The only surprise about this “news” is that members of the British establishment are mentioning it.
Net zero will be far more expensive than the public has so far been led to believe, top economists have warned the Lords Economic Affairs Committee.
Transitioning to a low-carbon economy is “necessary” but will be “much more expensive than people imagine”, Olivier Blanchard said.
The former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund said there was a “substantial fiscal cost to achieve anything close to net-zero”.
Mr Blanchard, who is now a senior fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington DC, said the exact cost of the transition was unknown.
However, he told the Lords committee: “The public does not believe, or has not been made to understand, that is going to be costly for them. It is going to be costly and that message has to be sent out.”
The economist said that governments would have to borrow more money to fund the shift to net zero, as paying for it purely through higher taxation was not politically feasible.
It’s good to see attention being drawn to the irresponsibility of the politicians in Britain (above all then–prime minister Theresa May) who committed the U.K. to net zero (greenhouse gases) by 2050. It should be stressed that they did so with broad cross-party enthusiasm. There was little thought, and almost no debate, just self-congratulation. And, as Blanchard stresses, the public was given no clue as to what net zero would cost. When voters discover the truth, their enthusiasm for the current trajectory of net-zero policies is likely to fade very rapidly. This will likely mean major political trouble to come.
The Daily Telegraph:
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has previously put the cost of the UK reaching net zero by 2050 at £1.4 trillion spread over three decades. It has said the transition will herald around £1.1 trillion in savings, meaning the net cost will be around £300bn . . .
However, Sir Dieter Helm, an economics professor at Oxford University and former advisor to Boris Johnson, told the Lords that it was “delusory to think” that the net zero transition would pay for itself…
Sir Dieter previously branded the Government’s climate targets “hopelessly unrealistic” when Boris Johnson was prime minister.
A central planner is still a central planner, even when he tells a few good jokes.
Many other (Western) countries have followed Britain’s lead. Their citizens will eventually start paying such a high price for doing so that they are likely to vote out the politicians who persist in supporting the reckless “race” to net zero.
Writing in Capital Matters last week, Andy Puzder warned:
A new report for the RealClear Foundation by Rupert Darwall is a timely and much-needed warning to America. It shows what would happen if Democrats and progressives get their way and inflict net-zero climate policies on the country.
British politicians boast of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions faster than any other major economy but ignore the unfortunate fact that Britain’s economy has been performing poorly since 2008.
In 2020, even before the recent surge in energy costs, everyday Britons were paying about 75 percent more for electricity than Americans, the result of a double whammy — cap-and-trade policies on the one hand and renewable subsidies on the other…
Andy discusses his article on Fox here.
Meanwhile (from the Hill, February 9):
The cost of the Inflation Reduction Act’s energy and climate provisions is now expected to be significantly higher than previously projected, at least partially because of greater-than-anticipated investment in climate-friendly technology.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revised its projections this week, greatly increasing how much it believes the law’s energy tax credit-related provisions will cost.
“The costs of energy-related tax provisions are much higher than the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation originally projected,” CBO Director Phillip Swagel said…
Oh.