How to manufacture a climate crisis

October 31, 2021

The establishment is hinting that the kind of draconian restrictions imposed during the pandemic will be redeployed to enforce their climate change agenda. As with Covid-19, a key part of the plan is to generate fear across the population through psychological manipulation and media propaganda.

The desired result is a major reduction in personal mobility, with ordinary people taxed and regulated out of their cars and off flights. Heating costs will also be hiked dramatically as gas boilers are banned and replaced with expensive and less effective heat pumps. Food supplies are another target.

The aim of the ramped-up indoctrination campaign will be to convince the general public to accept this top-down assault on their living standards.

Key elements of the programme are already in place. The BBC long ago effectively banned any proper debate on its airwaves. Don’t expect to see scientists who point out flaws in climate modelling on the UK’s state broadcaster; or economists who question whether the benefits of reducing emissions are worth the costs.

Establishment journalists have also been encouraged to insert climate change into news stories. Almost every time there are floods, reporters tell viewers that such disasters are likely to get worse. The same policy is applied to heat waves, forest fires and hurricanes. Even cold snaps are blamed on global warming as part of the “extreme weather” trope.

Improved communications technology has been a great help to this campaign. Alarming footage of disasters in previously little noticed regions now spreads rapidly around the world, particularly if it fits the establishment’s narrative.

But propaganda by omission is another key element of the strategy. The public is kept in the dark about the debate over the frequency of climate-related natural disasters – and the possibility that even if their frequency were increasing there could be other causes.

The role of government policies is also conveniently neglected. Environmentalist-inspired changes to river management policies, such as reducing dredging, have made flooding more likely in some locations. The “green” agenda and its huge costs have also contributed to cuts in maintenance spending on drains and other vital infrastructure. Green land-use policies promote construction on brownfield sites, which for historical reasons are often on low-lying land near to rivers.

Another long-term factor is urbanisation, which promotes flooding as water runs off rapidly from concrete surfaces into drains rather than being delayed by vegetation and soil. (It also increases temperatures via the urban heat island effect.)  

Policy changes have also been implicated in forest fires. Management methods designed to mitigate the risks, such as thinning and clearing combustible material, have been phased out under pressure from greens. Moreover, arson is a leading cause of wild fires in some regions. This human element is another reason why assessment of long-term trends is problematic. There have been examples of environmentalists engaging in other forms of arson attack, and it is worth bearing in mind the possibility that various kinds of political actors could play a role in future incidents. 

Finally, water shortages have been made more likely by policies to obstruct the construction of new reservoirs, including in regions with growing populations. The subtext is that the resulting shortages would provide a useful rationale to reduce consumption by imposing new regulations and compulsory water meters.     

So, there is substantial evidence that many of the policies imposed by environmentalists actively contribute to the “natural” disasters that are then used by propaganda outlets to promote the idea of a climate crisis. The economic damage caused by green policies also makes societies less resilient. Yet discussion of these crucial factors is typically absent.

There are two main dangers from the one-sided propaganda and indoctrination programme currently being implemented by governments and their media assets. The first is that it will encourage the adoption of harmful policies that impose higher costs than any climate change they aim to prevent. In other words, there is a high risk that the cure will be worse than the disease, with negative effects on low-income groups and poor countries in particular. A sensible strategy would be to implement win-win policies that benefit both the economy and the environment – for example, ending the vast and inefficient state subsidies and privileges given to various polluting activities. However, governments and transnational bodies have been curiously reluctant to adopt this approach.

The second danger is that climate change will be used as a pretext to bring in a far more tyrannical economic and political system, for example by empowering unaccountable transnational institutions that lack the usual constraints. Indeed there are clear parallels with the Covid-19 pandemic, which is being used as a convenient excuse for elites to grab more power and to impose vaccine passports as a stepping stone towards a long-planned global system of digital IDs.   

A free and open debate about climate change is absolutely essential if these alarming outcomes are to be avoided. However, the wider agenda behind the climate change narrative could plausibly explain why elites are so obsessed with eliminating dissent.

First published on the Transport Watch blog.

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Why are rail subsidies so high?

March 4, 2013

Taxpayer subsidies to the rail sector have reached astronomical levels. At £6 billion per year (including Crossrail), they have roughly trebled in real terms over the last twenty years. But the high rate of subsidy has not led to a reduction in fares, which recently have risen above the official rate of inflation. There are two main reasons for the large increase in taxpayer support. The first, and probably most important, is wasteful investment in loss-making new infrastructure. This is the direct result of policies that have aimed to increase public transport ridership and reduce car use.

