Essay by Eric Worrall
Never has a proposed Whitehall taskforce been so aptly named.
Election 2024: Labour to create new office for net zero in government to push green transition
Sources say the new office would demonstrate commitment to achieving clean power by 2030 and provide a key dividing line with the Tories.
Alexandra Rogers
Political reporter @Journoamrogers
Tuesday 25 June 2024 03:04, UKLabour will ramp up its efforts to achieve net zero with a dedicated team of officials working to eliminate carbon emissions if it wins the election, Sky News understands.
The party’s transition team, led by Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray, is considering setting up an Office for Net Zero if it forms the next government, sources said, with a focus on delivering its aim for clean power as laid out in its manifesto.
It is not yet clear whether the new office would sit within the Cabinet Office – one of the key control centres in government alongside Number 10 and the Treasury – or under the the existing Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Desnez).
…
While Labour have announced moves to accelerate the move to net zero, including doubling onshore wind, tripling solar power and quadrupling offshore wind by 2030, Mr Sunak’s approach has been more cautious.
…
Read more: https://news.sky.com/story/election-2024-labour-to-create-new-office-for-net-zero-in-government-to-push-green-transition-13156557
If only the Net Zero push had been around back when the BBC used to make comedy programmes.
In the famous BBC Sitcom “Yes Minister”, MP Jim Hacker and his adversary Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby ran the “Department of Administrative Affairs”, a fictional Whitehall ministry which had poorly defined responsibilities and achieved nothing significant during the entire series.
But “Office for Net Zero” beats “Department of Administrative Affairs” in terms of implied uselessness. I mean, there’s a vague expectation the “Department of Administrative Affairs” might actually be expected to achieve something. But “Office for Net Zero” – can you imagine a “Net Zero” progress report?
Labour leader Keir Starmer’s imminent administration was always destined to be a comedy special – radical green politicians using Karl Marx as their guide to fixing the economic failures of Britain’s energy market.
Don’t lose any important peripheral appendages to frostbite kind of humour.
But please keep the “Office for Net Zero” title for the crack team of bureaucrats who will lead the charge to make it all right. Writing future WUWT articles about the unfolding energy disaster at the “Office for Net Zero” would just be the cherry on the cake.
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Doubling down on failure?
Seeing as they’ve all signed up for it, with 2030 not that far away it might be a good time to lose an election. 🙂
The current socialist government will commit economic suicide 5 years later in 2035.
With the next government expected to run from 2024 to 2029, the 2029 election campaign should be grimly amusing with some politicians deserting the sinking ship before the bovine excrement impacts the air moving device.
Seeing as they’ve all signed up for it, with 2030 not that far away it might be a good time to lose an election. 🙂
With only a few days to go before the election, announcement of planned doubling down on endless economic pain for the electorate, shows the depth of of idiocy in the alt-left wokey pollies. For 200,000 grand, I would have counseled Starmer to shut up now. With a real alternative candidate in the race, this should accelerate the opposition numbers.
Its a leftist tradition.
Here in the U.S. a Google search finds 4 federal departments that have offices dealing with “The Climate Crisis” Departments of State, Interior, Energy & Defense. The Democrats will probably get around to a “Climate Crisis” Department.
I really DO hope they will actually put one up and then watch the ‘progress’..
Even ignoring the economic concerns, solar panel farms require extensive land use, which can lead to habitat fragmentation.
Bear in mind that Josef Stalin was very much in favour of democracy – provided he counted the votes. The Office for net zero will have no difficulty reporting that they are progressing and on target. Not only is the office the first to be so appropriately named, it is also the first that needs to be staffed with pathological liars.
I really doubt that “first” bit.
We already have the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
At least they understand they’ll be dropping the Energy Security aspect.
Seems sensible since they are doing nothing about energy security.
More or less easy now most of your industry has left the country and what is left planning to leave. But now you have to import all your stuff. Is that net zero?. And to import you have to export but if you are not making any stuff what do you export? If you are not making stuff where does the money come from to buy stuff. Printing Pound Stirling like there is no tomorrow? Destroying the purchasing power of that same fiat currency killing everyone’s savings in the process. Remember how everyone was poor in the USSR and there was nothing to buy.
If they can achieve net zero then at least they will not have made things any worse.
If they really want to be “ambitious” then net negative has to be their goal.
Everyone starving/freezing to death when the economy collapses, or the wind drops to zero in winter is a strange usage of the phrase “not worse”.
I should’ve added the sarc tag.
I was also speaking numerically and not idealogically
If their net achievement is zero then it’s no worse than where we are now – if their achievement is negative then that would mean that they are further from their deluded goals and that’s better for us all.
The sarc tag shouldn’t have been necessary
Thanks 👍
As long as the down votes don’t cost me anything (net zero?) I’ll live with it 😁
That is the goal of many “greens”. Certainly here in Wokeachusetts. They openly say it- and one way to get there, after they stop all fossil fuels, is to lock up all the forests so no tree every gets cut.
Politicians…the scourge of humanity.
Nope — coercive immortal monopoly governments. Politicians wouldn’t exist without such things.
Whether getting rid of such things is good or possible, I leave to others. But politicians are as inevitable as carnivores and herbivores.
except for the most part they are parasites.
Political parties – the home of politicians – are the scourge of humanity and they exist only by the grace {idiocy} of the voters so there is hope. The voters are turning their backs on parties. Soon the trickle will become a flood.
