Abssent carbon controls on China and India, this is really quite irrelevant with respect to the world’s greenhouse gas problems. The United Kingdom slashing greenhouse gases by 2050 is akin to making a law against littering out your car windows that only applies to green Saabs and they can still litter, just not as much, for the next 43 years.
This also addresses FRDE to some degree.
I fully understand that Britain by itself will make less difference than around a 10% clean up in China’s Power Industry or better Emissions and Fuel efficiency standards by the US.
The leaders in Britain also understand this from the articles I have read and linked.
The point of this action is a large rich industrialized nation is going to take the leadership. Appliance companies will want to meet the new requirements when they are specified so they can continue selling appliances. If demand is pushed by a large Government, then it will drive up production of CFLs, LED lighting, Wind Turbines and Solar Panels. Increased production will result in decreased cost and thus the ability for the technology to be cheaper for the rest of the world.
Maybe I am guilty of simplifying things, but what the UK develops will be portable to the rest of the world. I hope along the way, the UK Industrialist find a way to make some corporate profits off this to create some new jobs in the UK. I hope that a little manufacturing, a lot of construction and some permanent white collar and engineering jobs.
Forgive this optimist his belief that humans can still innovate their way out of trouble. Innovation and the will power to run with it is what made first Britain and then the US the world powers that they are.
Jim
I appreciate that that’s the sentiment, but it’s utterly pointless.
“Leadership” is one of those words that gets tossed around and means whatever the speaker wants it to mean, but in this case it means, well, very little. “Leadership” is not demonstrated by being the first to do something you know how no impact and will almost certainly not bring about any positive results.
Leadership comprises those actions taken to motivate other people to do things. Being the first to jump might be a small part of leadership, but it’s not the whole enchilada or even most of the tortilla. It’s especially meaningless when the people you’re allegedly trying to motivate aren’t even on your team; it’s like the quarterback for the 49ers expecting that players from other teams will do what he says because he was the first to shave his head to show team spirit.
What the UK is doing will have only the most indirect and fleeting of impacts on a small selection of other countries, and will have no impact at all on China, India et al. What chance, honestly, do you think there is that China will now say “Well, gosh darn it, the Brits have a 43-year-long commitment to reduce carbon emissions that has very little in the way of specifics in it. Let’s just cast aside the whole industralization concept now”? I’ll tell you how likely that is: Zero. Or, as our British friends call it, nil.
I’m not trying to discount the potential dangers of global warming, but self-flagellating Western governments proposing measures that are more than half symbolic is not a meaningful response, it’s purely political. The Labour government is simply trolling for green-friendly votes here by proposing something that sounds grand and can be quietly de-emphasized after the election. Trust me, we’re going through the same process in Canada, where one party (the Conservatives) is lying about caring about the environment and the other party (the Liberals) already proved their credentials as liars on the environment when they were in power. Both are proposing measures that, like the UK measure, have virtually no short term obligations and are proposed to last after most of the members of government will be retired or dead.
I do too, but what you’re proposing sounds to me like economic suicide if it’s taken seriously, which of course it isn’t. If those technologies are cost effective they will be developed irrespective of what the UK does. If they weren’t being developed before, or weren’t being developed as fast as you’d like, you have to accept the fact that there must be an economic reason for that, and deviating from whatthe market has decided is going to cost some money If they’re not, then the instant the UK requires them those industries will be killed by foreign competitors and UK industry won’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of competing overseas.
Understand that I am NOT saying we need to always just let the market decide. It’s not a libertarian, mostly. Sometimes the government needs to step in to correct externalities. But you have to at least be honest about it; it costs money. By being honest and accounting for the costs, only then can you have a serious and informed policy discussion.
Attempting to reduce energy consumption, or replace the thermal energy of fossil fuels with something else, is going to cost money. There is no point in dressing this up and pretending that somehow the UK can make a profit off of this, because it cannot, at least under these conditions. This stuff has a cost associated with it, and the cost is going to be huge. Now, you can simply wait for fossil fuels to run out, which they will eventually, and allow the market to do this for you; as oil goes dry, it will become expensive and other fuel options will become correspondingly more economical. But…
…But that may introduce the unacceptable risk of climate change. So if you want to do it sooner, you are going to have to just accept that you’re imposing an external cost by asking people to either use more expensive forms of energy (more expensive for a time, anyway) or use less energy, which imposes costs of manufacturing and such. But this sort of thing can’t be done in isolation, because it instantly (assuming you’re serious about it, and I don’t think the UK is) creates a serious imbalance. If the UK incurs huge costs in energy converstion and savings, but the rest of the EU doesn’t, the UK will be plaed in a tremendous economic disadvantage for at least some period of time. It’s fine to claim that eventually the UK will develop energy saving technology but that won’t happen if it, in the meantime, suffers massive economic downtowns and a loss of investment, and in any event there’s nothing stopping France or Italy or Germany, while exploiting easier carbon emissions laws, from developing the same technology, right? I can still drive to work in a big SUV and work on green technologies when I get there.
