Climate & the cost of living

We’re in the grip of a horrible cost of living crisis…

Millions are in real trouble. Even worse, it’s being used to spread dangerous misinformation. We need to keep our most sceptical wits about us! Climate action – ‘going green’ - is being portrayed as the problem, when in fact it’s a huge, immediate, cost-effective and technically simple answer.

 Boris Johnson himself cried, in New York: “Kermit the frog sang ‘It’s not easy being green’. He was wrong! It is easy, lucrative and right to be green! It is easy to be green! We can do it!”

 So why aren’t we doing this “easy, lucrative and right” thing? And is ‘going green’ the cause of the cost of living crisis? (Spoiler: No. It’s not!)

 Let’s look at it, and at what Robert Courts thinks, through calm and non-political eyes…

Prices rocket around us, in the supermarket, on the forecourt, our gas and electric, even the rent. Why?

It’s not just us! It’s global. It’s international. The costs of everything are rising everywhere. The whole world is affected. Why?

The war in Ukraine has made everything much worse. We aren’t self-sufficient in food or energy, so we have to bear world prices. This is nothing to do with ‘going green’. We’re just trapped in a world market.

Energy companies also buy and sell in a world market, so we have to pay world prices. We have to do this whether it is drilled in our waters or not. ‘British’ gas and oil is no cheaper than any other gas or oil. The stuff belongs to the companies – we give them eye-watering subsidies, but they keep full ownership. Drilling in, say, the North Sea will eventually produce more oil or gas, but we’ll still pay world prices for it.                                             

The world price of energy has shot up. This is partly due to a surge in demand after the pandemic, partly due to empty storage tanks after the winter, and partly due to the war in Ukraine and the freeze on Russian oil and gas. None of these has anything at all to do with ‘going green’.

Opening new oil and gas fields doesn’t produce cheaper fuels, it produces fuels at world prices. Even worse, it takes years to develop new fields, so cannot affect today’s crisis. And even worse than that, opening new fields will lock us into reliance on fossil fuels for decades. It will lock in rising emissions and accelerate climate change. To take this road now means purposely and permanently turning away from a sustainable future and towards climate catastrophe.

‘Going green’ is (relatively speaking) swift and simple, cheap and secure. It takes very little time and relatively little money to insulate homes and save heat, fuel and cash. Wind farms are quickly built and wind power is cheap. Solar panels are simple to install and make low-cost electricity. And we haven’t mentioned hydrogen, or wave and tidal power yet. (Or the weird and wonderful ideas brewing in boffins’ heads right now.) All of these save fuel, money and carbon quickly, easily and economically. All of these provide immediate, solid jobs, ongoing. ‘Going green’ is a straightforward no-brainer.  

If ever there was a time for taking what our Prime Minister recognises as the “easy, lucrative and right” green route into our future, surely this is it?

Mr Courts, though, doesn’t seem to recognise this. He told Hugo that we must exploit all our fossil fuel reserves. On the crowded green benches of Westminster he applauds letting the energy companies off the windfall tax hook if they promise to invest in North Sea oil and gas, roaring his support for fossil fuels….