Net Zero Ponzi scheme
ROGER WATSON
I don’t know if children still learn the cumulative rhyme about the old lady who swallowed a fly. Perhaps not as it could be seen as advocating exploitation of animals. In case you have forgotten, it goes like this:
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly,
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – perhaps she’ll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her;
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – perhaps she’ll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a bird;
How absurd to swallow a bird!
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider…
And on it goes until, in pursuit of the last animal she swallowed, she swallows a cat, a dog, a goat, a cow and a horse. And dies.
I don’t know if our teachers realised, but they were teaching us about a Ponzi scheme where nothing of real value is independently generated, ending in a zero-sum game for investors and profiting only those who set up the scheme.
A similar thing is happening with the Net Zero agenda. Each stage in the agenda is an abject failure therefore further and more grandiose stages must be dreamed up with the promise of success. Eventually, people must see through this for the con that it is. But probably too late. We’ll have spent all our money on useless initiatives, our country will be in energy deficit, and our industry – what is left of it – will collapse in the wake of spiralling costs.
It all starts via the maniacal obsession with carbon dioxide emissions and the false belief that this leads to global warming, global warming leads to polar ice caps melting, rising seas and rising temperatures, old folks die, deserts are created and we must all carry an extra water bottle and stay indoors. Sounds terrifying but, as the film Climate: The Movie shows, this is all palpable nonsense. Global warming precedes rising carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide – needed by plants for growth – is good for the planet.
Enter the Net Zero obsession which preoccupies so much parliamentary time, and leads to so many international COP forums. In fact, the problem of global emissions is so serious that all the attendees, just as they do at Davos, must bring their own private jets with them.
In the name of Net Zero we have largely, in the UK, stopped using fossil fuels in our power stations. Or so most people think. In fact, as Ross Clark shows in Not Zero, we are actually burning wood which is more emission-generating than coal. But this does not count as a carbon emission by us as the wood is imported. Clever!
This is the first step in the Ponzi scheme: reduce the use of fossil fuels, but since we have blown up all but a few of our large power stations, we must import energy from elsewhere. So, we festoon the countryside with ghastly wind turbines and convert arable farmland into square miles of solar panels. Both initiatives have proved virtually useless as we often don’t have enough wind and, despite the warnings about global warming, we never have enough sun.
This is easily verified by checking the UK Energy Dashboard. For example, when I checked it on 29 July the largest slice of our energy pie was from gas – a fossil fuel. It was a dull windless day. The next biggest slice was imported energy – not even our own – and we import from France, which sensibly uses nuclear power, and The Netherlands where the dirty buggers still use coal.
This glaring problem with our feeble attempts to generate our own ‘clean’ energy (never mind that the solar panels and wind turbines are both made in China using coal-generated energy) has prompted the Bacon Sarnie maestro himself, marvellous Ed Miliband to announce his determination to capture the energy from wind turbines on windy days and solar panels on sunny days using batteries – Step 2 of the Ponzi scheme.
He probably doesn’t realise that nobody has managed to achieve this so far. How large does Ed think these batteries will have to be, where will they be situated and what will they be made of? Well, the answers are: they will be enormous; nobody has a clue; and from rare earth metals. These last items are mined out of the earth by the bare hands of kids in parts of the third world leading to massive pollution of water courses.
The batteries won’t last forever so they will have to be disposed of, along with their dangerous rare earth metals. Forget retrieving the rare earth metals, nobody has done that efficiently yet and it would probably be cheaper to send some kids from Indonesia out to the mountains with a bucket to fetch some more – Step 3 of the Ponzi scheme.
Ed will have to ‘invest’ – code for spend our money – in safe storage facilities and so the scheme goes on until, instead of a bacon sarnie, he swallows a metaphorical horse with the inevitable result. We end up with no energy and no money.
Meantime, the spinoffs are all aimed at making life more miserable for us. We should all have heat pumps fitted which are not only as useless as everything else in the Ponzi scheme, but are also noisy. Ask Mrs Miliband who was out protesting about them. Bit embarrassing for Ed, don’t you think? In the process our energy bills are growing and, it seems, we are just paying more for our own misery.
At least we can get away on holiday to some warmer and more pleasant part of the world for a few weeks. Or we could. The latest insane proposal is for a carbon passport which, based on the flights you take, will tot up your carbon emissions and past a certain limit you will enter your own personal no-fly zone. Has anyone thought this through? What if a family of four want to take a flight to the Bahamas and dad, who travels for his work, has reached his carbon limit? Will the other three be able to go and leave Dad behind?
You can bet your last carbon credit that carbon passports will not apply to the likes of Ed Miliband, David Jet Star Lammy or any of the COP or Davos devotees. But don’t worry — it’s all for the planet. Just not for the people living on it.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
If you enjoy The New Conservative and would like to support our work, please consider buying us a coffee or sharing this piece with your friends – it would really help to keep us going. Thank you!
This article (Net Zero Ponzi scheme ) was created and published by The New Conservative and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Roger Watson
See Related Article Below
Miliband’s Net-Zero Obsession Blamed For ‘Eye-Watering’ Costs, Offshore Wind Failures
The Energy Secretary’s green dreams continue to collide with reality in the most damning fashion.
BEN MARLOW
When it comes to the real cost of renewables, the cat is well and truly out of the bag.
Ed Miliband can carp on all he likes about how his precious net-zero revolution is going to magically lead us down the merry path to cheaper energy bills, but he can’t change facts – and his green dreams continue to collide with reality in the most damning fashion. [emphasis, links added]
The latest blow to his clean energy fantasy comes once again in the form of wildly unaffordable offshore wind power after Miliband unveiled the prices the Government is willing to pay for yet more offshore wind farms to be built in UK waters.
When Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy secretary, describes them as “eye-watering”, she isn’t exaggerating.
International developers are being wooed with a maximum guaranteed price of up to £113 per megawatt hour (MWh) for the power they generate from the farms, far above the wholesale price of power, which last year averaged about £72.
The price has been confirmed ahead of the latest round of subsidy awards for developers.
You might think Miliband had learnt from past debacles, such as 2023’s auction, which was such a catastrophic failure that there wasn’t a single bid despite seven contracts to build new farms being put forward.
True, it was late 2023 when Labour was in opposition, but still. That was such a shambles, it was obvious that the economics of offshore wind were evaporating faster than it takes a giant spinning metal blade to turn a passing gull into mincemeat and feathers.
The guaranteed prices on offer were so low that Tom Glover, chairman of energy company RWE’s UK arm, warned that no more offshore wind farms would be built unless the Government increased the guaranteed long-term prices by as much as 70pc.
By Glover’s calculations, that would have meant promising developers between £65 and £75 per MWh for the power generated from wind farms, as opposed to the £44 that was actually on the table.
And yet look where we are today, less than two years later. The strike price for offshore wind in the subsequent round actually turned out to be even higher than Glover’s demands, at £82.
Now Miliband is willing to pay up to £113 in the upcoming round, a 38pc leap from that and a whopping 57pc more than the wholesale price of electricity last year.
He has clearly allowed the disastrous cancellation of several major wind projects to spook him into being even more generous this time around.
Today @Ed_Miliband has announced the prices he is willing to pay new renewables in the upcoming AR7 round of the CfD scheme
Look how expensive they are!!!
The average wholesale power price in 2024 was just £73 /MWh
But he is willing to pay up to 57% more for offshore wind.… pic.twitter.com/yI0Dkaoe97
— Kathryn Porter (@KathrynPorter26) July 23, 2025
The biggest of these was the vast Hornsea 4 wind farm, which was abandoned earlier this year.
The reason? Because it would never be profitable, Danish developer Ørsted said a mere nine months after it was awarded the contract. It was even willing to fork out €500m (£423m) in “break-away” costs to relinquish itself from the burden.
This was the moment when Miliband’s grand vision for Britain to roughly quadruple its wind capacity to between 43 and 50 gigawatts by the end of the decade came crashing down.
Hornsea 4 wasn’t just one of Britain’s largest clean energy projects; it was the most significant wind farm being built in British waters, slated to provide enough electricity to power 2.6 million homes.
The £85 per MWh subsidy on offer from the Government was too low, Ørsted said, and if the world’s preeminent offshore wind specialist can’t make the numbers stack up, then what chance do others have?
After all, it wasn’t the only project to bite the dust.
Top image via @TheRepublicOfMikeGraham/YouTube screencap
Read rest at The Telegraph
*****
British Gas Boss Warns Miliband Against “Outrageous” Energy Bill Divide
RICHARD ELDRED
Making families with gas boilers pay higher green taxes than those with heat pumps would be an “abomination”, says the boss of British Gas. The Telegraph has the story.
In a stark warning to Ed Miliband, Chris O’Shea said that removing Net Zero levies from electricity bills would punish the poor and amount to a “terrible distortion of the market”.
It comes amid reports that the Energy Secretary is considering stripping green levies from electricity in a bid to encourage the adoption of heat pumps.
Instead, the costs would be moved on to gas, making a boiler more expensive to run.
Mr O’Shea, the chief executive of British Gas owner Centrica, warned Mr Miliband to resist such an “outrageous” overhaul and instead focus on protecting billpayers from the soaring cost of Net Zero.
“It’s a preposterous idea,” Mr O’Shea told the Telegraph. “The idea you’d put the levies on gas bills will mean those better-off people with heat pumps will be subsidised by those poorer people with gas boilers. That’s nonsense.
“I think those of us with the broadest shoulders should help those of us who have the most need.
“To put them on gas bills would be an abomination, outrageous and a terrible distortion of the market. It would also be unfair because the people [who have] gas boilers the longest will also be those who can least afford to pay higher bills.
“I have heard the argument that it will encourage more people to use electricity. But encouraging people to use subsidised electricity by forcing gas users to pay just doesn’t make any sense.”
Mr O’Shea said the Government should shift the cost of green levies on to general taxation rather than creating an energy bill divide between households.
The Climate Change Committee, a Government quango, has urged Mr Miliband to remove the taxes from electricity bills to encourage more people to buy heat pumps and electric cars.
However, experts have warned such a move risks increasing the average gas bill by £120 a year. …
The Centrica boss also cast doubt over Mr Miliband’s pledge to cut household energy bills by 2030, supposedly aided by Britain’s move to a greener economy.
Mr O’Shea said he was sceptical that the Energy Secretary’s promise to lower bills by £300 this parliament was “achievable”. …
Mr O’Shea was also critical of Mr Miliband’s pledge to ban all new drilling in the North Sea, even though Centrica no longer conducts any exploration activity in the basin.
“I don’t agree with the decision,” he said. “If you take it from an environmental point of view, we import LNG [liquefied natural gas].
“If you produce gas domestically, then it will have a lower carbon content than the LNG that we import. And the reason is the cost of shipping and the cost of turning the gas into a liquid.”
Worth reading in full.
••••
The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)
••••
Comment Policy: As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. This also applies to trolling, the use of more than one alias, or just intentional mischief. Enforcement of this policy is at the discretion of this websites administrators. Repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without prior warning.
••••
Disclaimer: TLB websites contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, health, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.
••••
Disclaimer: The information and opinions shared are for informational purposes only including, but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material are not intended as medical advice or instruction. Nothing mentioned is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Liberty Beacon Project.
Leave a Reply