By Jo Nova
Instead of the conservatives being torn apart by climate change, now it’s the left side of politics
Politicians finally seem to realize the voters don’t want to spend money on climate change.
Once all players in politics realize that their climate policies and green pledges paint targets on their backs, it’s the beginning of the end.
The UK Labour Party has bragged for two years that it will spend £28bn on green investment if they get elected. But their Green Prosperity Plan has become a target for conservatives to shoot down, and apparently the Labour party is now publicly falling all over itself to distance itself from the number £28bn. They’ve delayed it, added qualifiers, and reduced it from a “pledge” to an “ambition” but nothing seemed to work. Finally, they have had to declare that the spending target has been dropped.
A spending target was always a stupid thing, on any issue. What organisation, company or billionaire pledges to throw money for the sake of hitting a spending target, as if spending itself was the goal? It’s a vanity gig — only for those who want to show off their wealth (or in this case, your captured wealth). Surely the government should be bragging about achieving things as cheaply as possible, not about throwing more money than the next guy?
One target is gone but the boondoggle lives on
Labour still promises to set up a new publicly owned energy investment creature called GB Energy and a national insulation program. The word is that these will cost about £10bn. And there are already £8 – 10bn in green projects that the conservatives are already funding, so if the Labour party keep those, that will still amount to about £20bn. So far too much green gravy will still keep flowing but make no mistake — For an industry levitating on green fairytales, and entirely dependent on government largess, this is bad news. It’s a big shift, a giant deflation.
Naturally Big Green industry are worried. The head of Seimens is now on the back foot: ““Don’t let populism unsettle you,” ” he told the Labour party, which was his coded way of saying “Please keep giving us money”.
Britain risks a steep decline without a £28bn green economy pledge, Labor warned Green economy
Becca Roberts, Fior Reports
Jürgen Maier, former British boss of Siemens, the German industrial giant and major investor, said massive investment was needed to rebuild the British economy and make it fit for the future and that it should focus on low-carbon energy, transport and industry .
“These are the growth areas of the future,” he said. “The £28 billion is not a cost, but an investment. “Don’t let populism unsettle you,” he urged the doubters within the party.
In the EU, the German Greens themselves are putting the brakes on
The German Greens suffered a major hit in popularity polls after they tried to foist “low emission” heaters on the public last year. The next elections are coming up in June, and the Greens look like shrinking from 21 seats to 14. So now they are trying to water down, slow down and take out the sting from their Green policies. It’s almost like voters matter?
German Greens push to water down EU party’s climate targets
By Max Griera and Nick Alipour | EURACTIV
The European Green Party is set for an internal battle over climate targets at a party congress this weekend (2-4 February), with the German Greens pushing to postpone the climate neutrality goals by five years and scrap parts of the gas and oil phase-out policies.
The Germans are also pushing to remove calls to end the use of fossil gas by 2035 and of oil by 2040, keeping only the draft’s target of phasing out coal by 2030, as well as a call to prohibit financial services “for coal, oil and gas extraction, coal-fired energy projects, and the companies that develop them”.
The disagreement reveals that the national Green parties remain split on how moderate or radical their targets should be.
The German Greens have been looking to moderate their messaging, as the party is aiming to strengthen its social and economic profile and reconcile more business-friendly rhetoric with the Greens’ traditional stand on climate change.
Image by Дмитрий Бирюков from Pixabay
Rian (Ree) Saunders – UK Flag.
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