He did a cost of energy review for the government https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cost-of-energy-independent-review  and has given evidence to several parliamentary committees. He is emphatic that a significant part of the UK high price of energy is profit taking behaviour of the parties.

Very much agree.

It's difficult to change a person's opinion but it's easier to influence a new generation's views. Many of those people in the 80s who talked of "one for the road" still, I believe, are of the same mindset (even if perhaps a bit quieter about it these days) but the march of time guarantees their numbers are dwindling and being replaced by the younger generation with a different viewpoint. The drink/drive campaign was a demonstration, though, that it is possible to accelerate the change of public opinion and that is precisely what we need to do; after all, we can't wait for a generational change when significant climate change action is needed now and in the next few years.

If we're to harness the concern of younger people about what planetary state they will inherit, it's worth remembering there are a lot of older people who are similarly worried on behalf of their kids and grandkids. If the working generation can be squeezed by both their kids and their parents at the same time, that's certainly not going to be a bad thing.

I also think we need to be a bit more balanced about our use of the carrot and the stick. For instance:

• The benefit of doing the right thing (fitting a heat pump) is a small reduction in running costs (ignoring batteries, solar and so forth so we can compare like with like) viewed against the large necessary outlay of fitting the thing. This is because the gas price is artificially low and the electricity price is artificially high for a number of reasons, but including one that is the environmental levy. This levy is added to electricity bills but not gas ones. Increasing the gas price by adding the levy there (the big stick) will further disadvantage those least able to afford it. Reducing the electricity bill by removing the levy (the carrot) will reduce the amount of money able to be spent on environmental projects. Neither is a good thing. However, if electricity prices can be capped then so can gas prices meaning it is possible to spread the levy across both gas and electricity (higher gas taxation, lower electricity taxation) whilst at the same time pushing the gas companies to wear the cost rather than pass it on to the consumer.
• Simply decoupling the electricity and gas prices will allow market forces - particularly with the amount of renewable energy now being generated - to provide a bigger carrot to electricity users without wielding a big stick against gas users.
• I have seen plenty of examples of increases in installation subsidies being matched by increases in quoted installation prices so that the net price the householder has to pay stays roughly the same. Not all installers are like this but opportunists often are. Therefore the theoretical carrot is not being applied where it is needed.

Just a few examples but it feels we need to make it easier to do the right thing and that means much better targeting. Better targeting means better understanding of people's real situations and that means better conversations with those people. Government, whether local, regional or national, is great at coming up with ideas for new initiatives but far less so at starting off with information gathering and letting the ideas evolve from that information. All IMHO, of course.

The Energy Sector appears to them as an impenetrable fortress of multi-nationals and political nepotism.
So they despair and spend their efforts on protest marches or gluing themselves to motorway slip roads.

We need to find ways to connect with them and open a dialogue.

If, for example, some of the more clued-up Forum Members here could get themselves invited to address a meeting of Extinction Rebellion at a Uni or HE College, then that would make a significant difference. We would actually provide them with background facts on real issues which they could tackle.

Posted by: @lucia

↑

* Opinion Alert I absolutely agree with this myself but can you imagine the Daily Heil headlines? Or the Tufton Street (ESG lobby) 'reports' and the BBC Question Time outrage? I do understand why politicians are scared of it but it has to be addressed sooner or later. It sounds quaint these days but I really think it helps if constituents keep on the case with their MPs - letters, those things with proper paper and envelopes, but also meetings. 

 

 

Which is one reason I started with the need to accept it must be done otherwise it's almost pointless having the discussion.  For those that do then the question becomes how, and any objection along the lines of ' well you cant/shouldn't do that' can simply be met with the response 'OK, but you accept it must be done, so what would you do?'  Criticising others is easy and cheap, solving problems is difficult.  Let those who criticise provide their alternatives so we can all benefit from their superior insight.

Unfortunately discourse (including, to be frank, much of the media) on this and most other serious topics seems to have deteriorated into criticism without providing an alternative.  Shame on those, whether in power or not, who do that.

...

 

And thereby hangs the rub. You can't start with the presumption it MUST be done if most people don't yet accept that presumption. If you do, you're building everything you do on sand and as soon as someone says "...but I don't agree that it MUST be done..." any common sense you argue later is automatically ignored. That, of course, is the point you're making along with @judith with ...

Yup, its a chicken and egg situation.  Until people accept that it must be done they will find ways to avoid doing it if its inconvenient to them.  But as you rightly say most don't accept that, and probably wont until its too late.

We have to face this one down however, there is no convenient way to mitigate climate change, so we have to find a way to convince a sufficient majority that it must be done.  Up until now politicians have tried to pretend that its possible to mitigate climate change without inconvenience, (business as usual), which is one reason we are getting nowhere.

So perhaps the real question is, how do you convince people it MUST be done.  I think I hinted at that above.  Politicians are extremely good at creating an atmosphere if they choose to.  Climate change needs to be come enemy number one IMHO, possibly (if necessary) with all the hatred and bile that is associated with less worthy campaigns.  Of course its possible that people will still prefer to blame other people, which might be fatal to the cause or alternatively might be harnessed eventually just like, as you point out, people who drink and drive are treated by some as if they have grown horns.  As you rightly point out @majordennisbloodnok its been done before, which strongly suggests it can be done again.  

My personal view is that, if we cant do it with heat pumps, we cant do it.  They require no lifestyle change and are capable, if installed correctly, of resulting in greater comfort for no greater running cost.  The other interventions we need generally involve lifestyle changes.

* Opinion Alert I absolutely agree with this myself but can you imagine the Daily Heil headlines? Or the Tufton Street (ESG lobby) 'reports' and the BBC Question Time outrage? I do understand why politicians are scared of it but it has to be addressed sooner or later. It sounds quaint these days but I really think it helps if constituents keep on the case with their MPs - letters, those things with proper paper and envelopes, but also meetings. 

Which is one reason I started with the need to accept it must be done otherwise it's almost pointless having the discussion.  For those that do then the question becomes how, and any objection along the lines of ' well you cant/shouldn't do that' can simply be met with the response 'OK, but you accept it must be done, so what would you do?'  Criticising others is easy and cheap, solving problems is difficult.  Let those who criticise provide their alternatives so we can all benefit from their superior insight.

Unfortunately discourse (including, to be frank, much of the media) on this and most other serious topics seems to have deteriorated into criticism without providing an alternative.  Shame on those, whether in power or not, who do that.

...

And thereby hangs the rub. You can't start with the presumption it MUST be done if most people don't yet accept that presumption. If you do, you're building everything you do on sand and as soon as someone says "...but I don't agree that it MUST be done..." any common sense you argue later is automatically ignored. That, of course, is the point you're making along with @judith with

There is an elephant in the room with this topic. Governments have to be electable and any political party whose campaign slogan was “we’re going to make many/most of your worse off but the planet will benefit” won’t get elected. I’ve read somewhere that all politicians know how to reduce carbon emissions (large carbon tax anyone ?) but they don’t know how to be re-elected afterwards.

...

since if most people don't agree with the presumption they will rail against any governance that is based on that presumption.

I am old enough to remember the drink/drive advertising campaign of the early 80s. Before that, people talked about "one for the road" and decried the injustice if one of their friends was prosecuted for being "only a little bit over the limit". These days, if someone knows you're going to be driving and sees you with even your first (and small) alcoholic drink of the evening then it's almost as if you've just grown horns. In other words, the re-education worked. I believe the same needs to happen here. There is an existential threat and plenty of hard evidence to back it up so the public need to be re-educated so that acceptance of that is the default. It won't be easy since fossil fuel companies have a lot of money to throw around, but so did alcoholic drinks companies and so did tobacco companies and the re-education away from their acceptance worked.

The electricity from gas transition is the easy one compared to the other large carbon creating processes. We’re doing well in technological terms but not in affordability for the just about managing large section of the population and the support systems at present are regressive. A democracy needs to take this into account in the JFDI approach.

* Opinion Alert I absolutely agree with this myself but can you imagine the Daily Heil headlines? Or the Tufton Street (ESG lobby) 'reports' and the BBC Question Time outrage? I do understand why politicians are scared of it but it has to be addressed sooner or later. It sounds quaint these days but I really think it helps if constituents keep on the case with their MPs - letters, those things with proper paper and envelopes, but also meetings. 

@lucia Just a (possibly evil) thought.  There are politicians and political movements throughout history that have been highly successful on the back of creating, and then talking up (and ascribing all the 'woes of the world' to), an 'enemy'.  It takes time, but the drip drip of hatred, even if the 'threat' is over-stated or based on fallacy, does seem to work with a large number of people, probably better than rational argument.  Does the same approach need to be taken with climate change to get the message through?   

* Opinion Alert I absolutely agree with this myself but can you imagine the Daily Heil headlines? Or the Tufton Street (ESG lobby) 'reports' and the BBC Question Time outrage? I do understand why politicians are scared of it but it has to be addressed sooner or later. It sounds quaint these days but I really think it helps if constituents keep on the case with their MPs - letters, those things with proper paper and envelopes, but also meetings. 

Which is one reason I started with the need to accept it must be done otherwise it's almost pointless having the discussion.  For those that do then the question becomes how, and any objection along the lines of ' well you cant/shouldn't do that' can simply be met with the response 'OK, but you accept it must be done, so what would you do?'  Criticising others is easy and cheap, solving problems is difficult.  Let those who criticise provide their alternatives so we can all benefit from their superior insight.

Unfortunately discourse (including, to be frank, much of the media) on this and most other serious topics seems to have deteriorated into criticism without providing an alternative.  Shame on those, whether in power or not, who do that.

From a landlord's perspective is this is something that could be mitigated by tax breaks maybe?  

Under current rules it's already tax deductible.  TBH my personal opinion is that its just a cost of doing business which needs to be borne, like any other cost of doing business.  Provided there is adequate notice those who don't like it can get out.  HMOs have landlords so no different to single let's IMHO.

Of course there will be moans and threats of selling up, but if a landlord sells the property becomes available to another landlord or owner occupier - it's not 'lost' so I'm not sure such threats have any actual impact in the grand scheme of things.

The big mistake is to imagine that there are painless solutions.  In the 70s when the fossil fuel companies knew about climate change, there might have been.  All we are now left with, having squandered half a century, is solutions which are painful and will only get more painful as we delay even more.  We need to get over it annd get on with it rather than waiting for some fairytale way forward that will never happen.  Of course there are strong vested interests who benefit from waiting, but the whole reason for government is to overcome the rule if the jungle in favour of the benefit of people (present and future) in general.

@cathoderay 

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that. 

Oh my... I hear you. This is a part of the problem. I think. 🙈