A few months ago I started a new Serious Change project. The aim of the project was to write good responses to online newspaper and blog posts about the UK energy system.
Well, after a few months of online meetings, and posting comments, we got pretty good at responding. We even started to see common arguments for not investing public funds in our energy system. So, the obvious thing to do is to list these common arguments and write our best reponses (google doc). Anyone who would like to help write reponses is most welcome to write on that google doc — and if you would like to discuss any aspect of this project then just email lisa at seriouschange dot org dot uk.
The good thing about this exercise is that the next time we come across one of these common arguments, we can save ourselves some work and just refer to our reponse here — and so can you!
A few months ago, our friend, Francis Davey gave a speech where he explained the aim of Serious Change is to:
“Change the hearts and minds of people by telling the story of zero carbon Britain and show that this is desirable and getting there will be satisfying.”
Changing hearts and minds means you have to understand people’s values and what they care about.
So let us consider people who care about their family, their home, their job and their bills. They reasonably don’t want disruption to their life unless it is really worth it, for the good of their family, their home, their job or their bills.
Concerns about the science and morality of the climate changing or the technology of alternatives to fossil fuel are, at best, secondary, as these issues are not as clear or immediate as family, home, job and bills.
Well the Daily Mail, and the Tax Payer’s Alliance (TPA) are already talking to these people. They are telling a story of a government that is, without agreement, and therefore undemocratically, taking money from British families to invest in Green technology.
Here is one story from the TPA:
“14% of the average domestic electricity bill is the result of ineffective Government climate change policies that provide massive subsidies to the owners of wind farms but do little to reduce emissions”.
“Tough new targets on tackling climate change will cost every household in Britain at least £600 a year, push more than a million people into poverty and send fuel bills soaring, experts warned today.”
But the TPA and Daily Mail stories aren’t being told fairly.
People are not told how much of their money is going to oil and gas suppliers in tax breaks and subsidies. They are not told how much extra they are paying in tax or heating and car related bills because of these subsidies and tax breaks. The government support to oil and gas companies is a complex set of data to unpick, but with freedom of information requests and thoughtful investigation, it can be done.
It seems to me that telling this story is the right thing to do, regardless of any environmental concerns. But as I am interested in a fair analysis of the details of changing Britain’s energy system, it is also the first step in that investigation.
You can listen to the full Francis Davey speech here:
The Tax Payers Alliance (TPA) is a huge success in terms of how frequently it is quoted and the range of publications it is quoted in.
The basic premise is that people don’t like having ‘their’ money taken away from them, in the form of taxes, and wasted. The TPA then extends this basic premise to show the inadequacies and inefficiency of the government.
But how does the TPA do this?
The Reports
The website produces 4-5 reports a month. This is a lot less than I thought relative to the amount of coverage it gets. But each report fits the public mood and is well written. You can see them all here:
It seems that a common theme in these reports is to 1) find the amount of UK tax paid for a particular service, ideally one that is inefficient or doesn’t have strong public backing, and 2) divide that cost into the number of households and then 3) report that the government is taking this amount of pounds from your family and wasting it.
The reports do range in detail. Some are simple freedom of information requests with a short introduction:
The rest of the site is made up of blog posts which fit into the categories of:
-Media Coverage summaries of articles where the TPA has been quoted. This makes up most of the blogging on the site.
-Economics 101 includes a time line of tax, and other blog entries under headings such as; Corporate Tax, Dynamic Modelling, Fairness, Flat Tax, Green Taxes, Income Tax, Regulation.
-Better Government contains a document outlining how the government should be run by successful business people: http://tpa.typepad.com/bettergovernment/files/BetterGovernment.pdf . Then breaks down the criticism into the government departments of health, defense, education, energy, law and order, international aid, EU and then has some categories concerning quality and structure and trust of government.
-Burning Our Money is the most humorous part of the site, this contains the ‘non-job of the week’. Then there is the ‘rewards for failure’ section which includes bonuses at the BBC, just quoted from the telegraph and Sun, no original research here. There is also reporting on public sector pensions and Taxpayer-funded politics.
-European Union this is a campaign to stop the EU rip-off.
-Blogs By Location in West Midlands and TaxPayers’ association of Europe.
The Book
This is where it all began for the TPA in 2005, with volunteers writing the ‘Bumper Book of Government Waste’. The book shows how £101 billion is wasted by the government.
I like the Daily Mail. It doesn’t represent my views but I have to admire how powerfully it conveys its messages. It is angry, argumentative and fantastically critical.
Here are two stories that I think, having read the Daily Mail for the last few months, are representative of its attitude to UK energy. Then I talk about what we can learn from them.
So, I was delighted when I read this about wind farms with quotes from David MacKay. It has conclusion of “And, yes, we need to invest in more renewable energy. “ and “The answer is messy, expensive and fraught with controversy and debate. But it is not blowing in the wind.”
The next day was budget day and there was: “Tough new targets on tackling climate change will cost every household in Britain at least £600 a year, push more than a million people into poverty and send fuel bills soaring, experts warned today.”
This article goes on to say that “Critics said the targets, which include a drive to build more windfarms, would cost the economy £14billion a year by 2020 and would have only a negligible impact on climate change.”
So it is quite possible to have, in the same paper, using the same stock photos, science stories very positive about renewable energy but political and editorial stories that are totally negative about the way it is happening and its effects.
And it’s the criticism that is the headline grabbing stuff. It is more emotive to think of the government taking money from your family and wasting it, than it is to think about how cool it would be if we had a load of windmills.
But actually criticizing the government is a useful activity. The current situation is that we have a set of targets for reducing carbon emissions; it is 80% reduction from 1990 levels, by 2050. There are no complete plans yet for how to reach that target.
I would like to see groups getting together to intelligently criticize the government for missing opportunity with renewable technology and not having good enough policy or any policy at all and present these arguments in journalist sized pieces.
How would you do this?
The Daily Mail gets lots of its source material from The Tax Payers Alliance and Migration Watch. Again these two bodies don’t reflect my views, but they do an excellent job of communicating what they are about.
So, what about setting up a news source like this but for constructive criticism of UK energy policy?
The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, couldn’t have it more backwards:
The European Union’s global leadership on climate change is under threat as Germany heads a rebellion to protect industry from the extra cost of tough environmental targets. (The Telegraph)
She’s wrong for two important reasons.
1. Climate security is an economic target. Years ago the Stern Review showed this. It’s making our climate safe that will protect industry, not continuing to gamble with fossil fuels.
2. The change to a low-carbon economy will build the corporations that rule the world at the end of this century. It’s vital for European prosperity that lots of these are European. Who will own the electric car companies, and the businesses which build mirrors in the deserts?
If you agree with Serious Change, you can write to Chancellor Merkel to tell her. Your letter will help at this vital moment in negotiations.
A few months ago, our friend, Francis Davey gave a speech where he explained the aim of Serious Change is to:
The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, couldn’t have it more backwards: