Cabinet ministers have agreed a far-reaching, legally binding “green deal” that will commit the UK to two decades of drastic cuts in carbon emissions. The package will require sweeping changes to domestic life, transport and business and will place Britain at the forefront of the global battle against climate change.
The new budget puts the government on target to meet a reduction by 2050 of 80% of carbon emissions compared with 1990 levels. The committee has said that to reach this carbon emissions should be cut by 60% by 2030.
How quickly people forget.
Governments reflect the education and skill set of the elected leaders.
It is difficult to pursue both a government as well as a technical career.
So often the decisions are made without adequate technical understanding, based on ‘expert inputs’ that are based on very narrow perspectives.
Solutions will be difficult to implement.
Maybe quotas limiting the fraction of lawyers and accountants in leadership positions to no more than 5 times their share of the total population?
Hey, it’s the UK Government, they’ll fiddle with the figures and tamper with the reports of independent panels appointed by them, declare “victory!” and move on without having achieved any practical goal at all.
I feel for the minority rational people left over there.
In an article in one of the UK newspapers they say that they will need to install more than 2.5 million heat pumps for heat. Now combine that with an earlier comment by the energy minister that the power might not always be available on demand and you have the potential from real trouble. I’ve lived in a house with a heat pump and when it gets cold, it runs all the time because that’s what is needed to maintain temp. If you shut it off for an extended period of time, the back-up heating system has to take over. So a heat pump with intermittant power becomes pointless.
My heat pump is designed to work only down to 45 degrees or so…. after that, the Natural Gas furnace takes over, because the efficiency of the pump is too low. I’m planning to install a wood furnace also because our elected idiots are plotting a destruction of cheap fuel here in the NW as well.
Your heat pump only works to 45F? That’s odd, the ones we have in the mid-Atlantic worked reasonably well to the teens, although they did run all the time at those temperatures. The biggest problem people have with them is that since the air is always moving and very dry, it feels cold, even if the temp is 68F. Many people switch to nat. gas if they have the opportunity.
Always figured Cameron for a fool, now he’s proven it. He’s ensured that the Uk will become an impoverished, bleak, economically backward country for generations to come. The Uk has been going down the tube for decades, it was just a matter of how it would all end. They finally made up their minds and chose green suicide.
Get the bodybags ready Cameron, lots of people are going to die because you’re a moron. ‘Froze to death’ will appear in many obituaries each winter from now on.
Quite what these dullard idiots expect to achieve by shutting down Britain’s industry and economy is beyond my ken [or word power – it renders me speechless – nearly].
In Britain, our political ‘elite’ is suffused with a particular strain of brain-dead lunatics.
From apparats, political shills on the make and on the ladder – in all departments and political parties [inclusive of the MSM] – who blindly adhere to the green ‘meme’, to MPs who unquestioningly toe the line in awe of the executive.
This executive, which has [and is being] lead by a succession of unimaginative and intellectually challenged ‘run of the mill’ party men and women [Thatcher no hero of mine was the instigator of all of this madness, she had no excuse – Bsc chem] – Cameron being the latest in a line of moronic PMs, stretching back to Atlee.
These nutters, who desire to impose a form of, hair-shirt green imbecility, whereby everybody [excepting the elite – naturally] has to abide by legally enforced statutes which will make the mundane obstacles and ‘meeting the budget’ of normal life not only unaffordable but well nigh impossible – all this for a political whim!
Even if one did believe – how mankind’s inconsequential input of said gas [CO2] an atmospherically insignificant % – though, a truly life giving gas, at .0387% – can be the bugbear – threatening to all of life on earth.
Cutting Britain’s emissions to zero [desired by these nutters] will not benefit the planet one iota, the increase in Atmospheric CO2 will rise unhindered, our tiny amount of emissions is of no import.
All of this is politically inspired insanity.
Why do most of my countrymen and women continue to elect these Luddite 7u*3*its? Indeed, how could or should they be allowed to continue with these economically suicidal policies which threaten [and are antithetical to logical science] the very existence of our [my] nation state?
I remain in stunned amazement, we must be the laughingstock of the free world.
The global battle…….. how dramatic.
Expect businesses to move……………… The UK will learn the hard way when cold winters set in and the windmills fail.
Is Britain even big enough to be on the forefront of the global battle against climate change??
Would anyone even notice?
Wiki lists them as a little over 1% of global emissions, China 22%.
I mean that’s a tad bloated to think a country that small, with that small a footprint (1%), is in the forefront……………………
The Guardian article contains the caption “Ministers believe that commitment to wind power and other green energy sources will attract investment to Britain”.
Really? How does that work?
With its high overheads, the UK economy is struggling (and failing) to compete in the global arena – right now. These added inefficencies and overheads will probably deliver the coup-de-grace. Is that an IMF-man over there?
Back to the Stone Age.
You can add the current situation in Australia in as well. We have a minority Govt who is hell bent on introducing a “carbon tax” with the coalition member Green party holding the loaded gun to their head to ensure they do it. But, we are not going to stop the export of the actual “pollutants” to China & India.
Revenue raised by this tax is not going to go into alternative energies or other token measures, it is going to be redistributed to the prols. So, in effect it is a wealth redistirbution tax.
Even if Australia cut its emissions to zero tomorrow, the increase in emissions from China & India would absorb Australia’s emissions in 6 months.
Guess I better move my plans forward to visit the UK, cause it sounds like 5 years time there won’t be anything left to visit unless you’re interested in third world countries.
I would rather have POMs migrating here than Afghans, so bring it on.
Australia needs skilled labor, keep the politicians over there!