Ed Miliband is obsessed. The Energy Secretary is fired up by the same manic hubris, that messianism that brings traffic to a halt, that wastes police time and ruins people’s days, as the loony green groups Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. [emphasis, links added]
As with so many eco-zealots, people, indeed those Labour was elected to serve, are fodder, expendable, to be swept aside, as the dystopian vision for Britain – a decarbonized grid in five years from now – is forced on us.
In Labour’s election, Miliband promised to “move fast and build things” to the tune of £40 billion in investment per year. By “building things”, might Miliband actually mean destroying things?
One thinks here of the planned halting of North Sea oil and gas drilling licences, whose main effects will be that we are left with greater dependency on enemy states for gas, and it is estimated, over 100,000 British jobs will be lost.
Unsurprisingly, Miliband has become an increasing liability for Labour. His plan to rewire the whole national grid and power the country, in short order, with wind and solar – a process that will be full of faults, eyesores, and grievous noise and other nuisances – are at “the limits of what is feasibly deliverable”, according to the Government’s own National Energy System Operator. It’s embarrassing.
It also won’t work, not just because it is not “feasibly deliverable” but because this is still Britain, and we can’t be entirely railroaded by the eco lobby.
I am no fan of Reform, but I did find a degree of satisfaction in the deputy chairman and Lincolnshire MP Richard Tice’s warning to Labour about its renewables plans for his region:
“We will attack, we will hinder, we will delay, we will obstruct, we will put every hurdle in your way. It’s going to cost you a fortune, and you’re not going to win. So give up and go away.”
Critics raged about how such a view translates to wishing for the loss of thousands of jobs created by the net-zero infrastructure industry. But this is a bit like pointing to the cost of fire extinguishers when trying to stop Rome from burning. …
But the current proposals are as pointless as they are dangerous. Britain, even as we are now, with minimal industry and a fast-diminishing farming sector, is hardly going to be a make-or-break on this problem.
The Americas, India, parts of Africa, the Arab world … these are the guys who could make a difference, but aren’t particularly bothered about doing so. In some cases, it’s the reverse.
Meanwhile, going full-tilt for net zero as Miliband desires is widely understood to be incredibly dangerous and a huge national security risk.
Shutting down our pipeline of gas means dependency on, and vulnerability to the likes of Russia, from whom we still import some gas, and Qatar, not exactly a liberal democracy, and a major exporter of natural gas to us.
Meanwhile, China makes 80 percent of the world’s solar panels, and you can’t remake an energy grid in the image of Miliband’s dreams without being up to your ears in its monopoly on green energy.
While Labour is busy cosying up to China, perhaps it should be thinking more about the American discovery of “communication devices” in Chinese-made solar power batteries and converters, which connect the panels to the grid.
This equipment is capable of bypassing firewalls, with catastrophic national security consequences.
Mike Rogers, a former director of the US National Security Agency, said: “We know that China believes there is value in placing at least some elements of our core infrastructure at risk of destruction or disruption.” This is a terrifying threat.
Yet Miliband and his fellow net-zero evangelists are choosing this future for Britain over one in which we can both boil the kettle when we want without fear of overtaxing the grid, and retain a degree of sovereignty, which will be handy when the next world war really gets into gear.
And the cost to us, modern people accustomed to life in the First World, of Miliband’s vision is simply unthinkable.
We are, it seems, to begin to adjust to mass outages like that which brought Spain and Portugal to a standstill recently, due to an unexpected surge. Foul play by a foreign power has not been ruled out in that case either.
Top image of Ed Miliband singing at a wind farm. GBNews/YouTube screencap
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