Britain’s green and therefore ruined land

Show me someone prepared to ruin the country in pursuit of an ideology, and I’ll show you a socialist. Show me someone doing so in pursuit of an ideology based on bogus premises, and I’ll show you Boris Johnson.

He has announced plans to spend a trillion pounds on turning Britain green by 2050, within one generation. Yet by Johnson’s own admission this is all one big gamble: “The UK,” he announced, “is deciding to make a big bet on green technology”.

The UK has decided nothing of the sort. The decision has been made by the spivocracy regrettably empowered to speak on its behalf. For no sensible Briton – and, appearances to the contrary, they still exist – would place a bet on a certain loser.

That’s like playing Russian roulette with a loaded Glock. Pull the trigger, and you won’t hear a click. In fact, you’ll be too dead to hear anything.

Even assuming the best possible scenario unfolding over the next 30 years, Britain and Britons will be devastated. The first such assumption is that anthropogenic global warming exists and can be corrected by state action – and it pains me to accept this against all scientific evidence.

However, Britain is responsible for only 1.1 per cent of global carbon emissions. Therefore, even if our spivs succeed in expurgating every molecule of carbon from Britain’s green and pleasant land, that won’t make one bit of difference unless everyone else follows suit.

Yet even countries within the woke zone show none of our spivocrats’ alacrity. Germany, for example, still gets 25 per cent of her energy from coal (against our five per cent), the US is happily producing coal and shale gas, Norway is refusing to turn off the oil tap through which money flows into her coffers.

As to the countries outside the woke zone, such as China and Russia (both Xi and Putin are snubbing the COP26 conference), they are busily increasing their already huge emissions. Rather than closing down her coal-powered plants, China is building a forest of new ones, and Russia is pumping ever more gas into Putin’s offshore accounts.

By coincidence, these countries aren’t among our closest friends. In fact, they are looking for every competitive advantage, military, economic or geopolitical, in what they see as an existential confrontation with the West.

Anybody who’d rather not gamble with the country’s survival is duty-bound to ask this question: What happens over the next 30 years, during the transitional period when Britain is breaking up her economy to save the planet? After all, most of the required green technologies are yet to be developed, produced, tested and brought on stream.

The only sensible answer is that during that period the country will lose whatever economic competitiveness she has, while militarily she’ll be at the mercy of those wishing her ill. We may hope for a rapid recovery afterwards, but even the craziest tipster won’t cite good odds on that.

You’d get much better odds on Britain becoming a Chinese or Russian or Sino-Russian dependency, relinquishing more of her sovereignty than she did even within the ghastly EU. And that’s only if our enemies eschew direct occupation.

Anyone doubting the dire straits through which Britain is about to sail should look at exactly what’s in store. I’ll only sketch the upcoming disaster, for detailed accounts are readily available from the experts.

Every one of them starts his irrefutable factual arguments by saying: “Of course, we must do something about global warming, but…” Now we’re in a gambling mood, I bet most experts know that the whole climate thing is a pernicious swindle pulled by those who hate the West with its remnants of capitalism.

Yet the experts feel duty-bound to make the requisite disclaimer, which is akin to every Soviet publication, including those in fields like microbiology, having to provide quotations from Lenin. This alone shows the depth of the abyss into which we are falling, and that’s before we even consider the specifics.

First, when any government embarks on a vast economic upheaval, its projected costs must be at least trebled. So if Johnson says a trillion, read three trillion – of the money we haven’t got.

This trillion hasn’t emerged out of a meticulous cost analysis. Johnson pulled it out of the same place in which he keeps his climatology data. I bet (that dread word again) he simply asked his advisers what would be the lowest number they could see in their wettest dreams.

But whatever the number of trillions we’ll need to spend, where will they come from?

The government can only make money from either taxes or borrowing. The latter would have to come on top of the £2.25 trillion national debt we’ve accrued already.

Any economically literate person knows that excessive government spending is inflationary. If the extra funds come from extortionate taxation, this is also guaranteed to produce recessions and depressions, in addition to runaway inflation.

One way or another, it’s the people who’ll bear the brunt. Just consider the risible plan to replace gas boilers with eco-friendly heaters in every house. To that end, the government is generously offering a £5,000 subsidy to each compliant owner.

There are a few problems with this. First, the real cost is closer to £20,000, leaving the people with a gaping hole to fill. Second, instead of lowering energy costs, such heaters tend to increase them. Third, they don’t work well, if it all. The average household so equipped spends some £500 a year on repairs, while the shower water gets a third lower.

Above all, only about three per cent of British households can be so converted without tearing the house down and replacing it with a new one. And still the heaters won’t do the job unless the house is perfectly insulated – at a cost of thousands per wall.

This madness will proceed against the backdrop of energy costs doubling and redoubling (they’ve already almost doubled since May), food getting less plentiful and more expensive, taxes skyrocketing, transportation becoming ruinous.

The plan to replace all fossil-fuel vehicles with electric ones by 2030 is cloud-cuckoo land. For all 30 million cars in Britain to be powered by batteries, the number of charging points will have to increase tenfold – and so will the pressure on the already creaking grid.

This will be a tall order even when the sun shines and the wind blows. But what if God refuses to play along?

Blackouts will become commonplace, old people will be dying of hypothermia, men fumbling in the dark will be feeling up their mothers-in-law instead of their wives, which can’t possibly come to any good.

And all the time the grin on Putin’s face will be getting wider and his wallet fatter. Please go on placing huge bets, Boris, he’ll be saying. I’m holding all the trumps.

The upshot of it all is that, if Britain’s land is forced to become green, it’ll no longer be pleasant.

P.S. I didn’t arrange to play tennis this sunny morning because the weather forecast promised non-stop rain. Of course, when it comes to predicting weather centuries from now, the same meteorologists and climatologists are deadly accurate. It’s only tomorrow that baffles them.