Shocker: Green energy and jobs will cripple the UK economy

It's not green jobs themselves, but rather government pushing them when many simply are not ready and cannot compete in the free market. It would be like trying to push personal computers onto consumers in the 60's when they were the size of refrigerators. But give technology a chance to mature in the research lab and before long it not only competes but wins out over older tech. It' a simple concept that the liberal ruling class - always obsessed with picking winners and losers - doesn't get. Or maybe gets but turns a blind eye to the truth (wouldn't be the first time). The predictable results in Britain: Green energy and jobs will cripple the UK economy

The UK's headlong rush into renewable energy – one ignored by the rest of the world – will hit British jobs and then general incomes, an economic study finds.

The report, The Myth of Green Jobs by economist Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University, examines the long-term impacts of subsidising expensive "green" renewable energy projects. It says that if the UK continues to do so, it will lose 2 to 3 per cent GDP a year for around 20 years. If reducing CO₂ emissions is your goal, says Hughes, your economy really can't afford renewable energy.

How does he get to this figure?

He explains that one reason is that labour inputs are a cost, not a benefit. This is common sense: the goal for a productive economy is to have the highest value creation at the lowest cost. If your workforce is mostly employed doing the basics, such as cultivating manglewurzels, it is going to have fewer doctors, teachers or rocket scientists. North Korea is a good example. Or, for the same cost, you can have a cleaner environment.

I'll set aside for now that that last statement isn't exactly true as you are simply trading one type of pollution for another, in addition to the fact that CO2 is not a pollutant. But anyway.

(Hughes uses the example of two crops, one of which requires 50 hours of labour per hectare, and one that requires 100 hours of labour.)

"All forms of green energy tend to be substantially more expensive than conventional energy, so there is a trade-off between higher costs and lower emissions," writes Hughes. "This trade-off is not specific to green energy, since there are many ways of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. Hence, the starting point of any assessment of such programmes should be the total cost per tonne of carbon dioxide saved – or its equivalent – which will be incurred by relying upon different measures or policies to reduce emissions."

Read the whole thing, but the obsession here is with CO2 is the problem here, and after that the pushing of technologies not yet ready to compete on the open market, rather than much simpler and economical technology that conserves energy. More from Right Wing News and Pirate's Cove