[lbo-talk] negwatts instead of megawatts

James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Sat Oct 10 12:37:31 PDT 2009


Shane Mage writes that the calculation that UK energy bills will rise to 2000 pounds sterling is nobody's fault: 'why blame ecologists, or anyone at all, for electricity costs rising to their real value (taking account of the external diseconomies of generating electricity by polluting fossil fuel and grossly subsidized nuclear plants)?'

Maybe Shane did not look at the exchange rates. An annual utility bill of 2000 pounds sterling would be 3196.61 in dollars. Is that the right price?

I just did a calculation on the government website of what a family dependent on unemployment benefits would be entitled to: 36231.52 pounds sterling, meaning that more than half their income would go on fuel bills.

2000 pounds sterling a year is not the right price. It is the artificially inflated price because the British government has failed to build power stations. As we have seen with Enron and PG&E and with Eskom in South Africa, once you reduce supply, prices rise on a precipitate curve.

Did the government have to reduce the supply? No. They actively prevented the licensing of new power stations. That is their policy. It is a policy of reducing carbon emissions, or to give it its right name, of increasing the cost of electricity to put it beyond the price range of the unemployed and retired.

Thank you climate change protestors, you have just signed your grandmother's death warrant.



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