Unfortunately I doubt it. The tribe/clan instinct, left over from long, long ago, is still strong in so many humans.
Ten percent of the candidates in the soon to be British general election are independents. Double from last time. Ok, probably none will succeed but you gotta have eggs before chickens. One thing is sure – any successful independent will be head and shoulders above every party hack.
Their existence disproves the survival of the fittest, how did their genes get through the caveman era when they had no purpose.
Net Zero policies are increasingly unpopular as voters learn the true costs and tradeoffs involved. However, Net Zero talking points remain popular.
So for the best of both worlds politicians should talk about Net Zero but do nothing. Doing nothing is one thing American politicians do best. Is it any different in the UK?
At the beginning of this evening’s “historic” presidential debate, CNN was touting that millions of folks from around the world would be watching (apparently regardless of time zone). I would apologize to all of them, except it wasn’t my fault.
Yes, bad for Biden, and good for the United States and the Western World.
“British Labour Considers “Office for Net Zero””
OK. Stick them in an office without light, heat or AC. (Or power for their PCs and phones.)
Let them experience “Net Zero” before they inflict it on the rest of the UK.
There must be some unoccupied dungeons around.
From Yesterdays Telegraph, surprised anyone is surprised. And private money has to be paid for by the public too, it just keeps it off the Govt accounts.
I wonder how they plan to access all that private capital?
From closed down and bankrupt businesses, of course! 😉
They have full access to all on-shore, and probably to most off-shore bank accounts, useful when they don’t get full “voluntary” cooperation.
The green billionaires are going to make a killing lending the government the money. Mark Carney is their gopher.
What the article failed to mention is that it would be hundreds of billions per year.
There is no way to achieve their goal with any less, and the extent if the command economy required might even have made Mao and gas Great Leap backward blush.
The £4.7b is only to pay the salaries of the new department.
Is this the same as in the USA where we give them a title, authority, and enforcement to do whatever they want despite not being elected officials?
Much worse – the USA is exceptional in the breadth of choices people have in selecting who governs them.
Sue Gray…. that figures.
Sue Gray’s policy of introducing citizens’ assemblies was backtracked on a mere 30 hours after it was first briefed to the press. Gray must have forgotten that we already have a citizens’ assembly known as Parliament.
https://order-order.com/2024/02/20/mandelson-slaps-down-sue-gray/
Another one of Stalin’s daughters
Citizens’ soviets.
It is clear, we have a government problem not a climate problem.
Well sure but who elects the government? We have a people problem.
Yes that’s true but the issue has nothing to do with science or climate.
Not voters. The real government power lies with the quangocracy, Civil Servants and the judiciary and supra national organisations to whom law making has been contracted out. We still implement most EU law, despite Brexit. Politicians have very little say, other than Yes.
Long Live Socialism via Net Zero!
Do we know what Net Zero is for?
See above.
The Office. Unfortunately it won’t be as comical. But it will seek to impose its power through a lack of power.
One only need look at the history of the 18th amendment to the US constitution “prohibition” to realize how stupid even a democracy can behave.
Quangocracy!
https://www.netzerowatch.com/videos/v/6kzspwafymmzx4kmrybnnp8k8px22d
Yes Minister on global warming.
Sketches still stand up fairly well.
Very funny – not the original actors though 🙂
The original actor who played the useless bureaucrat Sir Humphrey also played the duplicitous head of government in the Sylvester Stallone movie “demolition man”.
The incomparable Nigel Hawthorne.
Story tip – video EV batts/heat – Extreme heat impact on electric vehicles (youtube.com)
Time for a new series of Yes Minister me thinks.
If you enjoyed that, check out the Australian series “Hollow Men” and “Utopia” .
They hilariously take the piss out of disconnected politicians & bureaucrats.
Working Dog Productions.
The output of the Department of Net Zero will be a real zero as one of the first things Sir Kneeler Flip Flop U-turn will learn is that all his targets are unachievable. For example, even if he could find a way of constructing and then erecting 4 times more windmills at sea than we currently have, there is no resource available to lay the cables until 2030 – a year after the next election. We could take bets as to how many weeks, months or years it is before his government is in crisis.
I don’t think that would be a problem for Rishi Starmer when he wins office from Kier Sunak. He can put up some wind turbines, tick somee boxes, and not bother to lay cables. He gets the added bonus of a grid not being degraded. As long as people didn’t see any grid improvement, they would never know that the turbines hadn’t been connected. Oh yes, and the little box at the top could be left empty so it would save having to buy lots of rare earths from China.
But it will give a few more flunkies a way to pull in a large salary.
They have never seen the irony and humor in the phrase “net zero”. That’s because irony and humor are beyond their ken.
I’m waiting for the Lib Dems to announce their Office for “Net Zero -1” and the so-called Tories “Net Zero -2”
Story Tip:
Rushie Sunik has announced the Tories’ path to Net Zero will be called the Ministry of Silly Walks
https://youtu.be/iV2ViNJFZC8?si=Vj3FsCGkQhViJheX
That’ll achieve just as much in the “fight” against carbon
He might win back some votes if he said something funny. A sense of humour – proof of human…
C3P0 has a better sense of humour than Sunak and is way more human. R2-D2 is taller.
In fact Net Zero describes the Labour Party in Government – what our wealth and economy will be worth if they make it through the next 5 years.
Tasks for ‘Net Zero Office’: