TILAK DOSHI
Hardly a week passes by these days without some news about how Ed Miliband (a.k.a. Mad Ed) – the U.K.’s Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero since July 2024 – keeps upping the ante in the ‘fight against climate change’. As a politician, of course, the ante he keeps upping is not his personal cash but taxpayers’ funds.
On Monday, the same day that Stellantis, owner of Vauxhall’s 120-year old van-making factory in Luton, announced the plant’s closure, putting at risk over 1,100 jobs – which it said was brought on in the context of Britain’s Net Zero policies – Mr. Miliband said this in Parliament:
Despite all the difficulties, at COP29, one truth was overwhelmingly clear: the global transition away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy is happening, and it is unstoppable because clean energy is the route to energy security, unstoppable because it is the economic opportunity of our time, and unstoppable because people in Britain and around the world can see that the climate crisis is here, and that unless we act, things will only get worse.
In less than five months, this Government have [sic] shown that we will seize the opportunities of speeding up at home, and have demonstrated climate leadership abroad, in order to deliver energy independence, lower bills, good jobs, economic growth and the security of a stable climate. We are doing all we can to keep the British people safe, now and for generations to come.
Anyone with even a modicum of understanding of energy markets will be left wondering whether Mr. Miliband really believes in what he says. His detractors must wonder if he is really that illiterate about energy affairs. How does he square his claims of an “unstoppable energy transition towards clean energy” with what is really happening in energy markets in the U.K. and globally? What happens when his climate evangelism inevitably clashes with energy reality?
What the ‘Energy Transition’ Means for You and Me
Mr. Miliband’s boss, Keir Starmer, attended the annual UN climate summit in Baku (COP29) to sign Britain up to be at the “forefront of the battle against global warming” by promising to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 81% by 2035 compared with 1990 levels. Note the spurious accuracy of 81%. Why not a rounded 80% for a target to be achieved a decade hence? Would that make it any less believable?
In an interview at the summit, Mr. Starmer claimed with a straight face that his Government has no plans to “start telling people how to live their lives. We are not going to start dictating to people what they do”. Perhaps the Prime Minister is unaware that his Government’s Net Zero policies need to do precisely that – dictating approved and unapproved behaviours by businesses and consumers with a system of taxes, subsidies, fines and regulations – to get the greenhouse gas emission cuts that he is espousing.
Subsequently, Bill Esterson, Labour Chair of the Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, seems to have let the cat out of the bag, saying “we will all have to change our lives” if we are to decarbonise the power grid by 2030 (en route to a full transition away from fossil fuels by 2050).
The U.K. target — ratcheted up from targets pursued by the previous, equally climate-obsessed Tory Government – is in line with the weighty recommendations of the ‘non-departmental public body’ the Climate Change Committee, which is described as “U.K.’s leading independent authority on climate change”. When one examines just what such emission targets actually mean for U.K. businesses and consumers, the list of what must happen is startling.
In a detailed document issued by U.K. FIRES, a research programme funded by the Government, official targets of “Net Zero by 2050” will require all airports except Heathrow, Belfast and Glasgow to close by 2030. No one will be flying at all by 2050. There will be no new gasoline or diesel cars by 2030 and by 2050 road use will be restricted to 60% of today’s level. Food, heating and energy will be restricted to 60% of today’s levels by 2050. Beef and lamb will not be on the British menu by 2050.
Restrictions on mobility and social activity will be achieved by ‘15-minute cities‘ where daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare and leisure “can be easily reached by a 15-minute walk or bike ride from any point in the city”.
These consequences of Net Zero for the U.K. – and by extension the rest of the West if other countries are foolish enough to implement Net Zero targets – are thus not mere conjectures. They constitute the economic and physical-science realities of Miliband’s “unstoppable transition away from fossil fuels”.
Economist Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs has a stat for Mr. Miliband. At the end of 2021:
Overall, fossil fuels represented 81% of overall energy consumption. Ten years [before that], they were at 82%. So though all of that investment is in renewables, you’re talking about $3.8 trillion, let me repeat that $3.8 trillion of investment in renewables moved fossil fuel consumption from 82% to 81% of the overall energy consumption. … The net of it is clearly we haven’t made any progress.
The results of Government policies since the U.K. Labour Government under Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2008 committed the country to a legally binding target of reducing carbon emissions by 80% from the 1990 level by 2050 are plain to see.
The U.K. now has higher electricity prices for its businesses than even Germany, the world’s epicentre of self-destructive green policies. In Miliband’s five months in office, the country’s last coal plant and its Port Talbot steel plant shut down, regulatory approvals for solar farms were rushed through in the teeth of objections in the local community, and the North Sea’s oil and gas field development has been sacrificed to an unchallenged climate lawsuit brought by Greenpeace.
Last week, Mr. Miliband introduced a “Warm Homes Plan” to fine gas boiler manufacturers if they do not sell a certain amount of heat pumps. The plan, dubbed the ‘boiler tax‘, requires manufacturers to sell at least 6% of their total sales as heat pumps or face a fine of £500 for each missed installation in the first year, rising to £3,000 in subsequent years. Many firms have already raised the price of their boilers by around £100 in a bid to offset the cost of possible fines.
As if this were not enough punishment on those wanting to keep warm in winter, Mr. Miliband is also relaxing the size and noise restrictions on heat pumps. This led the Telegraph to warn last week that the lifting of the noise restrictions will risk turning neighbourhoods into “war zones”.
What makes green ideologues tick?
In an article written over a year ago on luxury beliefs, I asked: “How did a leading economy like Great Britain come to have Governments (from both sides of the aisle) that promise their people penury and a future without the basic freedoms Westerners have taken for granted for over two centuries?”
Rob Henderson, who coined the term “luxury beliefs” defined them as “ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class”. Conspicuous consumption of status goods and services by the super-rich – having Bentleys and butlers for instance – might be frowned upon by the likes of Ed Miliband. His moral worth is instead related to his luxury beliefs, of which the “fight against climate change” is the crowning achievement – at relatively little cost to himself personally but at great cost to the lower and middle classes.
Another aspect of the luxury beliefs espoused by Ed Miliband and Keir Starmer is the need to claim ‘climate leadership‘ in international forums. Asked if he was disappointed other world leaders had not attended COP29 – such as those from the top 13 GHG emitting countries including China, the U.S., India, Indonesia, the EU, and all but Georgia Meloni of the G7 countries – Sir Keir said the U.K. was at the summit to “show leadership”.
Evidently, it does not matter to Mr. Starmer that some of the world’s largest developing economies with GHG emissions that dwarf the U.K.’s, such as China (by 35 times) and India (by 11 times) are not on the hook to curtail emissions until aspirational targets kick in decades later (theoretically in 2060) under the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. Furthermore, these countries are not required to contribute to the $300 billion a year in climate finance promised by the attendees at the just-concluded COP29 climate summit in Baku.
Nor does it seem to matter to Sir Keir or to his green commissar Mr. Miliband that President-elect Donald Trump, an avowed climate contrarian, has already made clear his intentions to exit the U.S. from the Paris Agreement under which the developed countries are expected to achieve Net Zero by 2050. Chris Wright, the nominee to be the next U.S. Secretary of Energy, has this to say about the U.K. in his book Bettering Human Lives:
The U.K., although no longer part of the EU, has continued aggressive climate policies that have driven up energy prices for its citizens and industry. The results are troubling. … The once-leading United Kingdom now has a per capita income lower than even the poorest state in the United States.
The impoverishment of Great Britain does not seem to concern Ed Miliband, one reason he has been labelled “Britain’s most dangerous man” on TalkTV.
Dr. Tilak K. Doshi is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.
This article (The Ed Miliband Phenomenon – What Makes ‘Britain’s Most Dangerous Man’ Tick?) was created and published by The Daily Sceptic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Tilak Doshi
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