Or if all the EU adopts strict carbon emissions laws, then the EU will be placed into this disadvantageous position as opposed to the United States, or China, or India. This sort of thing has to be done together. The UK does it alone is every bit as silly as if the city of Leeds did it alone, while London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow et al. all just kept pumping out carbons. Wouldn’t that be absurd?
Of course we can innovate our way out of trouble, I’m as much of an optimist as anyone. I also believe humans being can invent flying machines, but if you glued eagle feathers to your arms and flapped as hard as you could you still wouldn’t be able to fly.
This UK initiative is a glued-eagle-feather initiative, not a Wright Brothers innovation. Preventing catastrophic climate changes is not going to be accomplished through the sort of minor league, politically motivated nonsense the Blair government’s pumping out here.
You want to start fighting climate change? Start building nuclear power plants. A LOT of nuclear power plants. The availability of uranium to fuel them is essentially unlimited and with enough reactors you can replace the great, great majority of fossil fuel usage throughout the world - you can eliminate most uses of fossil fuels for home and business use and in conjuction with the growing popularity of electric vehicles eventually nuclear power plants can power most passenger cars as well, as well as trains.
Of course, this would cost trillions. A nuclear power plant is very, very expensive to build correctly, and disposal of the waste, while it can be safely done, is also very expensive. You’ve also got the knee-jerk reactions of a lot of dimwits who think anything that starts with “Nuclear” is evil. Oh, and you’ve got to get all of the world’s countries to agree to do it, by the way. But it would solve the problem. The question is, do we have the nads to do it?
How about putting scrubbers on the existing plants. This was being done by the Clinton admin. When the Bushies got in they stopped all the suits and allowed the pollution to pour out.
RickJay: Great post, many excellent points, many I of course do not agree with or at least not 100%.
Nuclear power is part of the solution, but not the only solution. At this time, Clean Coal remains cheaper than current nuclear technology for China, US and Canada. Solar and Wind need to have an increasing part of the energy pie. Increased nuclear is something that is needed. Better transmissions lines are something that is also needed and very costly. Increased homeowner Solar & Wind reduce the amount of energy being transmitted, a very good thing.
We cannot ignore the danger of more nuclear outside of the nuclear club, will increase the chance of accidents and the real potential for more nuclear weapons in the hands of less stable governments. So, unless you’re comfortable with most of the current African nations having nuclear weapons, we need alternatives.
Nuclear waste is a danger that can no more be dismissed than all the legitimate concerns you raised about the new British laws being worthless. Increased nuclear has is place, but not everywhere and we cannot afford to glibly ignore its dangers.
Manufacturers will be motivated to make appliances that are more efficient if that is the price of selling in the UK. Once they make these better appliances, they will find the ways to make them cheaper.
In many cases, part of the energy savings will be in simple stuff. For no good, reason the power saving modes on Cable Boxes, VCRs, DVD players, Printer, computers, etc. vary wildly. I went out of my way when shopping for a network Laser Printer to find one that powered down to a 1-watt draw. It takes a little longer to warm up, but this means 50 seconds as opposed to 30 seconds, no big deal. The tech used is pretty basic and did not cost much. In fact, the color laser in question is one of the cheapest on the market.
Clock Radios can vary by a surprising range in just displaying the time. To increase the efficiency of my water heater by about 10% cost me $25 worth Fiberglass R-15 insulation and a roll of duck tape. This could have done cheaper and better by the manufacturer.
There is so much that can be done and corporations need the motivation of this UK initiative. Of course, I am assuming they actually add the regulations to give this law the required teeth to start making a difference.
Jim
Wow…pretty much what RickJay said there. Great post! I think he hit all the highlights with that one.
-XT
Clean coal, while certainly a good thing, still emmits CO2. If CO2 is the problem, then this is only lessening the problem, not eliminating it. Nuclear does not emmit CO2 at all.
