The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published data earlier this month which showed that the UK’s ‘low-carbon and renewable-energy economy’ (LCREE) had not grown significantly between 2014 and 2020. [bold, links added]
This performance is a far cry from the promises of plentiful ‘green jobs’ and a ‘green industrial revolution’ that have echoed around Westminster for the past decade and more.
It turns out that the much-heralded green growth was nothing more than mold.
This news should surprise no one. As I have argued elsewhere on spiked, the green industrial revolution is a lie.
Since the 2008 Climate Change Act, successive governments have embraced the fantasy of leading the world in the ‘transition’ to a low-carbon economy.
And it’s all been to no avail.
The rest of the world continues to increase its consumption of fossil fuels despite endless COP meetings, and Britain’s green industrial revolution stubbornly fails to materialize.
Back in 2009, the then Labour government, led by Gordon Brown, claimed the green economy was already thriving. He promised to add 400,000 new ‘green jobs,’ taking the total number of people working in the green sector to 1.3 million.
These claims were based on proprietary data produced by an economic research company, which refused to share its data, as did the government even after freedom-of-information requests.
Even without access to the data, I was already able to point out in 2009 that growth in the ‘green economy’ is an illusion – or better still, an accountancy trick.
The government was effectively compelling sectors of the economy through a variety of green regulations to ‘decarbonize’ their operations.
It was then adding said sectors to the green economy and so the green economy appeared to be growing.
This was happening even when the sectors in question had been harmed and diminished by the new regulations.
It took me until 2013 to obtain the data on which successive governments were basing their figures, policies, and predictions. By then, it was being claimed that the ‘green economy’ was worth £122 billion.
But it had only reached this size because the figure included sectors of the economy that simply do not qualify as ‘green’ in any meaningful sense.
It even included the production, transportation, and sale of liquefied natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas – otherwise known as fossil fuels – merely because such businesses were now subject to environmental regulation.
My analysis at the time suggested that through such tricks, the government’s financial wizards had inflated the value of the ‘green economy’ by something in the region of 700 percent.
In 2014, the ONS took responsibility for the annual measurements of LCREE sectors. Since then, the ONS has found ‘no significant change’ in ‘turnover in the UK low-carbon and renewable-energy economy’ (up to 2020).
It also found that ’employment in the UK LCREE (in 2020) was estimated to be 207,800′ – that is 1,092,200 short of the number of jobs Gordon Brown had promised to create by 2017.
This is hardly the stuff of a green industrial revolution. Nevertheless, the drive to decarbonize the economy, pursued now in the shape of Net Zero, has continued to inform successive governments’ industrial and economic policy.
Ministers still insist that decarbonization presents a major economic ‘opportunity’ for the UK.
The green dream threatens to turn into a nightmare the longer its advocates refuse to wake up to its manifest failure. That it has failed is no surprise.
In truth, Britain did not even have sufficient industrial prowess to recycle its own waste plastic, let alone to become a world leader in producing wind turbines and solar panels.
And environmentalism always was, at its core, hostile to both industry and economic growth.
There never was a green economy, nor a green industrial revolution to support it.
The only sense in which this green economy existed was as a parasitic growth on other sectors’ vitality. It was never the source of real wealth creation itself.
Today we face rising inflation, a cost-of-living crisis, and an energy crisis – all of which have been exacerbated by successive governments’ green fantasies. Waiting for the green dream to come true now runs the risk of doing very serious harm.
Read more at Spiked-Online
Fifteen years ago I was reading about the promise of a booming green economy. Some authors were concerned that the US would be left behind. One concept is clear. Once liberals latch onto an idea, they won’t let go of it. That includes a green industrial revolution, the fabled increase in extreme weather events, or the fraud that 97% of scientists support the climate change narrative.
Life on earth is carbon-based. The closest we come to a carbon-free environment is a desert. 83% of the elements, by mass, that make life’s little carbon sacks of water – cells – are made of carbon and oxygen. Photosynthesis is the basic biochemistry of life. Its green pigment enzyme chlorophyll literally paints the environment green. Its basic molecular ingredients are CO2 and H2O. This little miracle of life converts sunlight energy into high-energy sugar and atmospheric oxygen. More CO2 always makes life greener, stronger, more abundant, and more drought-tolerant. Because life is literally made of the stuff. Without it, all life dies. That is the science of biology and the science of the CO2 fertilization effect. Fossil fuels retain the high energy bonds created by life. They are 85% of our modern civilization’s energy. We use them – coal, oil, and gas – to make us the best fed, longest-living, most prosperous human beings that have ever existed. When we use them, they recycle the two most important ingredients of life – CO2 and H2O – back to the environment from which they came. Making coal, oil, and gas our ONLY GREEN ENERGY. While left-wing lawyers, politicians, and grade school teachers frighten schoolchildren and the public into believing the basic ingredient of our carbon-based life is “pollution”. It isn’t. Barry Bateman, B.Sc. Advanced (biology), farmer most of my life.
The whole modern day Enviromentalists Movement is based upon Lies and Junk Science it started with Carson and Silent Spring then Ehrlich and The Population Bomb and has now grown into monster that wants to annialate all humanity