6 ms·

As noted in another comment, some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere and the UK becoming more of a service economy. Though there a

As noted in another comment, some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere and the UK becoming more of a service economy. Though there are indicators like emissions per kWh of electricity generated that show promise. https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/ ... over the past 10 years the value has went from 475g of CO2 per kWh to ~153g. A contentious part of that value no doubt is that biomass imported from North America is considered carbon neutral. Add in the complications of new growth vs old growth, transportation and the time-sensitive nature of man-made climate change it can perhaps be seen as less advantageous as figures may suggest. All the same I'm optimistic, particularly in Scotland where a disproportionate amount of green electricity is harvested by population. Our National Grid is playing catch up trying to accommodate intermittent sources and price accordingly.

londons_explore 3y ago
> Our National Grid is playing catch up Nah - they're thinking of playing catch-up in 5-10 years time when they've done the paperwork to get permission to start catching up...
midasuni 3y ago
Biomass is a small impact. The next big impact will be ever increasing wind power and the shift from gas to electric for heating.
- ricardo81 3y ago
  Drax which burns biomass is self-styled as "the UK's largest renewable power station"
  - midasuni 3y ago
    Right now it’s generating less power than Solar - in the depth of winter, 8% Gas is 50% higher at 12% and that doesn’t include the gas usage in keeping homes warm Wind (32%) imports and nuclear are all higher than gas for the electricity generation, let alone imported wood generation.
    - ricardo81 3y ago
      It's not ideal to compare at any point in time. It's a clear day (and midday), not long after a storm has passed generating record levels of wind energy - during a national holiday when demand is always low (and prices often go into negative territory) I'm not disagreeing what'll be the next impact, just saying Drax and biomass is perhaps worth more than the statement of it being 'small impact'.
      - midasuni 3y ago
        In 2022 biomass was 5% https://www.edie.net/what-did-the-uks-electricity-generation-mix-look-like-in-2022/ https://www.edie.net/what-did-the-uks-electricity-generation...
        ricardo81 3y ago
        It is worth bearing in mind that it can be seen as stored energy that can be used at any point in time, unlike wind and solar. In other words, 5% as an average means it's far higher during periods lacking light and wind. Solar is down as 4.4%, though in peak Summer during the day it can satisfy about a 1/4 of demand, cheaply.
        midasuni 3y ago
        It’s not clear if solar includes reduced demand from rooftop solar, or just grid connected solar Either way 5% is a tiny amount. biomass is also far better than gas for those times when you do need to boost supply, so increasing biomass still seems like a win.
        ricardo81 3y ago
        agreed. It can seem counter-intuitive with biomass since it's "burning trees", but generally it's a carbon neutral process or far closer to one than burning buried fossil fuels.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Drax is huge, and now burns canadian imported wood rather than coal which is was built for because it can be considered carbon-free.
  - tonmoy 3y ago
    Farmed wood should actually be considered carbon neutral. Other than transportation cost and the carbon emitted during harvesting, it’s a legitimate way of capturing carbon from the atmosphere and then just emitting the same carbon back
    - robin_reala 3y ago
      The problem is that at this point we need to be actually capturing carbon and not re-emitting it.
      - gambiting 3y ago
        Capturing carbon is literally a fantasy. Other than growing forests there is no hope we can invent a technological way out of our carbon emissions by capturing them. Companies which promise otherwise are essentially a scam. And growing forests is a viable option but the problem is that the carbon is only captured for as long as you don't burn the wood or let it rot, it has to be either buried or turned into things which ultimately won't release their CO2 back into the air.
        _3u10 3y ago
        If we can increase our CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere we can become carbon neutral faster as increased concentrations drive forest growth and allow plants to grow in previously desert regions.
        shaky-carrousel 3y ago
        Grow a forest, convert the wood into charcoal, then store it in a salt mine.
distcs 3y ago
> As noted in another comment, some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere This is an excellent point. Are there reports similar to TFA that accounts for this? I mean a report that calculates the total demand a country is putting on carbon emissions (directly or indirectly) will be more insightful.
mytailorisrich 3y ago
I note that the article mentions that the peak was in 1970, perhaps earlier than most countries. I think that this may be linked to North Sea gas and conversion from coal to natural gas. And also the decimation of industry that occurred during the 70s and 80s.
- ricardo81 3y ago
  Indeed, great points. Generally these articles use 1990 as a frame of reference. To be fair based on the initial graph shown alone, the UK has almost reached 50% of 1990 values also, though perhaps other countries have already achieved 50% of 1970 values.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
baby 3y ago
