As Matthew Lynn, a columnist writing in the Sunday Telegraph (£) puts it, the compulsion on car firms to build more electric vehicles (EVs), on pain of large fines, was already causing great damage to the UK and European economy. With the US now imposing blanket 25% tariffs on car imports from the UK, the Net Zero obsession is suicidal for the UK-based car industry, home to brands such as Jaguar Landrover, which has just paused shipments to the US:
“It would be ridiculous for the Government to start fining the car companies for not selling enough cars that no one really wants at the same time as the Trump administration is hitting them with huge new levies in their main export market. None of the car companies is in exactly great shape to start with. The combination may well prove fatal.
The [UK] government should announce an immediate one-year suspension of the EV target, and then start a consultation on postponing it for another five or even 10 years. If it was scrapped immediately no one would miss it.”
Tens of thousands of car workers could lose their jobs, unless there is a drastic change in policy in the UK – never mind what the Trump administration chooses to do – and they live in those famed “Red Wall” seats that the insurgent new party, Reform, is targeting at the next General Election.
I regret to say that seeking a ‘way forward’ with the UK Government of the day is increasingly unrewarding. At some point firms will just ‘give up’, ‘pack up’ and leave.
The question is whether or not there is any level of ‘business drain’ that will be enough to destroy the Net Zero ideology.
Although there is no reason to suppose we are facing a ‘climate crisis’, mere facts and logic will not stop this example of what Sowell has called an ‘ideological stampede’. Zealots, suffused with, indeed enjoying, panic are not open to reflection or discussion. We need sensible people everywhere to do their best to calm them down and reduce the harm they are doing to us. Here’s hoping!
Miliband resembles nothing more than a Soviet commissar, tasked with carrying out the Five Year Plan. All that matters is the Plan, and he will carry it out no matter what. A million kulaks may die, but so long as the Plan is implemented, all will be well.
Of course, in reality, Comrade Commissar Miliband may well have ended up in the Gulag anyway. We can but hope.
It still baffles me how quickly and eagerly the big carmakers seemed to jump on the EV path, committing hundreds of millions in tooling and line design and sourcing before getting even a small amount of apparent buy-in by the market.
The hard-headed engineers and auto marketers I’ve known forever wouldn’t have done this.
So I have to wonder – how did they all get replaced by Net Zero Idiots? The public – the car-buying public – doesn’t seem to be supportive of NZ. Most funds that hold the carmakers’ shares don’t seem enthused for it. But somehow, they went all in.
My Inner Conspiracy Theorist is intrigued.
bobby b,
I have said this before and I shall say it again. The most under-rated force in human existence is fashion. It apploes to eveything. EV seemed the “in fashion” idea and that’s where the money went. Compare for military aircraft from the ’60s/’70s and the fashion for variable geometry wings. Compare for “e” and “i”. Back in the ’90s Apple launched their weirdly throat lozenge-styled eMacs. Everyone started adding a lower case “e” to the start of the name of everything. Same for “i” following Apple’s iPod, iPhone, iPad. Go back 130-ish years and everything was banded as “Electric” even if it wasn’t. There is no conspiracy here with one caveat – government “grants”. But then it was the government who was the dedicated follower of fashion and the companies just followed because they saw $$$ in the water. NZ is a fashion in the sense of being meaningless virtue signalling except, of course, unlike the cut of a suit, this really matters. I have a lot more to say about the role of fashion but let’s leave it for now.
JohnK,
Yup. Milliband was bred for this. His Dad was a Marxist “intellectual”, his brother followed the family trade as well. They are cultists. I was almost tempted to replace the “l” there…
“It still baffles me how quickly and eagerly the big carmakers seemed to jump on the EV path, committing hundreds of millions in tooling and line design and sourcing before getting even a small amount of apparent buy-in by the market.”
bobby_b, have you heard of CAFE ?
The carmakers were forced by Government to “jump on the EV path”.
the Net Zero obsession is suicidal for the UK-based car industry,
the Net Zero obsession is suicidal for the UK.
There you are. Even better:
the Net Zero obsession is suicidal for anyone who adopts it.
The UK 2019 Net zero legislation was passed without any objections in parliament. It was at the fag end of the Theresa May government. Amazing that the country was very polarised over Brexit at the time both within parliament and the country but all of parliament was happy to sign up to economic disaster. Being in/out the EU was small fry compared to this, yet that’s what the country was outraged by at the time. Well….the elites never let a crisis go to waste.
So the UK car industry is headed for oblivion because it insists on building cars that don’t work and which nobody wants?
Funny. It’s like I’ve heard this story at least once before . . . . ?
llater,
llamas
Government edicts(Net zero being an example) are all like lung cancer and smoking.
The detrimental effect is so far down the line nobody sees the connection.
As George Washington observed:
”Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master”.
And, a few more “dead, white” males chip in:
”No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.” – Mark Twain
”The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” – H. L. Mencken
”Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good, will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C. S. Lewis
Having goods made in China and other nations does NOT reduce world Carbon Dioxide emissions – if anything it INCREASES Carbon Dioxide emissions when one factors in transport costs and more wasteful production methods in China.
Therefore “Net Zero” in the United Kingdom is NOT about reducing world Carbon Dioxide emissions (see above) it is solely about destroying what is left of British industry – the United Kingdom is no longer even in the top ten of industrial nations, but the establishment wish to destroy what industry we have left.
Occam’s Razor comes into effect here – if a policy has an obvious (obvious) effect, it is logical to assume that this is what the people pushing the policy want. There may be some very complicated alternative answer – but William of Occam warns us against seeking complicated answers because we do not like the implications of a straight forward (logical) answer.
The ruling establishment are pushing policies which obviously do harm and do NOT reduce world Carbon Dioxide emissions – therefore it is logical to assume that doing us harm is the OBJECTIVE of the policies they follow.
They are doing us harm – because they want to do us harm.