The Climate Scaremongers: A Miillion More Green Jobs? Pull the Other One, Mr Miliband

The climate scaremongers: A million more green jobs? Pull the other one, Mr Miliband

PAUL HOMEWOOD

TEN years ago, Ed Miliband promised a million new green jobs by 2030. He’s not the only one, of course, to make such extravagant pledges.

The reality, as you might have guessed, is somewhat different.

The ONS has just published the data for 2022, claiming there are more than 600,000 jobs in green industries. However they include all sorts of occupations such as waste collection, double glazing, insulation, nature protection, forestry, water supply and recycling, which add up to more than half the total. These are jobs that have existed for years, and there has been little change in employment numbers since 2015. They also include another 78,000 jobs in the environmental charity/consultancy/government sector.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/bulletins/experimentalestimatesofgreenjobsuk/2024

When you strip out all those peripheral jobs and focus on the low-carbon sector itself, we find that total jobs have increased from just 57,900 in 2014 to a pitifully low 97,700 in 2022. Of the increase, there are 9,200 new jobs in nuclear, presumably building Hinkley Point, and 10,000 new jobs in low-carbon vehicles, which are not new jobs at all as they will have switched from petrol/diesel car production.

The whole renewables sector, including wind and solar farms, hydro, carbon capture, bioenergy and renewable heat, employs 17,400 people, just 7,400 up on 2014.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/datasets/lowcarbonandrenewableenergyeconomyfirstestimatesdataset

The issue of jobs was at the heart of a House of Lords debate last week, initiated by Lord Lilley, which debated the impact on jobs of the climate agenda.

Lord Strathcarron, in particular, pointed that far from creating jobs, we are losing them by the bucketful. His speech included these comments:

‘Turning first to importing pollution, since 1990 our share of CO2 emissions embedded in imports has risen from just over 10 per cent to nearly 50 per cent. The very fact that we import half our emissions should give us pause for thought, but, unfortunately, we are moving in the opposite direction. The decision to cease all new oil and gas licences can only mean that, in future, we will need to import even more oil and gas to make up for our own self-induced shortfalls.

‘Turning to jobs, growth and prosperity, as has been well publicised, the UK now has the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world, which is directly caused by artificially penalising industrial and domestic consumers with subsidies for renewable energy, carbon pricing and the extra infrastructure costs as a direct result of the policy. The OBR suggests that subsidies for renewables will add £12billion to our bills for this year alone – and it will only get worse as we factor in future renewable subsidies and the £100billion grid upgrade needed for decarbonisation.

‘To give an indication of the wishful thinking by Net Zero advocates, in 2014 the current Secretary of State for Energy promised 1million new green jobs. The outcome is somewhat less impressive. Since then, official government data shows an increase in employment in the low carbon sector of just 40,000. Against this must be offset the manufacturing jobs we have already lost in other sectors. Moreover, there will surely be many more to come, not least in the steel and oil and gas sectors. We now have the worst of all worlds: high taxes to pay for job losses.’

In reply, Lord Hunt, Minister of State at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), commented:

‘The noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron, spoke about the issue of green jobs. We reckon that around 640,000 people are employed in green jobs in the UK. That is a rise of 20 per cent even from 2020 to 2022, which I would have thought those in the party opposite would wish to acknowledge; it happened under their stewardship.’

His reply was condescending and irrelevant. He cherry-picked the increase since 2020, forgetting to point out that employment numbers were low that year due to lockdowns. He also implied that these jobs were the result of the climate agenda, which as we have seen is an insult to our intelligence.

As Lord Lilley commented, we need an honest discussion about the costs and benefits of pursuing the path of Net Zero. For years there has been a conspiracy of silence among all the major parties.

We deserve better.

Eat less meat (or else!)

THE Committee on Climate Change has said that Britain must cut its meat and dairy consumption by up to 50 per cent to meet the latest Net Zero targets. Piers Forster, the CCC’s chairman, said British consumers must be ‘persuaded’ to change their diets.

Do they really think that people are so concerned about Net Zero that they will give up meat?

Of course, we all know that when they say ‘persuade’, they mean ‘compel’.

In their zealotry, they don’t seem to care about the effect their policy will have on the rural economy. In England alone, livestock and dairy farms employ more than 120,000, and meat production is valued at £9billion a year, according to DEFRA.

Industry estimates suggest that you can triple that number of employees, when indirect jobs and jobs in the meat and dairy processing industry are added in.

Worse still, the rural economy in some parts of the country could be wiped out if livestock and dairy farming is ended. Shops, pubs, garages and other local businesses could not survive such a catastrophe.

Even to contemplate such an outcome would be thoroughly reckless. And this is why Piers Forster, climate academic, is totally unfit to be in charge of climate decision-making.

And as is ever the case, while we are trying to cut our meat consumption, the rest of the world eats more every year. Our consumption is barely 1 per cent of the world’s.

World Meat Production – Global v UK: Million tonnes

https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare

The whole concept is crazy anyway. Methane emissions from cattle remain in the atmosphere for only a few years. By 2050, most of it will have disappeared, as it is broken back down into its constituent parts.

Far from being bad for the environment, livestock are nature’s recycling machine. The grass they eat is returned to the soil as manure, helping more grass to grow. Medieval peasants knew all about this, but apparently today’s nature ‘experts’ don’t.

Meanwhile arable food production requires huge amounts of fertilisers and mechanisation, and industrial farming often leads to soil erosion and habitat loss.

If the country did give up meat, much of the food needed to replace it would doubtless need to be imported, with all the emissions that would entail.

Anybody who still thinks that livestock are bad for the planet should watch this TED talk by the renowned ecologist Allan Savory.

This article (The climate scaremongers: A million more green jobs? Pull the other one, Mr Miliband) was created and published by The Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Paul Homewood