Now there’s gold in them thar green hills
CHEERY Rishi Sunak resembled Eric Morecambe singing “Bring me sunshine” as he toured the TV studios yesterday.
No Chancellor faced with soaring national debt, worrying inflation, higher taxes and likely rising interest rates should look this chirpy.
“Dishy Rishi” was even upbeat about the eye-popping cost of saving the planet at next week’s COP26 armageddon summit.
It’s as if he had just discovered a magic money tree.
Some believe he has.
The Government insists its zero emissions target is not only good for the planet but will contribute a huge cash bonanza to the global economy.
Far from costing the earth — or around £1.4trillion over the next 30 years in the UK — green technology will generate ten times as much.
A money-spinner for both rich and poor, they say.
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“Costs are dropping dramatically over a relatively short time,” the Chancellor told the BBC’s Andrew Marr.
“The zero target will kick-start a market and bring these costs down further, whether it’s solar, wind or electric car batteries.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s own boosterism was on show last week as he unveiled his zero emissions target, to the dismay of sceptical Tory MPs and ministers.
Many Tories, so-called climate change “deniers”, believe the world can adapt without hurling money at the problem.
Others fear COP will flop without China’s Xi Jinping, leader of the world’s biggest polluter, who looks like boycotting the conference in Glasgow.
“Some say we are going too fast,” says the PM. “I say there is a force out there stronger than government. That force is the market. And the market is going green.”
Solar energy, battery power and wind turbines are becoming cheaper and more efficient.
The world could soon be powered by sunshine from Australia, Africa and India. Nuclear, fusion and hydrogen may follow.
Boris is not the only optimist.
Industry analysts are predicting the end of the world, not for planet Earth but for the petrochemical dinosaur which has run the show for 100 years.
One major investor predicts oil states which have dominated our lives since the invention of the motor car face the same threat of extinction as the whale oil industry in the 19th Century.
TRANSFORM BALANCE OF POWER
Such a development would transform the international balance of power.
Oil-rich Russia would be reduced to its core role as a corrupt mafia state.
Saudi Arabia would lose its influence on global Islam and become just another desert kingdom.
And that is only the beginning.
An Oxford University team says green technology will create a £10trillion to £20trillioon boost to the global economy over the next 25 years.
These vast sums are only educated guesses.
But a fraction of that profit would deliver a mind-boggling boost to the world’s poorest, perhaps bringing something like democracy in its wake.
Echoing BoJo, Oxford’s Institute for New Economic Thinking says the sooner we start, the quicker the rewards will start rolling in.
It cites the plummeting cost of solar technology, down by 15 per cent a year since the mid-1990s.
Battery power, virtually unknown 20 years ago, is now driving our cars, trucks, buses and, soon, passenger aircraft.
GROWTH & PROSPERITY
If all these energy sources become cost-effective, they will bring growth and prosperity not just to richer nations but to the Third World, which blames the West for stealing its future.
The pace of change is already so rapid, even the International Energy Agency (IEA) has ceased putting oil at the top of its agenda.
Clean energy is replacing oil as the major producer.
“The message is clear,” says IEA chief Fatih Birol. “A new global energy economy is coming, which is cheaper, cleaner, safer, more resilient — and much fairer across countries.”
These breakthroughs have been pioneered by private risk-takers ready to gamble their own cash in pursuit of profit — not by governments with our money.
So everyone’s a winner.
Except the Marxist rabble of Insulate Britain activists glueing up our motorways.
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Their aim is to kill capitalism, shut down business and turn us all into pre-industrial-age peasants living on parsnips.
Capitalism is showing them a green pair of heels.
'Pandemic of unvaccinated'
AUSTRIA is considering a fresh Covid lockdown – but only for unvaccinated people.
As in Britain, the rollout has slowed and most of the newly infected are anti-jabbers.
Austrian leader Alexander Schallenberg says: “The pandemic is not yet in the rear-view mirror.
"We are about to stumble into a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
Entry to restaurants and hotels would be restricted to those who are double-jabbed or immune after contracting the virus.
Sounds like a plan, Boris.