Boris goes green - are we all ready to make sacrifices now?

[cromwell]

Our Prime Minister has committed to reducing the carbon emissions to 78% of what they were in 1990 by 2035. (They have already gone down by 44%).
But in the next phase we won't be able to reduce much more before it starts affecting how we live our lives. Do people realise this?

There are problems everywhere. Low traffic neighbourhoods are unpopular in London, having been foisted on the hapless Cockneys by Boris and Mayor Sad Dick. Harrow council has had to ditch all it's LTN's in their entirety. Up to 91% of residents were anti, cycle lanes were virtually unused, and shutting off some roads to traffic caused horrendous jams in others plus more pollution due to gridlock.

Air travel. Will technology help us here? Will liquid hydrogen replace nasty, smelly polluting kerosene? Problem; according to some you would need four times the volume of liquid hydrogen to replace the kerosene. Electric planes? You'd need 50kg of battery for every 1kg of kerosene. So - will people be willing to give up going to Majorca or Dubai to save the planet? I'm guessing not. So how to stop them? Tax airlines out of business? It's a hard sell, especially as our politicians and elites will most certainly still be flying to summits, etc.

What about carbon emitting food like beef cattle? There is a massive push by greenies to stop us eating meat by pointing out the health benefits of yummy locust burgers and tofu. But what if these blandishments fail? Are people going to want a carbon tax slapped on beef? Are they going to want to give up their burgers, steaks and Sunday dinners? Again, I'm guessing not.

Then, who is going to pay for replacing gas boilers with heat pumps? You or I, at £20,000 a throw? Or pay for insulating 30 million homes to new standards?

What about petrol and diesel cars? Fancy paying £10,000 more for an electric vehicle than it's petrol equivalent? Where are all the new charging points that are going to be needed? Where are the new power stations being built to provide the power for all these electric cars and to power all the electric air heat pumps? Who is going to pay for all that?

Boris shows no sign of backing down. OK, so he's grandstanding. He's not going to be PM by 2035. But he's running an electoral risk. People will still want to go on holiday; still want roast beef; and will not want to be paying £20,000 for heat pumps. It is a massive risk for Johnson; or would be, if Labour weren't just as fervent believers.

How are they going to achieve all this? Well one way has already started. On our truly awful Look North from Leeds they had last night, under the thin guise of "local people going green", they had stories about how to reduce your carbon footprint, what meat substitutes you could try, sustainability, etc etc.
It was absolute flat out propaganda, and we are going to be getting an absolute tsunami of it.

Expect any populist party that springs up as anti-Green to be ferociously attacked by all regular political parties and the media.

Interesting times ahead.

[Workingman]

Don't get me started....

Why pick on 1990 as the benchmark? By that time the damage had already been done and the levels were five times those of 1950. It's simple, it is a target to aim for and we will all get a warm glow if we achieve it.

Two problems 1. it is not enough and 2. we will get nowhere near not even if we pump in many billions of $£€s into 'green' economies and we all start eating worms or go vegan. The 1990 figure is still too high.

We passed the tipping point decades ago, not least with population and infinite economic growth, and nobody wants to address those so we tinker at the edges. Lifestyle changes will be forced upon future generations whether they like them or not and they will happen for the next one or two not for our great, great, great grandchildren.

The great unspoken truth is that we, every one of us, even ardent 'greenies', do not want to change too much.

[Suff]

It is true that we don't want to change. However I've been a big proponent of allowing people to choose to change rather than having changes forced on them. At least if you want them to choose change then the alternative they are changing to is not horrendous, or they wouldn't choose it.

The UK will achieve these goals because 30% of our emissions are from CH and another 30% of our emissions are from transport. So by banning pure FF vehicles from 2030 and hybrids from 2035, we start seeing the transition begin around 2025. Norway has seen this.

For CH, they will start with new homes where the addition of £10k or £15k is not crippling. Already I'm seeing 30kw heat pumps for around £10k without installation. As the market grows costs will fall and as more installers are trained and experience installation costs will fall. Eventually the price will fall in line with gas CH and with a 5:1 multiplier on energy usage, costs will be below gas for electricity.

As for 78% below 1990, that was because 1990 was where the stake was stuck in the ground at Kyoto. The true target is 100% below 1990 levels or net Zero CO2. 78% is still far better than most countries are working towards and more than our Paris accord commitment. The UK actually leads most of the EU countries in this respect and it is far easier for us to go the other 34%. You might think that the low hanging fruit has been reaped with CO2 reductions but this is not actually true. In fact the investment so far has laid the groundwork for much larger reductions in the future. Electricity migration in thirds, 1/3 renewable, 1/3 Nuclear, 1/3 gas as peaker plants and emergency reserve.

Reality says that current emerging technologies are going to take over the emergency reserve and peaker plants.

Who is going to pay for insulation and CH changes? We are. But we'll be paying it out of funds which would have gone elsewhere. There are few weeks that go by I do not have to drop a cold call for insulation "support" here. The government is huge on it. Because they can't meet their commitments without it.

But here is the real thing. By moving to heat pumps and electric vehicles, the UK can contain the impact of CO2 into the electric generating grid. Which can then be expanded when needed. Insulation reduces demand for heat in winter and cooling in summer. The grid can be expanded, net neutral, for the new capacity, to serve the new demands.

There is a plan behind this and we are not quite at the sharp end, we're about 3 steps behind the bleeding edge so we know it works.

As for the vegidiots. I have not one second of time for them, but they'll get all the air time that can be spared. Because if we believe the vegidiots, it's all our falt. Even though they eat avocado's flown into the country. But why should reality be allowed to ruin a good story???

[Workingman]

If we do not make some pretty dramatic changes, and soon, all this talk of EVs, windmills, heat pumps, insulation and stopping cows belching are going to save us is nothing more than a Utopian dreamscape.

We are running out of resources and trashing the planet at the same time. And we do more of it as each day passes.

[Suff]

I agree fully we are running out of resource and time.

Even if the UK achieves 100% mitigation, the rise of China and India totally negates the lot. But at least we have cleaner air for our kids and can take the moral high ground.

An interesting side fact is that, fully built out, renewable energy is cheaper to produce, overall, than fossil or nuclear. Which is a bonus. Also reducing our reliance on gas means we become more energy secure. So long as we do it properly and don't destabilise the grid. ergo the Nuclear build out.

[Workingman]

Here lies the problem

Those of us at the top of the pyramid do not want to let up - even a little bit. Those lower down want to climb up, and who can blame them?

Way back in the late 60s I had a book called something like 'Where on Earth are we going?'. It was a set of essays by leading environmentalists at the time. They worked out that the sustainable population of GB should be about 30 million. It was based on us not taking out more and more and also putting stuff back in - a sort of circular economy.

It involed a mix of energy from nuclear, wind, solar and small scale hydro. It involved hardcore reuse or recycling of every product imaginable - most organic stuff was for composting instead of landfill, including cotton and wool textiles. Public not private transport would rule the roads. Loads of other stuff.

Did we go for it? No, they were cranks, yet look what we are attempting now - tinkering.

[Suff]

It is not as if it has not been known for decades. But known and known by the public are two entirely different things.

Still, even today, if the public really want to know the score they have to do the research themselves and, even then, work out who is riding what hobby horse. Everyone has an agenda here, even the people who "just want things to remain the same".

The biggest problem with climate science and knowledge is the credibility gap in the political leanings of the scientists and activists. Very close to 100% of them are well left on the political spectrum and many are hard left.

This puts common sense on the political spectrum and leaves it open to challenge.