There’s a real problem of transparency and opacity of actual numbers when it comes to contribution to global warming, diseases, and other issues at scale. It’s a shame and it’s not clear how we can do better without some real technological breakthrough in measurement
- _3u10 3y ago
  Maybe just measure CO2 in the atmosphere? And maybe put international pressure on the largest emitters? (China and India)
  - netsharc 3y ago
    China is where Walmart gets their cheap crap (and Apple their iPhones ), tax the CO2 and the people shopping at Walmart get mad that everything's more expensive. Slash, the manufacturers look for other countries where maybe the CO2 expulsion is under the limit, or the reporting isn't that robust... Because hey if they're not competitive price-wise, the customers look elsewhere for their cheap crap...
    - snowpid 3y ago
      je vous presente https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Border_Adjustment_Mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Border_Adjustment_Mecha...
    - thworp 3y ago
      Ah yes, clearly it's only those people shopping at Walmart that would not be happy about price increases. More than that, it's only that cheap crap that they buy that would get more expensive. Enlightened people like you will just stand above it and buy nothing but organic, locally sourced crap!
      - _3u10 3y ago
        With a high carbon footprint due to the price local labour is paid and the amount of stuff they purchase. When you buy from China and India you know people are only getting paid enough to just buy food and a small place to live, drastically reducing their carbon footprint.
flohofwoe 3y ago
I wonder if it's a similar effect like after the German reunification, but caused by Brexit instead? Total emissions for Germany as a whole dropped by around 35% during the 90's because the non-competitive East German industry was essentially shut down overnight. 35% emission drop looks great in headlines, but only if one ignores the economic side effects (of turning the lives of 16 million people upside down). PS: looking at the graph the sharp downward turn already started in 2006, so probably not Brexit...
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago
  It really started with the "dash to gas" [1] in the nineties. We had gone through some painful labor disputes in the coal industry which the government was keen to avoid. Alongside that the generating industry was privatised. This encouraged a lot of investment in gas. Also we were getting a ton of grief from Norway about all the acid rain from sulphur which had to be dealt with [2]. The Tory government which has been in power since 2010 was somewhat sceptical about wind power and shut down new onshore development when they came in. Fortunately their coalition partner negotiated the continued development of offshore which has been huge since then. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_for_Gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_for_Gas [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain
  - LargeTomato 3y ago
    Hi, sorry but how can the Tories have coalition partners? The UK has 3 major parties and the other 2 are generally the coalition, right? I'm not too familiar with UK politics.
    - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
      Really two major parties. In 2010 neither of those parties gained enough seats in parliament to gain a majority so they formed a coalition with one of the minor parties which tipped the scales in their direction. The system is somewhat archaic and well overdue reform but neither of the major parties wants that for obvious reasons.
ajsnigrutin 3y ago
> As noted in another comment, some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere and the UK becoming more of a service economy. This would be an interesting metric... instead of carbon emissions being calculated by the location of "chimneys", a better metric would be a total carbon emissions by all consumpton of the country. Sure, EVs are clean if you buy them in (eg.) UK, but all the polution is done elsewhere, from the dirty lithium production and dirty rare earths production, energy intensive metalworks, etc., but the car is still bought and used in UK, and the UK consumer is the cause for those emissions. Also many even local policies don't take that in effect, because many things where we 'force' users into 'greener alternatives' are not so green if you count the manufacture (which is done elsewhere, and again, noone cares about that). In many cases, extending the life of a device (car, appliance,...), even with bad energy usage and/or emissions is still greener (looked globally) than buying a new appliance/car and disposing of the old. Sure,the new small EV is "green", but driving your old VW golf for 5 more years could have been greener (again, depends on the distance driven, etc.).
- gambiting 3y ago
  >>the UK consumer is the cause for those emissions. Sure, but counting it as UK emissions would mean you count it twice, no? If other countries that mine lithium report their own CO2 emissions then if you add the CO2 cost of using electronics made with lithium and used in UK to UK's CO2 emission, that means you have counted the same emissions twice,no?
  - patmorgan23 3y ago
    If you are trying to total all CO2 admissions? Yes. If you're trying to determine which countries have the biggest impact it could be a valuable metric.
  - mirekrusin 3y ago
    It needs to be done at planet level, otherwise it's emission shifting, not reduction. Moving it from one place to another on the same planet doesn't reduce emissions.
  - 3y ago
dan-robertson 3y ago
