Idiot decision - fossil is the problem, not diesel lorries
This idea that we should use the all knowing bureaucracy and politics to deal with the climate change problem. We’ve been told a number of times — Bill Nordhaus and Nick Stern come to mind - that this isn’t the way to do it. Prices and markets, not dictat, is the way. Here’s another example of why getting the babykissers to determine everything we may do is that wrong way:
Labour has unveiled plans to introduce a petrol and diesel lorry ban as part of their net-zero drive.
Ministers have announced an end to the sale of new fossil fuel-powered trucks in a move that opens up a new battle with the Tories and Reform.
They have ruled out allowing the continued use of low-carbon or synthetic fuels, meaning that from 2040 all new heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) will have to be electric.
For the sake of the point allow that the problem is real, it’s us, we need to do something. OK. Having a committee bad lorries isn’t the way to do it - a ban on even a type of lorry isn’t. We’ve noted this a number of times and the main point:
In the Adam Smith Institute we have long argued that government should set the targets rather than mandating the technology to achieve them. In this way we allow competing ideas to be developed that can achieve the goals in different, and often unpredictable, ways.
Governments have decided that petrol and diesel vehicles are to be phased out and then eliminated to remove the pollutants they emit. They are to be replaced by electric, or possibly hydrogen powered vehicles. This misses the point spectacularly. As Tim Worstall of this parish has pointed out, petrol and diesel engines are not the causes of pollution. The fuel they use is the cause, rather than the engines themselves.
If a non-polluting fuel could be devised, the engines could continue in use without the detrimental effects of fossil fuels, and if the new fuels were compatible with existing internal combustion engines, there could be huge savings to be made by going green in a far less costly way.
And thus the interest in that Porsche experiment with windmills and Fischer Tropsch.
Now, we do not know how technology is going to pan out in these next 14 years. Maybe solid state batteries really do work and become terribly cheap. Maybe festooning the Drake Passage with birdchoppers does. We don;t know. But rather more to the point not only do you not know nor does the government, any politician or bureaucrat nor all of them lumped together*. We are not facing risk, nor probability, we are dealing with unknowns. To which the correct answer is wait and see.
That is, it’s entirely fine to start insisting that at some future date the sale of fossil diesel will cease. Fine assuming that we all agree that climate is a problem, we must do something etc. But given that it’s fossil diesel that is the problem then that’s what should be done - any solution that deals with that problem is also, equally, fine.
That is, even if we accept the set up for this decision it’s still the wrong decision. Which is, of course, why everyone with an IQ greater than their shoe size has been insistent, all along, that we do not use politics and bureaucracy to define how we deal with problems like climate change.
Tim Worstall
*No, knowledge does not increase by the size of the crowd, the normal observation is that the more people in it the faster the collective IQ approaches room temperature.