{"id":9797,"date":"2011-06-13T08:51:05","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T12:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=9797"},"modified":"2011-06-13T08:51:05","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T12:51:05","slug":"british-carbon-tax-may-spark-de-industrialization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/06\/13\/british-carbon-tax-may-spark-de-industrialization\/","title":{"rendered":"British carbon tax may spark de-industrialization"},"content":{"rendered":"

The current British government’s global warming\/climate change programs, combined with the European Union’s policies, may have triggered a race to the exits by British industry<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Now, the CBI and Britain\u2019s leading chemical firms have warned that the proposed \u201ccarbon floor\u201d tax (also unique in the world) will make our industry so uncompetitive that, unless the policy is changed, it will lead inevitably to mass plant closures and job losses. Similarly, the European Metals Association warned last week that the EU\u2019s various \u201canti-carbon\u201d policies are becoming so costly that they are already forcing steel, aluminium and other producers in their energy-intensive industry to relocate outside Europe, losing hundreds of thousands more jobs.<\/p>\n

At one end of the scale, then, whole industries are protesting that the soaring costs of \u201cclimate change\u201d measures will amount, in effect, to a colossal economic suicide note. At the other, we begin to see how the obsession with \u201cclimate change\u201d will push our own household energy bills through the roof, driving millions more people into \u201cfuel poverty\u201d. Apart from anything else, by 2020 our Government expects us to pay \u00a3100 billion for a further 10,000 useless, subsidised windmills, plus \u00a340 billion to connect them to the National Grid. These costs alone would almost double our present electricity bills. <\/p>\n

Furthermore, we are all unwittingly having to pay billions for the EU\u2019s Emissions Trading Scheme, the Carbon Reduction scheme, higher airline taxes, higher vehicle duties, highly paid \u201clow-carbon officers\u201d in our council offices, and heaven knows what else besides. With the new carbon floor tax soon due to raise our energy bills by further billions, we can see why the Government\u2019s own forecast — that the Climate Change Act will cost us up to \u00a318 billion annually until 2050 — might well be an underestimate.<\/p>\n

Most terrifying of all, however, is the extent to which our politicians remain firmly locked in their little green bubble, oblivious to the practical implications of the measures they have set in train. As for what purpose it all serves, we may note last week\u2019s report that China, already the world\u2019s biggest CO2 emitter, is now also the world\u2019s largest energy user. Each year it increases the world\u2019s CO2 emissions by more than the total that Britain emits annually. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The current British government’s global warming\/climate change programs, combined with the European Union’s policies, may have triggered a race to the exits by British industry: Now, the CBI and Britain\u2019s leading chemical firms have warned that the proposed \u201ccarbon floor\u201d tax (also unique in the world) will make our industry so uncompetitive that, unless the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,25,62],"tags":[245,337,240,39,661],"class_list":["post-9797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-economics","category-europe","tag-climatechange","tag-eu","tag-globalwarming","tag-junkscience","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2y1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9798,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9797\/revisions\/9798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}