Green Fatigue Comes To Britain

Britain’s Coalition Vichy Government launches the Green Deal today, another taxpayer subsidised and incentivized Green boondoggle.

The Green Deal is supposed to make all of Britain’s residential and commercial property more energy efficient by installing cavity wall insulation, loft insulation, solid wall insulation, condensing boilers, double glazing, floor insulation, solar panels, photovoltaic PV panels, ground source heat pumps, electric storage heaters or wind turbines with little or no upfront cost, except for the taxpayers subsidising yet another pointless gesture politics Green scheme.

Big Green would have us all believe that business is behind all Green schemes for a low carbon economy economic suicide:

The government’s “green deal” scheme, intended to give householders a environmental makeover, launches on Monday without any of the country’s large retailers signed up – despite a promise that they would play a central role in offering the deal to consumers.

Major retailers such as supermarkets and DIY stores are viewed as essential to the success of the scheme as they are trusted by customers and have the necessary reach to cover the population.

The key to the Green Deal working is major players like Tesco, B&Q, Sainsburys and the John Lewis Partnership becoming involved, these companies are being very cautious about the Green Deal and are adopting a wait and see approach:

But none is ready to join the launch, with several telling the Guardian they would “wait and see” how the scheme worked out before making a final decision whether to support it.

This has to be bad news as business waits to see to who will be brave enough to start the ball rolling, which is unlikely without further taxpayer funded Green subsidy.

The Green Deal is gesture politics at its most congenitally stupid, between them Britain’s homes and industrial premises are responsible for 50% of British CO2 emissions, which sounds impressive until you put this into a global perspective, billions are going to be spent to reduce a percentage of 0.8% of all global CO2 emissions, Britain’s total CO2 emissions amount to just 1.6% of the global total.

Any CO2 reductions will be swallowed by China in a microsecond, so apart from the Liberal/Green feel good factor the Green Deal will achieve nothing but increased costs on energy bills, still more energy poverty and job losses as energy bills increase to pay for the Green Deal.

A further sign of the Green fatigue hitting Britain is the closure by News International of Eureka Magazine, a monthly science magazine that launched with the Times 3 years ago.

News International is set to close Eureka, the monthly science and environmental magazine distributed with The Times, this week following a sustained loss of advertising from its global top spending companies.

The closure of the 64-page stitched magazine, the first ever launched with the weekday Times and the first dedicated monthly science magazine of any national newspaper, comes exactly three years after its launch.

A source said the imminent closure was a sign of shifting consumer and corporate priorities, as the heightened time of political consciousness around the environment and green issues appears to have receded in these austere times.

There is no doubt that austerity has had a part to plan in the decline of Big Green, what would be really interesting to know is how much Green fatigue has been caused by the self-appointed ecozealots continually telling us all how we should live in their Green Agrarian Hell, the hypocritical champagne environmentalists from Hollywood who preach one Green life style and live another, and then of course there are the never ending failed predictions of Environmental Armageddon.

It is no wonder that Green fatigue has not only hit Britain, but the rest of the industrialised world as well.