Trade adjusted emissions are also down. The percentage due to trade has increased over time: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-trade?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-tra... Note: 1. the US hasn’t seen such a big change so this thinking doesn’t really carry over to there. 2. The chart is a percentage of domestic production so decreasing domestic production while holding emissions due to trade constant would make the line go up.
throw0101b 3y ago
> As noted in another comment, some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere and the UK becoming more of a service economy. Consumption-based emissions are also down for the UK from a peak of 750 Mt down to 500 Mt: * https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 33% is still pretty good.
asdajksah2123 3y ago
Britain has been one of the highest trading nations in the world for centuries. That's what their colonies were for. So I don't think it's as simple as British manufacturing all having moved overseas. A lot of British consumption was being manufactured overseas even before the last few decades. It's entirely possible that this is because of that, but I don't think one should be so quick to jump to that conclusion specifically for a country that is famous almost entirely for their "Empire".
- riffraff 3y ago
  British manufacturing is still in decline, e.g. Bloomberg published a graph yesterday showing how the British car industry output shrunk by half since Brexit in 2016.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    Brexit didn't happen in 2016, just the vote to begin the process, so the fact that Bloomberg are making this claim is misleading. Additionally when Brexit actually did get implemented it's had no effect on trade, in fact trade with the EU is up slightly. But that's all expected for anything to do with the UK in the media these days. They will keep lying and manipulating people on this topic forever.
    - kolektiv 3y ago
      You don't need a final legislative change to impact inward investment and manufacturing location when everyone knows it's coming. The Brexit vote hit investment confidence and manufacturing long before the final withdrawal agreement because the writing was on the wall and manufacturers avoid risk. "No effect on trade" is definitely not true, I've personally had multiple exporting clients go bust due to trade restrictions and even if their volume of trade is exactly replaced, the balance and make up of trade is different (it isn't just that, however).
      - nvm0n2 3y ago
        No it didn't. The economy was growing at the time of the vote and continued to grow after it, a bit faster even. Unemployment hit record lows. You may be thinking of the predictions of the remain campaign which very heavily featured the idea that even the vote itself, without any actual legal changes, would trigger a recession due to "uncertainty". But that was wrong, it never happened. Check the trade stats for yourself. Trade is down but that's because of the huge damage of lockdowns and other terrible policies. Brexit would show up as a reduction in trade with the EU faster than elsewhere, but that didn't happen, the proportion remained about the same. This data comes from the government itself. Seeing any Brexit effect in the recorded data just isn't possible. That's surprising given that even most leave campaigners accepted that there would be some impact, no but in the end it seems the single market was basically a mirage. It never did much for services which is the bulk of the UK economy. Again, if you don't believe me, check the data for yourself.
Podgajski 3y ago
There’s a Chinese saying, that if you apply weights and measures people will use the weights and measures to cheat and steal. This time we stop measuring emissions and just focus on reducing emissions. And that would mean reducing consumption.
- pjc50 3y ago
  I'm as much of an anti-Taylorist as anyone, but how do you even know whether emissions are reduced without measurement? Reducing "consumption" (of what? measured how?) is probably impossible in a democratic economy - that's known as a recession and tends to cause a change of party.
  - Podgajski 3y ago
    We have a seal what increases emissions: driving, flying, buying things, heating, cooling,… I mean, it’s pretty obvious. Focusing on those, rather than trying to quantify, the emissions, released, is much easier. It’s much easier for me to know how much I buy then to try to find out how much admissions are omitted between the things I buy. For example, trying to figure out the emissions created by buying a Tesla for a high mileage, gas powered car. What really matters most? The best answer is buying neither of them. Second best sensor is buying and driving it much less, those both matter more than how much admissions are created by the creation or use these vehicles. They still arguing about how much emissions are caused by elect versus high-efficiency, gas, powered vehicles. In fact, we have something that easily quantifiable versus something that’s almost unquantifiable. We all just need to do a lot less. But that’s why people focus on emissions and not use, because it’s the thing they don’t want to hear.
    - physicles 3y ago
      “We just need to do less” “But that’s called a recession. It won’t happen” “WE JUST NEED TO DO LESS” For better or worse, in a democracy anyone who tells the populace to scale back their lifestyle will not get elected. “We need to do less” is not a solution. It’s wishful thinking. What other solutions are there? Make our current lifestyle less carbon-intensive over time. Yeah it’s not as good as perfect collective action, but it has the advantage of actually being possible.
dukeyukey 3y ago
> some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere and the UK becoming more of a service economy. Worth remembering the UK still manufactures more than France, and had a comparable amount of manufacturing as a percentage of GDP as other Western countries.

