Why emphasise the costs of Net Zero?
This is something that always puzzles us. Why is it that when people tout the benefits of their favourite policy they always, but always, tell us of the costs of their favourite policy?
More than a million jobs, higher wages, nearly half a trillion pounds in investment in the pipeline – the UK’s green economy is powering ahead, according to research by the country’s leading business organisation.
The net zero economy, which is worth more than £100bn a year, benefits all of the UK, according to the CBI Economics analysis commissioned by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank, despite critics who want to abolish the UK’s net zero targets.
We agree, entirely, that there could - please note, could - be benefits to Net Zero. We’re certainly willing to agree that not broiling Flipper in the fumes of the last ice floe is a useful target for society, even a benefit. Our usual point on this is that we differ on the method. We’re with Mssrs. Nordhaus and Stern, the IPCC and all the rest in insisting that market processes, suitably modified to include the costs of the externalities, are the way to go. Rather than the Rolls Royce minds in Whitehall gurning over their slide rules at us as they plan the Brave New World.
But leave that grander question aside for a moment. There are costs and benefits to everything because that is the human condition. When deciding what to do it’s vital to put costs on one side of the ledger and benefits t’other. You know, credits are always toward the window and do not then reorganise the desks.
Investment in something is a cost. We could have devoted those same resources to something else therefore devoting them to this - whatever this is - is a cost of doing this - whatever this is. Equally, jobs are a cost of doing something, not a benefit. That human labour could have been doing something else to our benefit if not this.
Which does lead to that important question. Why are we being entertained with a listing of the costs of Net Zero rather than the benefits?
It is not just The Guardian either. The original report is from CBI Economics:
The UK’s net zero economy is now a major part of the national industrial base. It supports more than a million jobs……This transformation is being underpinned by a substantial pipeline of investment. The UK has around £455 billion of energy infrastructure in development….
Why are they telling us how expensive this all is as if that expense is a benefit?
That the house newspaper of the soft left (is flaccid left too much?) doesn’t grasp economic costs and economic benefits is not much of a surprise. But that the economics arm of the Confederation of British Industry is muddled over what is a credit and what is a debit on the societal books might explain all too much of this modern world.
Tim Worstall