Clinging to fossil fuels is like sticking to horse-power
Many politicians in the UK are “stuck in an outdated mental universe” on green energy, says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph. Tony Blair recently warned of the “huge burden” of moving to Net Zero. Rishi Sunak, Britain’s prime minister, has insisted on imposing “a discriminatory and retroactive surtax” on renewable companies.
Instead, Sunak is allowing the opening of coal mines and the construction of oilrigs in the North Sea. Both will increase more carbon into our world.
Renewables have been one of our biggest success stories. Richi’s actions will “surreptitiously halve” the UK’s carbon tax available to the national treasury. Money that could be used to fund the building of wind farms or solar energy installations.
Both Prince Charles (now King Charles III), and Greta Thunberg, have long advocated that politicians should take climate warming more seriously, carbon emissions are destroying our planet.
It’s crazy. Clean tech “will entirely change the global economic system, not in years to come but now.at some distant date but this decade”. Attempting to cling to fossil fuels is like “sticking to horse-power as others embrace the steam engine”.
The usual argument is that green energy is “a pious luxury for rich Western states, while the rest of humanity belches out carbon”. But greenhouse emissions, in much of the world, have already peaked. It happened 10 years ago in Latin America.
China, which is embarking on a vast expansion of wind and solar across the “empty deserts of Inner Mongolia”, says it will reduce its carbon emissions from 2025. The country’s dominance in battery production means it’s “running away with the great prize of the 21st century”.
Solar energy, and a “rapid switch to clean tech” could cut energy and fuel bills in western economies by almost 20% in the next seven years. “This is an unstoppable global juggernaut. It does not require lavish state spending.” Britain must hold its nerve and plough on with “green energy rearmament”.
