🌍 Economics is killing the climate.
We will never tackle climate change when we continue to invest in clever ways to justify more carbon emissions.
It feels like stating the obvious — but the biggest threat to the climate, to the survival of our planetary ecosystem and, ultimately, the safety of humanity … is our economy.
In a rush? Enjoy the funny video at the bottom of the post ... 👇
Why? Because our socioeconomic construct is a complex Ponzi scheme. It’s circular system that requires the relentless illusion of ‘growth’ to function. That growth is largely based on the consumption of finite resources and the most obvious of those is fossil fuel.
What this means in practice is simple: anything we do to combat climate change is in direct conflict with the survival of almost every major economy in the world.
Seldom is this more apparent than today’s expected announcement by the UK’s Government: a plan to spend over £22,000,000,000 (that’s 22 thousand million pounds) of tax payer’s money on “Carbon Capture & Storage”.
But this is good right? This is good for climate change?
Well, no. It’s bullshit. It’s like managing a tear in your bicycle tyre by paying someone to ride alongside you working a pump.
The solution is to stop the leak.
Fixing the tyre costs you once. You can then ride fast and free for years.
When it comes to climate change, we should be investing in solutions that reduce our emissions — not solutions that give the appearance of mitigating emissions because that just encourages creating more emissions for longer.
The challenge is that CCS probably has a great economic model … because it costs money in and of itself and it enables the ongoing consumption of gas and oil.
The alternative — to reduce consumption and thereby reduce emissions — reduces economic flow-rate, reduces tax inputs and looks really bad on a spreadsheet.
In the UK, when it comes to tackling climate change, one of our major leaks is our poorly insulated housing stock. We burn fossil fuels to heat our homes and then we piss the heat out of uninsulated roofs, poorly fitted doors and single-glazed windows.
There are around 30 million homes in the UK. The government could therefore invest £1,000 towards the insulation of over ⅔ of every single home in the UK for the same price as their investment in CCS.
Why should they do that?
Because insulating a home is a single fixed cost investment that improves the energy efficiency of the home for the entire lifespan of the building, reducing emissions (and running costs) forever. CCS on the other hand, is an endless ongoing costs that does nothing to reduce emissions, particularly from poorly insulated housing stock.
I should add that, quite apart from the environmental benefits, there’s a massive social benefit to insulating homes too - since our energy companies often charge their poorest customers the highest unit price1 and the poorest customers often live in the most poorly insulated homes. Insulating homes benefits the poorest in society the most.
Will they do it? Of course not.
Insulating homes reduces electricity and gas consumption and reduces economic growth. So let’s burn more fossil fuels for as long as we can get away with it… and if people complain, let’s pretend we’re trying to bury a tiny fraction of the CO₂ we produce in the ground.
This is what the Auzzies think of the same scheme… expressed with far more humour than I can muster. Enjoy!
With the Energy Price Cap in place, this really depends on ones ability to switch tariffs because, although the EPC should be cheaper for prepayment customers, the bigger discounts tend to be given to customers on DD as a lure for switching.