O/T net zero=net loss

[MillerBill]

1100 jobs at Vauxhall to go in Luton and the company are saying there is no demand for electric cars .We have already seen the Steelworks ruined through the establishment demanding green energy.Our domestic bills are through the roof compared to the USA who are paying much much less.The floods in Wales have been blamed for cutting all the trees down,that were absorbing the rainfall and replacing with hundreds of ugly windmills.Millband is going to completely ruin the economy.

[animallittle3]

1100 jobs at Vauxhall to go in Luton and the company are saying there is no demand for electric cars .We have already seen the Steelworks ruined through the establishment demanding green energy.Our domestic bills are through the roof compared to the USA who are paying much much less.The floods in Wales have been blamed for cutting all the trees down,that were absorbing the rainfall and replacing with hundreds of ugly windmills.Millband is going to completely ruin the economy.

The best speech on climate change I've heard to date .

https://youtu.be/zJdqJu-6ZPo?si=msGjKRHqu1toN03J

[Timbertop]

Brilliant. Just don't understand why government policy is to delude us all.

[UlleyMiller]

An ambitious Tory target which is proving that a one size fits all approach won't work with EVs, and leaving the new government a headache - something they're getting used to.

I'm not sure Vauxhall (and their ownership) don't have some responsibility here too. EVs are still quite expensive, and Vauxhalls (in the main) are very much lower end cars. Taking their Astra as an example of the problem, ?35k (upward) for a reasonable spec hatchback puts buyers into a decision between that and a much more desirable petrol equivalent. If you're a buyer with no tax incentive, choosing between a well-spec'd (and quicker) Audi A3 or an Astra, you might not always plump for the Vauxhall.

Tesla have grown rapidly though, and historically more expensive European brands are growing their EV market share pretty well. As much as newspapers will enjoy a headline out of the Luton plant's demise, people would do well to remember that the previous government were aligned on the push to EVs, and that typically lower priced car brands enter a very different market to higher priced German/Swedish brands - EV sales in the UK last year had 7 of the top 10 cars being either Tesla, German or Swedish. Vauxhall and Ford didn't feature.

[MillerBill]

An ambitious Tory target which is proving that a one size fits all approach won't work with EVs, and leaving the new government a headache - something they're getting used to.

I'm not sure Vauxhall (and their ownership) don't have some responsibility here too. EVs are still quite expensive, and Vauxhalls (in the main) are very much lower end cars. Taking their Astra as an example of the problem, ?35k (upward) for a reasonable spec hatchback puts buyers into a decision between that and a much more desirable petrol equivalent. If you're a buyer with no tax incentive, choosing between a well-spec'd (and quicker) Audi A3 or an Astra, you might not always plump for the Vauxhall.

Tesla have grown rapidly though, and historically more expensive European brands are growing their EV market share pretty well. As much as newspapers will enjoy a headline out of the Luton plant's demise, people would do well to remember that the previous government were aligned on the push to EVs, and that typically lower priced car brands enter a very different market to higher priced German/Swedish brands - EV sales in the UK last year had 7 of the top 10 cars being either Tesla, German or Swedish. Vauxhall and Ford didn't feature.

Ulley in five years time we will be flooded with Chinese cars.They are the country with cheaper energy,cheaper labour and consequently will sell at a much lower price.We started this net zero nonsense under Boris.It was motivated by geeks in Whitehall who now have Mad Milliband as their leader to support this impossible target which will make us so much poorer with all these green taxes.Meanwhile we have billionaires like Gates encouraging us to go even further while he gets richer at our expense.

[UlleyMiller]

Ulley in five years time we will be flooded with Chinese cars.They are the country with cheaper energy,cheaper labour and consequently will sell at a much lower price.We started this net zero nonsense under Boris.It was motivated by geeks in Whitehall who now have Mad Milliband as their leader to support this impossible target which will make us so much poorer with all these green taxes.Meanwhile we have billionaires like Gates encouraging us to go even further while he gets richer at our expense.

I'm not sure what the issue is which is bothering you? We can't pay people less to make UK car plants competitive with China, and we can't dictate which car brands are desirable. Motoring costs haven't changed since July, and whether the government persist with Tory policy, tweak it, or drop it, the impact on motoring costs, buying cars etc won't materially change in the short or medium term. Although I would have preferred the other Miliband in 2010, Ed is very much away from the hard left, is an experienced operator, and has had a pretty solid backing in a town very much like ours for almost 20 years - I'm not sure he's the cartoon villain in any of this, and would be more concerned right now that a god-complex EV salesman seems to be heading for a top role in what appears to be a chaotic government in the US next year, and how that might impact the sector.

I've every sympathy with the people in Luton facing uncertainty, but that story is one of Vauxhall's making (in the main) and none of this will have a great deal of impact to many motorists, especially those who aren't young enough to have the prospect of ICE cars disappearing in their lifetime (I'm doubtful I'm that young, and I've a good few years left yet).

[KerrAvon]

The best speech on climate change I've heard to date .

https://youtu.be/zJdqJu-6ZPo?si=msGjKRHqu1toN03J

What exactly made you think the video was the ‘best’ speech. I thought the following:

It contained a ridiculous characterisation of climate change as being a ‘shortage of polar bears’. It is, of course, so much more. It has the capacity to render it harder or impossible to grow food in large swathes of the world, to render swathes of the world uninhabitable and to make extreme and destructive weather events far more common. Reducing it to a ‘shortage of polar bears’ in the comfort of the Oxford Union may act as a comfort blanket for people who don’t like unpalatable truths, but that won’t help.

