It worked after we fell out of the ERM (ran out of money as Thatcherism always does).
And after the 3Day week.
And Suez.
And Munich…
The “Conservative” Party” is mostly full of idiots who have no understanding of science and have fallen for the climate change scam. It is not going to change any time soon.
The same thing is true of Labour, SNP, Plaid, Liberals and Greens. There is a consensus among all political parties in the UK (except Reform) that
— There is a climate crisis
— It is traceable in extreme weather events like last summer’s heat wave or the Libya rainstorm and dam failure, or the Pakistan heat wave
— UK Net Zero is possible in the timescales of the Climate Change Act as amended by Theresa May
— Doing UK Net Zero will in some way remedy the climate crisis, and will in some way lessen extreme weather events such as the above.
The Conservative Party probably has fewer believers in this nonsense than any other UK party except Reform. It certainly has more who are ready to openly question it.
And at least the Conservative Party, with one or two egregious exceptions, seems to know who is and is not a woman!
Are your disaffected regular-party voters likely to turn to your Reform Party? A relatively strong third-party movement would likely disrupt our upcoming Presidential election.
Probably not. Though the way people started to vote for UKIP during the leadup to Brexit may indicate more volatility than there used to be. It could be that if disaffection with Net Zero reaches a high level, and there is no other way of expressing it, that Reform gets votes. The usual way of doing this is vote for a minority party in a by-election, to send a message. The Liberals were the traditional beneficiary. But they have now gone woker than woke, and are more infatuated than ever with the EU, so that role is maybe up for grabs, and Reform might fill it in some places.
The next election will be very interesting. If Sunak dares to wade in with both feet, the Conservatives maybe could be in with a chance. If he continues to rearrange the deck chairs, he and they are likely toast. And then Heaven help the UK!
The phrase “political consensus on climate change” tells you everything you need to know about these grifters. It has NOTHING to do with the environment and everything to do with political wealth, power, and control.
And ‘consensus’.
So nothing to do with science, either ….
Wonder if anyone told Rishi or Kier .
Or if they would understand.
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Fusion is as viable a path to (genuflect) Net Zero (genuflect) as windmills and solar and a whole lot more fun to investigate. If we can use hydrocarbons until fusion solves all our problems, I’m all for it.
Wishy-washy Rishi needs to find an actual policy about something – anything.
“… shield people from its worst impacts by helping to pay around half the typical energy bill.”
Robbing Peter to pay Paul comes to mind. Instead of consumers suffering fully from Leftist governmental forays into energy and economic mismanagement, we’ll have taxpayers (the same people!) share their misery. Ain’t socialism grand?
When will British Tories realize that their striving toward “net zero” or reductions in fossil fuel use have stymied the economic boom the UK should have realized from Brexit?
The Tories have historically been for economic development through capitalism, which requires fossil fuels. Net Zero and similar policies are about socialism, and Labour is better at socialism than the Tories could ever be.
They got captured by the college kids when the central committee took control of which candidates were allowed to run, and started inserting their cronies.