We should have gotten used to being foisted on one crazy ecological idea after another, but they still have the potential to cause outrage. We learned last week that one in ten UK households, or about three million, have faulty smart meters. Technology doesn’t seem to be as good as those who brought it to us claim—in this case, politicians are sending virtuous signals to eccentrics who ignore the economic realities of keeping households, businesses, and countries solvent.
As with many green fantasies, there is incompetence here. The government is well behind its goal of providing 80% of households with these faulty meters by 2025, not least due to a shortage of installers. And those who installed were accused of paying more attention to quantity than quality, so many people were left in a mess.
My objections to such things are based not on revived Lutheranism, but on repeated demonstrations that the idea of ​​allegedly saving the planet is deeply destructive to the economy: and smart meters are only a small harbinger of future horrors. On Friday, we reported that people in rural households – those of us who live far from the gas grid – would suffer if they were forced to switch to heat pumps due to the government’s reckless insistence on banning all new oil-fired boilers. an increase in their electricity bills.
At a time when many people are struggling to support their families due to a spike in inflation, fueled in part by the frenzied injection of money into the economy during the pandemic and the slow rise in interest rates since then, the cost of heating has skyrocketed. more than two-thirds, if you’ll pardon me. The expression of the word should let the blood cool.
But for ministers, extreme poverty is a price worth paying for the cult of net zero. Few independent experts claim that solar or wind energy is enough to meet the heating and electricity needs of a country of nearly 70 million people. We are confronted with this acute crisis because of the ingrained opposition to nuclear power that has taken hold over the past 20 years—the germ has entered the bloodstream of the Conservative Party under Dave Cameron—and a long-term determination to improve our environmental commitments. This record will hurt the economy of any developed country that depends on the production of electricity, heating and water supply for buildings and, of course, on the movement of people and goods from point A to point B.
Perhaps sometime in the 2030s, ministers will not only tell us to brush our teeth in the dark, as the late Patrick Jenkin did during the 1973-1974 energy crisis, but much more. Wear a sweater or two and snuggle up to other people, or otherwise use your pet as a thermos. We can gather bushes to build a fire for cooking, or we can gather together to keep warm, at least until the carbon emitting fascists catch up with us.
A fascination with net zero and a growing respect for environmental activist groups (now they’ve gone from sticking themselves to roads and climbing motorways to protesting in posh Glyndebourne where they performed in Max Planck’s opera). Thursday) and seems to have paralyzed our rulers into inactivity.
This must stop because otherwise public anger will rise and the economy will collapse as we stop even competing with countries like polluting China.
The government plans to introduce 600,000 heat pumps a year (so far agreed), but does not plan to do anything completely impractical in homes. As Sir Bill Wiggin, MP for North Herefordshire, noted, many rural households need oil for heating, not only because they are not connected to the gas network, but also because many properties in these areas are listed buildings. As a rule, they cannot accommodate these pumps without destroying some of the protective fabric.
Cost matters: According to the Energy and Utilities Alliance, an oil-fired boiler costs an average of £2,500 and a heat pump £13,000. Unfortunately, the government continues to intervene and waste money recklessly, offering grants of between £5,000 and £6,000 to those who wish to install such pumps – despite the public’s lack of interest in this senseless scheme. Millions of dollars were returned to the Treasury for subsidies. Will ministers provide ongoing funding to cover operating costs? What will this do to the already suffocating UK tax burden?
Rishi Sunak, who has otherwise shown a willingness to abandon his predecessor’s ill-conceived policies, must urgently rethink his environmental policy. The ban on boilers after 2026 should be lifted: this is a gross destruction of family life, and thousands of voters in the heart of conservatives will correspondingly rebel when they are forced to buy damn expensive heat pumps.
And for similar reasons, Mr. Sunak should indefinitely delay the ban on the sale of new non-electric vehicles from 2030, he cannot continue to ignore the economic and physical damage to these vehicles – whether it be from not having enough electricity to run them. or due to the chaos caused by the slow charging of lithium mining, even multi-storey car parks can collapse under the sheer weight of electric vehicles. God knows, his party should reboot and cheer up those who think that she lives in a parallel universe. And what better place to start than to drop all these ridiculous ideas and announce a new nuclear program?