Boris Johnson and the rest of the green claque used to boast about all the green jobs that net zero would create.
Former British prime minister Boris Johnson was not known for his attachment to the truth, but on one occasion, at least, he was, if accidentally, accurate.
Speaking in 2021, he claimed that Britain’s pursuit of net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions was “about growth and jobs.” He was right, but not in the way he meant. Net zero is “about” growth: It destroys it. And it is “about” jobs too: It destroys them.
There have been signs that some in Britain’s labor unions are beginning to wake up to this reality.
Gary Smith, the general secretary of the GMB union, said the UK’s progress in cutting carbon emissions so far was largely based on the “decimation” of manufacturing industries such as steelmaking, creating “huge social and economic scars”.
The UK, he argued, “has essentially reduced its carbon emissions by putting people out of manufacturing jobs and moving the work to countries like China.”
Smith, who regards climate change “as a huge problem” without, I note, mentioning whether Britain’s efforts to fight it are going to make the slightest difference to the climate (spoiler: they won’t) is right, but in two different respects.
The first is that a part of Britain’s more recent decarbonization has been the result of “exporting” energy-intensive businesses overseas, basically by letting countries such as China do the work.
Smith:
The UK has essentially reduced its carbon emissions by putting people out of manufacturing jobs and moving the work to countries like China.
The second is that more and more of the manufacture of (allegedly) green technology is taking place in China, from wind to solar to electric vehicles.
Smith:
“Our renewables infrastructure is being built in state-owned or oil and gas wealth fund-backed yards in China and the Middle East, and China obviously burns a huge amount of coal to produce the steel required for that.
“It is not morally defensible. And so for British politicians to go around the world talking about climate change and the threat it poses, well — we’ve simply embarked on a policy of exporting jobs and importing virtue.
And that doesn’t seem likely to change.
The Daily Telegraph:
[W]ind farm developers have privately argued that to hit the Government’s 2030 clean power target, ministers may have to relax – rather than strengthen – rules designed to ensure that turbines are made with “local content” from the UK.
Boris Johnson and the rest of the green claque used to boast about all the green jobs that net zero would create. The good news is that he was right. The bad news is that those jobs are in China. That’s not to say that there are no green jobs in the U.K. There are. The question is whether they will be outweighed by the jobs lost to net zero.
And the destruction of Britain’s North Sea Oil sector isn’t going to help:
Mr Smith warned that the green transition was being forced on the industry too quickly and risked triggering a jobs bloodbath if ministers did not pull back.
“Successive governments have taken a hostile position and a fundamentally dishonest position on the realities of oil and gas,” he said.
“We are going to need oil and gas for decades to come. And actually, Labour agrees with that. It’s in their manifesto — we ensured it was in there.
“But what is totally counterproductive from a Labour perspective is taxing the industry out of business and putting bans on new exploration. You’re going to create a cliff edge which will have devastating implications.
“If you close down oil and gas prematurely, where are people going? So much of the supply chain for these industries is actually in the North East, on the Tyne.
“I have said to Labour, ‘You can close down an oil rig 100 miles offshore and nobody sees the consequence of that. But what about the first factory in the North East that has to lay people off?’ That’s when they will have a very big political problem.”
That “very big” political problem is coming, and, with net zero playing a central role in policy-making throughout the West, the “very big” political problems it is going to cause won’t be confined to the U.K.
Oh yes, David Turver tweets:
Yesterday’s data dump from the [British] Government also showed we have the highest domestic electricity prices in the IEA. On a par with Germany, but ~80% above the IEA median, 3.5X Korea and 2.8X USA. Prices like these are an existential threat to the economy
Needless to say, British companies are being encouraged to switch from gas to electricity. Gas is far cheaper, but net zero is what it is.