For much of the post-war period, rail was viewed as a declining industry. Despite previous government efforts to suppress private road transport, the step change in efficiency resulting from the door-to-door transit of passengers and freight led to rapid growth in car and lorry traffic. A policy of ‘managed decline’ was therefore applied to the railways. British Rail received subsidies to keep the system going and there was some modernisation of key inter-city routes, but there was little enthusiasm to attempt to reverse the long-term trend.

This changed with the ascendancy of environmentalism within government. With their perspective grounded in radical egalitarianism, environmentalists not only objected to the pollution produced by private road transport; they also resented its social aspects – for example, the way that cars had become symbols of wealth and individual expression. The environmentalist agenda gradually captured university departments, various government bureaucracies, elements of the media and eventually national policy. In the mid-late 1990s, the road construction programme was cut back dramatically and a new strategy introduced. Private road transport would be deliberately discouraged with travellers encouraged to use buses, trams and trains instead.

For the railways this represented a sea change. The new policy meant that rail now had prospects for growth. It did not, however, change the fundamental economics. Since rail involves at least a three-stage journey, compared to the door-to-door convenience of private road transport, it remained unattractive for the vast majority of journeys.

Following privatisation, however, the policy of encouraging more rail travel appeared to be successful. Usage rose by around 50 per cent between 1997 and 2012, to levels not seen in peacetime since the 1920s. This reflected not just the impact of various deliberate policies, but also other trends such as a booming central London economy for much of the period and demographic changes that led to a huge expansion of the ‘inner city’, pushing middle-class families out into the commuter belt to avoid poor schools, anti-social behaviour and fear of crime.

A combination of increased ridership and price controls produced severe peak-time overcrowding on several routes into London. Train operating companies have been constrained in their ability to smooth the peaks using the price mechanism, since season ticket fares on most London commuter journeys are regulated by the government. With a severely limited ability to deploy the price mechanism and other means to make more efficient use of existing rail capacity, the industry has increasingly focused on supplying new infrastructure to accommodate growth. This has proved hugely expensive, however. The final cost of the ongoing Thameslink 2000 upgrade, for example, is likely to be £6 billion. And the Crossrail scheme will cost £16 billion.

Since in commercial terms such projects are loss-making and would never be undertaken in their current form by the private sector, taxpayers have been forced to fund them. Accordingly, wasteful investment in new rail infrastructure is probably the largest single factor in the growth in taxpayer support in the post-privatisation era. Such investment has not been restricted to overcrowded routes in the South-East. The government also funds improvements for blatantly political reasons, in regions where there is little passenger demand. For example, it was recently announced that branch lines in South Wales would be electrified – at taxpayers’ expense, of course. The environmentalist agenda means that rail schemes get priority even though the government’s own cost-benefit analyses show that economic returns from road improvements are far higher.

The second major reason for the increased burden on taxpayers is the artificial structure imposed by the government on the post-privatisation rail industry. Historically, railways that developed in the private sector exhibited a high degree of vertical integration. This meant in practice that the same company owned the tracks and operated the trains, thereby avoiding the transaction costs associated with complex contractual arrangements between highly interdependent separate organisations.

Partly as a result of EU policy, Britain’s privatisation model has been very different, with one firm owning and maintaining the tracks, other firms operating the trains, and another set of firms leasing out the rolling stock. On top of all this complexity, the industry has been tightly regulated by various government agencies. The resulting fragmentation, combined with layers of bureaucracy, needlessly increased costs on the network. In addition, the high levels of regulation severely hindered entrepreneurship. As a result, the productivity-boosting innovations that have cut costs in other industries did not materialise on the railways. Indeed regulation is now so restrictive that private rail firms have effectively become subcontractors for the Department for Transport.

Structural reform would therefore be one of the best ways to reduce the burden on taxpayers. The government should stop prescribing the level of vertical integration and instead free the rail industry to become more efficient. This policy should be combined with a more rational approach to rail investment. A first step is to abolish price controls to remove artificial distortions to fare levels and consumer demand. The provision of new capacity should then be left to the private sector, without taxpayer support. It would make commercial sense to build new infrastructure in high demand locations where it could be funded by fare revenues or land development. Uneconomic projects driven by political motives and special-interest lobbying would no longer get built.

The economic case for phasing out subsidies is very strong. The taxes imposed on individuals and businesses to support the railways destroy jobs and hinder wealth creation in the wider economy. In addition, large parts of the rail industry could thrive without the bureaucratic micro-management that comes with government support. It may seem counter-intuitive, but removing rail subsidies could also end up benefiting passengers, by unleashing entrepreneurship and innovation on the railways that would drive down costs.

