WHAT I’ll tell you first may make you furious. Next I’ll probably get you weeping, followed by driving you to despair before ending in the Land of Make-Believe.
Consider electricity. Government data tells us our annual emissions total, plus how this is split between sectors of the economy. One of those sectors is electricity generation, which in 2020 produced 21 per cent of our emissions; in 2024 it was down to 10 per cent.
Oh good, you are thinking, all that stuff about going for clean energy actually meant something. A reduction of 11 percentage points. Marvellous. Just shows Miliband was right with his wind and sun policy.
Short interval here. I don’t know how they do this but total greenhouse gas emissions are measured in Megatons (one million metric tons) of carbon dioxide equivalent, written as MtCO2e but henceforth to keep it simple shortened to Mt. That includes carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and smaller amounts of other gases that we are pushing into the atmosphere.
Staying with the UK, then:
Emissions total 2020: 405Mt, electricity generation proportion: 21 per cent (85Mt)
Emissions total 2024: 371Mt, electricity generation proportion: 10 per cent (37Mt)
Therefore: 85 minus 37 gives 48Mt saved over four years. Wonderful. Reduction of millions of Megatons, all helping with the ‘race to Net Zero’.
You may have noticed that overall reduction of 405 minus 371: 34Mt. Again, wonderful? No, maybe not. A recent report pointed out this decrease was probably ‘fuelled by the shutdown of more than 100 businesses and factories over the past two decades’, so calm your excitement: read on first.
A wider view with data from Edgar, the EU Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research which shows the real picture:
World total emissions 2020: 48,962Mt.
World total emissions 2024: 53,206Mt.
2024 total minus 2020: increase of 4,244Mt over four years.
Therefore, while the UK power proportion reduced by 48Mt in four years, the world added 4,244Mt. All those wind turbines over land and sea, all those solar panels planted across our land instead of wheat or potatoes, just to make an imperceptible reduction, totally invalidated by what was going on in the real world.
I did say I’d make you furious.
Maybe keep looking at the whole world data from Edgar which has emission details of 210 countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. When you look at the whole pond we are merely tiddlers. The four largest emitters, China, the US, India and Russia, contribute 29.2, 11.1, 8.2 and 4.8 per cent respectively, over half the global total.
Fourteen countries plus aviation and shipping are between 1 and 3 per cent. The informative Edgar tells us that the remaining 192 countries (including the UK) each contribute less than 1 per cent.
Using Edgar’s data:
World total 2020: 48,962Mt / UK: 421Mt / UK proportion: 0.86 per cent
World total 2024: 53,206Mt /UK: 387Mt /UK proportion: 0.73 per cent
(Edgar’s UK figures are very slightly different from those of our government.)
Yes, both our reduction (34Mt) and our proportions are utterly meaningless. If we suddenly went emission-free it wouldn’t make a scrap of difference. It’s enough to make you weep.
China has been in the news recently because it is making ‘a landmark pledge to cut its climate emissions’, and will ‘reduce . . . emissions by 7-10 per cent by 2035 relative to the year of the country’s peak emissions, believed to be 2025’.
Good news at last? Well, not really. Quick look at Edgar again.
China 2024 emissions: 15,536Mt. Proposed reduction 10 per cent: (1,554Mt).
China 2035 forecast emissions therefore: 13,982Mt, still 37 times larger than the UK’s current total.
Are you now driven to despair by the UK’s vainglorious target of achieving Net Zero emissions by 2050? And by gormless governments calling it a ‘race’? If you were suddenly Emperor of the World and wanted the banishment of all harmful emissions, where would you start? Your campaign would surely focus first on the worst, then work down, country by country, eventually reaching the UK several years later.
Finally I introduce Mr Sam Hall, Director of the Conservative Environmental Network. He tells the truth about climate change, though he may not have realised it. ‘It is,’ he said recently, ‘one of the greatest threats we face to our country’s prosperity and security.’
It certainly is. Energy so expensive that customers are now £4.4+billion in debt to their suppliers, home-grown food abandoned in favour of vast fields plastered with solar farms that are sunless for the critical early evening peak electricity demand from October to March (exactly when we need more heating), massive subsidies for wind turbines, useless in winds that are either too light or too strong, cosy combi gas boilers thrown out and replaced by expensive and chilly heat-pumps, electric cars dependent on power that could be cut off in a cold winter, and our North Sea and anti-fracking policies meaning that the UK ‘could face importing 70 per cent of oil and gas needs by 2030’.
The UK’s economy creaks alarmingly and the geo-political situation is growing more desperate. Meanwhile, our climate policy is operating on the principle that there is a looming catastrophe, so we must take all necessary actions to deal with its terrifying storms before it destroys the earth and all in it. Only by courageously attacking our paltry greenhouse gas emissions can we hope to persuade all the other countries to join us in a desperate race towards a benign future with a more tranquil climate.
What nonsense. I leave you in the Land of Make-Believe. Sorry.
