Philip Hammond has warned Theresa May that plans for Net Zero Emissions, by 2050, will cost the UK £1tn, according to a report in the Financial Times.
I am a bit puzzled by this climate change thing.
The UK, as I understand it, accounts for 1% of global CO2 emissions (2015 figures).
Even if the UK doubled CO2 emissions, surely that is well within the realms of experimentally inaccuracy.
Halving it would make no measurable difference to the world. The UK taking it to zero will be economically paralysing to UK and still make not difference to the world.
Isn't the environmental (aesthetic and wild life) cost of wind farms (and so on) much more significant than our rather minimal potential contribution to global CO2 reduction efforts?
No doubt someone will explain?
This was Trump's argument for pulling out of the Paris Accord.
Why should the USA and the UK set a good example to the World? Why should we be a good neighbour and demonstrate that, whilst in the past we have made a massively devastating impact on the planet, at least now we are doing something to put it right!
Also, when the World finally wakes up to the inevitable climate disaster, there will be a huge market for the technology and skills to attempt to alleviate it. Those countries that have been fighting it already might well be in a strong position at that point.
My mother in law said something incredibly naive yesterday. She said that people in the city don't appreciate nature and the natural world as much as those that live in the countryside. I don't believe there is more than 1% of the UK countryside which still looks like it did before mankind began its agricultural assault on it shortly after the last ice age. I think there maybe some mountaintops which have not yet become meccas for hikers, and small parts of the original Caledonian Forest in Scotland remain relatively untouched. As for the rest of the UK, it has all been shaped either directly or indirectly by humans.