Bear in mind that climate change also has the capacity to drive mass migration, including the irregular migration that is causing such consternation around the world (and, ironically, often to those who also preach climate change denial).

The video contained a ludicrous false dichotomy – that people have to choose between action on climate change and the survival of their children and having indoor toilets. The real choice is between action against climate change and the descent of the world into a place where the survival of children becomes far less certain. Bear in mind that many of the poorer countries in the world are places that are particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change. Dead people don’t need toilets – indoor or otherwise.

The video does contain some grains of reality – that the richer counties in the world are going to have to assist the rest to make the necessary change and that technological solutions will play a part.

And, of course, the video ignores the elephant in the room, which is that oil and gas are finite resources (unless you have been hanging around some of the really weird parts of Twitter). We are going to have to decarbonise, so why not do it now and on our terms

If you really like rich kids making stupid arguments, may I recommend a subscription to The Spectator for Christmas.

[KerrAvon]

1100 jobs at Vauxhall to go in Luton and the company are saying there is no demand for electric cars .We have already seen the Steelworks ruined through the establishment demanding green energy.Our domestic bills are through the roof compared to the USA who are paying much much less.The floods in Wales have been blamed for cutting all the trees down,that were absorbing the rainfall and replacing with hundreds of ugly windmills.Millband is going to completely ruin the economy.

I don't think that 'the floods in Wales have been blamed for cutting all the trees down,that were absorbing the rainfall and replacing with hundreds of ugly windmills' by anyone serious. Do you have a source for that?

[howdydoo]

Global Carbon Emissions by Country:

China 34% up 262% since 2000
USA 12% down 21%
India 7.6% up 197%
Russia 5.4% up 23%

Nearly 2/3rds of the polluters right there.

They don't give a sh!t.


COP 29 - World Leaders couldn't be bothered to turn up.

Apart from the UK and it's near 500 delegates.


Ed Milliband doing his best to rival HS2 for wasting taxpayers cash.


Oil and Gas might be finite resources but there's plenty still available. If we want to stop pollution, let's look at the worlds population and control that.

1950 it was 2.5 billion. Now it's over 8 billion.

[KerrAvon]

There may be a quantity of carbon still available to burn. And when we do it adds to the likelihood of catastrophic climate change.

Fiddling while Rome burns because we are only a small part of the orchestra (largely because we've outsourced a lot of our contribution to China) doesn't look like a viable option to me.

I'll be dead in a few years and beyond caring, but I don't see that as a reason for inaction either.

I agree that curbing world population growth is necessary, but that costs money too. Birth rates fall in response to education and healthcare, including vaccination programmes. We are going to have to help poorer nations with that.

[howdydoo]

Better inaction than the crackpot schemes Milliband has come up with.

I'd look at the here and now and look at the resources we have in the British Isles. If everything is going to cost money, maybe we should look at supply and demand, and use our resources to make some (money).

Looking at the advances in science, this finite resource or the ability to synthetically produce something like it, will exist for 100's of years. We have more oil reserves now that we did 70 years ago. Funny that.

[KerrAvon]

Unless we are going to re-invent the first law of thermodynamics it will take energy to create synthetic alternatives to carbon fuels. That energy has to come from somewhere.

I don't know how much oil remains available, but I know that burning it increases the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. We really have to stop that.

It's not a nice place to be, but the party at which we burn carboniferous fuels whilst pretending that it comes without consequence is over. It's time to make an orderly change to a post carbon world.

[howdydoo]

Send the memo to China, USA, India and Russia.

[UskMiller]

I don't think that 'the floods in Wales have been blamed for cutting all the trees down,that were absorbing the rainfall and replacing with hundreds of ugly windmills' by anyone serious. Do you have a source for that?

While I feel your question may be rhetorical, Kerr, I can state with certainty that there is no source for this statement. The floods in south Wales, which is where I live, are a result of poorly managed water catchments, from source to sea, and a consequential inability for those systems to adapt to increasing climate change induced events. They are nothing to do with turbines replacing trees.

[UskMiller]

What exactly made you think the video was the ‘best’ speech. I thought the following:

It contained a ridiculous characterisation of climate change as being a ‘shortage of polar bears’. It is, of course, so much more. It has the capacity to render it harder or impossible to grow food in large swathes of the world, to render swathes of the world uninhabitable and to make extreme and destructive weather events far more common. Reducing it to a ‘shortage of polar bears’ in the comfort of the Oxford Union may act as a comfort blanket for people who don’t like unpalatable truths, but that won’t help.

Bear in mind that climate change also has the capacity to drive mass migration, including the irregular migration that is causing such consternation around the world (and, ironically, often to those who also preach climate change denial).

The video contained a ludicrous false dichotomy – that people have to choose between action on climate change and the survival of their children and having indoor toilets. The real choice is between action against climate change and the descent of the world into a place where the survival of children becomes far less certain. Bear in mind that many of the poorer countries in the world are places that are particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change. Dead people don’t need toilets – indoor or otherwise.

The video does contain some grains of reality – that the richer counties in the world are going to have to assist the rest to make the necessary change and that technological solutions will play a part.

And, of course, the video ignores the elephant in the room, which is that oil and gas are finite resources (unless you have been hanging around some of the really weird parts of Twitter). We are going to have to decarbonise, so why not do it now and on our terms

If you really like rich kids making stupid arguments, may I recommend a subscription to The Spectator for Christmas.

Thank you, Kerr, for providing a sensible analysis of this. 👍🏼.