22 January 2013, LSE

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Energy Bill will impose immense costs on households and businesses

March 4, 2013

Today’s agreement on energy policy, ahead of the forthcoming introduction of the Energy Bill, shows the government remains committed to meeting ambitious targets on greenhouse gas emissions and renewable energy. The economic cost will be immense. The Department of Energy and Climate Change quotes a figure of £110 billion of investment in the electricity sector alone (by 2020), a high proportion of which will be used to expand offshore wind capacity and connect it to the national grid. This investment will be funded by higher bills.

A number of questionable claims are made to justify the policy. Firstly, it is claimed that new investment is required to ‘keep the lights on’ since a significant proportion of coal-fired power stations will close within the next few years.  In fact, environmental policies – in particular the EU Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD), which is supported by the UK government – are forcing the closure of coal-fired power stations which are not fitted with desulphurisation plants. In other words, the potential reduction in generating capacity is itself largely the result of environmental regulation.

Then there is the claim that meeting the targets on emissions and renewable will add only a small amount to bills. In reality, these policies are already inflating electricity prices by a very large degree. This is because government regulation effectively forces power companies to generate electricity from high cost sources and limits the extent to which they can deploy low-cost sources such as coal. The Renewables Obligation and feed-in-tariffs are two ways in the electricity market is rigged to achieve this result. And as long ago as the 1990s the ‘dash for gas’ was partly spurred by the imposition of EU regulations on coal-fired generation. It is telling that in US states that have refused to adopt European-style green policies, electricity prices are now over 50 per cent lower than in the UK. Indeed, DECC itself has estimated that by 2015, climate change policies will be adding 26 per cent to domestic electricity prices and 10 per cent to domestic gas prices. The impact on commercial users will be similar. This estimate implies an extra burden on energy consumers of approximately £12 billion per annum. Other environmental policies such as the LCPD will push up prices even further.  Moreover, there will be additional negative effects on the wider economy. For example, rising energy costs are likely to add to the political pressure to raise welfare benefits for those on low incomes, who spend a disproportionate share of their income on utility bills.

Despite the huge costs being imposed within the UK, these policies are unlikely to make a discernible difference to climate change. Firstly, Britain accounts for only a tiny fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, developing countries are rapidly increasing their carbon output. Secondly, higher energy costs in the UK are likely to displace economic activity, particularly energy intensive industries, to countries with lower costs such as China, a process known as ‘carbon leakage’. If production is less energy efficient in developing countries, as is often the case, this may actually lead to a rise in emissions. Given their questionable overall effectiveness, there is surely a strong case for the British government to moderate its green energy policies to take greater account of their impact on households and businesses. At the very least, the government should ensure that targets are met at the lowest possible cost by reforming fiscal and regulatory frameworks so that they treat different sources of emissions similarly.

23 November 2012, IEA Blog

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The hidden cost of environmental scares

February 17, 2013

Environmental scares have a long history. At the end of the 18th century, Thomas Malthus predicted that rapid population growth would lead to war, pestilence and famine. Almost 200 years later, the 1972 Club of Rome report, The Limits to Growth, pointed to similar consequences due to rising populations, pollution and the exploitation of finite natural resources.

But the disasters failed to materialise. In flexible market economies the price mechanism incentivised consumers to use scarce resources more efficiently. Entrepreneurs found lower-cost substitutes and developed new technologies to improve productivity, for example through the new crop varieties that facilitated the green revolution. Nevertheless, the ideological climate created by The Limits to Growth contributed to the implementation of some unpleasant sterilisation programmes in developing countries in an attempt to reduce birth rates.

These consequences were relatively minor compared with the effects of Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring. The resulting assault on pesticides lead to the banning of DDT in the USA and the steering of foreign aid to prevent its use in tropical countries. As revealed in Malaria and the DDT Story, this green crusade contributed to the death of up to 100 million people, as efforts to eradicate the disease were hampered by controls on spraying.

The world is now gripped by another environmental issue: climate change. The latest IEA monograph, Climate Change Policy: Challenging the Activists, describes how the policy agenda has been captured by quasi-religious ‘global salvationists’. Even more than in previous green campaigns, dissent has been ruthlessly suppressed. Organisations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are dominated by ‘true believers’ and the political process is noticeably biased towards socialist-style initiatives based around central planning and detailed regulation.