As for wind and solar, they are both niche power technologies…they can’t take up the majority of the strain in wide scale power generation (nuclear can). Individual deployment of the technology (as you suggest here) is in-efficient and costly. And its not ready for prime time in any case. Nuclear is the only technology that can be spun up rapidly…if the problem is critical as the AGW crowd is saying then its the only real option.
Well, its one of those cost to benifits thingies. It all hinges on how bad GW is going to REALLY be. In addition, I don’t think Africa is a major CO2 emmitter atm…India and China are the big up and comers, and both of them already have nuclear capabilities.
What you are saying is your rather take a major economic hit than simply solve the engineering problem that is nuclear waste? As this still seems to be the concensus among many of the eco crowd, I guess we really aren’t serious about this whole GW thingy after all…
Seriously, just kidding you there (mostly)…but the problems with nuclear waste have been blown out of proportion. If GW is real, and if we can do something about it (the first isn’t really an ‘if’ appearently, the second one is a BIG ‘if’…IMHO) then nuclear is the one place we can make an immediate differences. Anything else is going to have a major economic and socal impact on a nation like the US…an impact too big for folks to go along with it unless their backs are to the wall and they have zero choice. So…if we are REALLY serious about starting to do something, then nuclear will be the first thing we do. Until then I have to think the eco crowd aren’t REALLY serious about all this…
-XT
xtisme: Please do not misunderstand me. I am probably in the minority of Greens that want more nuclear power. I would like to see a lot more. It is 99.9% better than Coal for CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions.
I just was pointing out that it has risks, high costs and that nuclear waste being engineered away is further away than Solar and Wind becoming cheap enough to compete with Nuclear power.
As the US, China and India lead the world in Green House gas production and all three are Nuclear powers with weapons and fairly stable and responsible governments, I would like to see Nuclear power increase in these nations.
Here is the problem, where does India dispose of its waste? Will they keep the pervasive corruption that is endemic in the Indian government out of the construction and maintenance?
Will China care about poisoning some border region?
Will the US ever get the nuclear waste rolling to Utah?
Solar is improving dramatically. It can and needs to be a player in this game.
Efficiency is a good factor that will pay for itself in the end.
Etc.
Jim
As with much of what I read on this subject, it’s hard to know what to make of this announcement. It could well be posturing.
Since the debate about global warming hit my radar screen, I have read doomsday predictions about the blow to the economy that reducing carbon emissions would cause. If the UK actually does something to unilaterally reduce emissions, they would be doing the rest of the world the service of demonstrating the truth or falsehood of the predictions. To those who seem to be suggesting that the UK’s economy is too small to have any impact, I’ll offer the following stats from the International Monetary Fund for 2005.
The UK had about the same GDP as China, and India was out of the top 10 at number 12. China and the UK each accounted for about 5% of world GDP. I realize that India and China have grown faster than the UK since 2005, and that India and China probably pollute more than the UK. My point is that if they actually do something, it has the potential to be a very useful piece of data in the ongoing debate, demonstrating what actually happens when a major industrial nation tries to do something.
No worries…I DID misunderhear you. I seem to be doing that a lot lately…sorry. 
Waste is a local issue. Where will India dispose of its waste? Same as us…they will find a honking big granite mountain somewhere and dig a hole…or they will simple let it sit around in pools at the reactor site (like we do today…really safe, ehe? ), and then eventually the reactors themselves will become the tombs for the waste when they have outlived their usefulness. Not an optimal solution perhaps…but its workable. And the alternative, if I understand the GW crowd, is fairly unpleasant…much more so than a purely local nuclear disaster. Right?
Besides, with some of the new pebble bed reactor designs, waste isn’t the same issue as it once was.
Its in Nevada btw. As to the answer…gods know. I suppose we will if the eco-facists ever get the fuck out of the way.
Agreed…in fact I recall that there was a breakthrough of some kind in South Africa recently, increasing efficiency and decreasing size IIRC. That said however, its STILL not ready for prime time as a major energy player. Too big a foot print for our needs.
-XT
Sadly the stats got cut out by the hamster’s quotation mechanism.
Today the UK has one bubblegum inflated to look large
- China is still chewing its mouth candy (gee - I’m learning American)
@Crotalus - just think exchange rates - and then think exchange rates again
- guess who is overvalued
- and guess who is undervalued
My money is on China keeping an undervalued currency
Don’t compare rubbish with codswallap.