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Climate Fools Meeting in the UK

See here for the original article.

What really caught my eye was the following:

• People in the UK could end up having to pay 800 pounds more (about 1500 AU dollars more) per year in energy bills.
• This will result in about 6 million people in 'energy poverty' i.e. unable to pay their energy bills. My guess is that will be those least able to pay to begin with (such as the old, infirm, unemployed, etc).
• Expected cost is 18.4 billion a year until 2050!

Also examples were given of how the UK governments' commitment to cut Co2 emissions by 80% is going to result in the economy being crippled. Also examples were given of failures in Wind farm projects and the Danish experience. The Danes have the highest energy bills in Europe, massive costs, subsidies and failure of energy policy and that all the promised green jobs seemed to have been created in China.

We need a Climate Fools Day in Australia

In case you haven't noticed the same determination to push through green policies regardless of the cost is happening now. Perfectly enshrined by the wish to put a price on carbon regardless of how it is achieved, yet while ignoring that in the US carbon trading is essentially 'dead' (well its about 1c a ton, as good as free). You cannot just put a price on what is a 'non-commodity' - the market will just come back and wreck its value, thats fundamental. Also especially when we have silly things like 'carbon multipliers' on solar power (i.e. creating fake credits not backed by any carbon reductions..).

Mind you, at least we had the slight back down in NSW on gross feed-in tariffs, but I suspect that was more to do with the realization that a lot of the voting public would be getting rather large energy bills for using the same power. In effect those who could not afford the solar panels were paying for those who could - talk about robbing the poor to pay the rich!

Governments basically need to back out of trying to 'manage' the market and let market forces (with a few simple incentives in the right places) discover a more environmentally friendly way to operate. Carbon trading is the direct opposite of this and hence essentially is doomed to fail as the market will evolve 'beyond' it.