In the worst case scenario, global warming will provide a rationale for state officials to increase dramatically their control over households and businesses, in terms of their freedom of movement, housing choices and energy consumption. Entrepreneurship and innovation will suffer and economic growth rates will fall. Intrusive bureaucracy will thrive. This will cause discomfort in the West, but it will be disastrous for developing countries. Even a small cut in their growth rates will condemn millions more to poverty and disease.

As the authors of the book explain, climate change can be addressed by relatively low cost policies that reduce emissions without significantly reducing the dynamism and flexibility of market economies. The ability of individuals, businesses, communities to innovate and adapt can be retained. Accordingly, calls for central planning and heavy regulation should be strongly resisted.

30 September 2008, IEA Blog

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Coal’s revival can help cut energy bills

February 17, 2013

Energy companies are raising gas and electricity prices again, meaning yet more misery for those struggling to pay their bills. Many pensioners face the prospect of spending about a quarter of their income on basic utility services – and that’s on top of the increasingly unaffordable council tax.

While political tension in the Middle East and high demand in Asia are clearly partly responsible for high wholesale energy prices, government policies, driven by an environmentalist agenda, are making a difficult situation far worse.
An increasing share of bills is being used to subsidise uneconomic renewable energy, such as wind power. By 2010, the Government’s renewables obligation will add £1bn a year to electricity prices. Proposals by the European Commission to introduce legal targets for green energy are likely to lead to bill increases of 10-15 per cent by 2020.

Extra expenditure will also be needed to integrate wind power into the national grid. The planned offshore locations tend to be distant from the existing network so new capacity will be required. This means that stretches of coastline are likely to be scarred by unsightly pylons, or that consumers will subsidise the costly process of burying power cables underground.

A further problem is that wind power is highly unreliable. Extra capacity must, therefore, be provided in conventional power stations to maintain supplies on calm days.

And there is more bad news. The decision to build a new generation of nuclear power stations will further increase prices. When capital costs are included, nuclear generation is significantly more expensive than coal-fired. Construction overruns, as well as largely unknown decommissioning and waste-disposal costs, could further inflate bills. If the consortia building the new stations go bust, the Government could end up finishing the job with taxpayers’ money.
Britain’s previous nuclear programmes have been economically disastrous – development losses amount to at least £20bn, while decommissioning is likely to cost another £75bn. Yet caution has been thrown to the wind in an attempt to appease the global-warming lobby.

Environmental policies have also raised the cost of fossil-fuel generation. Some coal-fired power stations, such as Drax, near Selby, have been fitted with expensive desulphurisation plants – costing up to £1bn each in current prices.
Yet this equipment may actually speed up climate change, since sulphur dioxide emissions are thought to have a cooling effect on the atmosphere. The desulphurisation process also requires vast quantities of limestone, which has meant additional quarrying in the Peak District.

These sulphur “scrubbers” were designed to reduce acid rain, but it is now clear that the scale of the problem was greatly exaggerated by a coalition of environmentalists and European bureaucrats. Acid rain from UK power stations had a positive fertilising effect on many soils and actually improved agricultural yields. The damage to trees was negligible. But electricity customers have ended up paying dearly for measures that, in reality, have had little impact.

True to character, environmentalists are strongly opposing proposals to build a new coal-fired plant in Kingsnorth, Kent. Yet such new capacity is needed desperately to keep bills under control. Electricity from coal power stations is cheaper than gas or nuclear, while new technology means that new plants will be 20 per cent more efficient than existing ones and release far less carbon.

Energy security would also be enhanced. Major coal exporters include Australia and the US – stable countries that are unlikely to threaten Britain’s supplies. And the world won’t run out of coal in the near future – reserves will last for hundreds of years.

There is, therefore, a strong economic and environmental case for building new coal-fired power stations. Yet despite huge benefits – cheaper electricity and lower emissions – none has been built in the last 20 years.

Whether it made economic sense to “dash for gas” in the 1990s is a moot point, but gas has recently been in short supply, and the market has responded. A new pipeline has been built from Norway to Easington, in the East Riding, and import capacity for liquified gas has been increased at Milford Haven, in Wales. The energy companies should also be given similar flexibility to exploit new coal-powered electricity generation.

But an increased level of regulation is likely to make such adaptation more difficult in the future. As politicians and bureaucrats attempt to control how our gas and electricity is supplied, there will be reduced scope for the innovation and entrepreneurship needed to combine lower prices with lower emissions.

The recent policy record does not augur well for consumers. Government interventions in the energy sector have achieved very little in terms of improving the environment but have been highly successful at raising bills.

6 August 2008, Yorkshire Post

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