londons_explore 3y ago

> Our National Grid is playing catch up Nah - they're thinking of playing catch-up in 5-10 years time when they've done the paperwork to get permission to start catching up...

midasuni 3y ago

Biomass is a small impact. The next big impact will be ever increasing wind power and the shift from gas to electric for heating.

ricardo81 3y ago
Drax which burns biomass is self-styled as "the UK's largest renewable power station"
- midasuni 3y ago
  Right now it’s generating less power than Solar - in the depth of winter, 8% Gas is 50% higher at 12% and that doesn’t include the gas usage in keeping homes warm Wind (32%) imports and nuclear are all higher than gas for the electricity generation, let alone imported wood generation.
  - ricardo81 3y ago
    It's not ideal to compare at any point in time. It's a clear day (and midday), not long after a storm has passed generating record levels of wind energy - during a national holiday when demand is always low (and prices often go into negative territory) I'm not disagreeing what'll be the next impact, just saying Drax and biomass is perhaps worth more than the statement of it being 'small impact'.
    - midasuni 3y ago
      In 2022 biomass was 5% https://www.edie.net/what-did-the-uks-electricity-generation-mix-look-like-in-2022/ https://www.edie.net/what-did-the-uks-electricity-generation...
      - ricardo81 3y ago
        It is worth bearing in mind that it can be seen as stored energy that can be used at any point in time, unlike wind and solar. In other words, 5% as an average means it's far higher during periods lacking light and wind. Solar is down as 4.4%, though in peak Summer during the day it can satisfy about a 1/4 of demand, cheaply.
        midasuni 3y ago
        It’s not clear if solar includes reduced demand from rooftop solar, or just grid connected solar Either way 5% is a tiny amount. biomass is also far better than gas for those times when you do need to boost supply, so increasing biomass still seems like a win.
        ricardo81 3y ago
        agreed. It can seem counter-intuitive with biomass since it's "burning trees", but generally it's a carbon neutral process or far closer to one than burning buried fossil fuels.
londons_explore 3y ago
Drax is huge, and now burns canadian imported wood rather than coal which is was built for because it can be considered carbon-free.
- tonmoy 3y ago
  Farmed wood should actually be considered carbon neutral. Other than transportation cost and the carbon emitted during harvesting, it’s a legitimate way of capturing carbon from the atmosphere and then just emitting the same carbon back
  - robin_reala 3y ago
    The problem is that at this point we need to be actually capturing carbon and not re-emitting it.
    - gambiting 3y ago
      Capturing carbon is literally a fantasy. Other than growing forests there is no hope we can invent a technological way out of our carbon emissions by capturing them. Companies which promise otherwise are essentially a scam. And growing forests is a viable option but the problem is that the carbon is only captured for as long as you don't burn the wood or let it rot, it has to be either buried or turned into things which ultimately won't release their CO2 back into the air.
      - _3u10 3y ago
        If we can increase our CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere we can become carbon neutral faster as increased concentrations drive forest growth and allow plants to grow in previously desert regions.
      - shaky-carrousel 3y ago
        Grow a forest, convert the wood into charcoal, then store it in a salt mine.

distcs 3y ago

> As noted in another comment, some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere This is an excellent point. Are there reports similar to TFA that accounts for this? I mean a report that calculates the total demand a country is putting on carbon emissions (directly or indirectly) will be more insightful.

mytailorisrich 3y ago

I note that the article mentions that the peak was in 1970, perhaps earlier than most countries. I think that this may be linked to North Sea gas and conversion from coal to natural gas. And also the decimation of industry that occurred during the 70s and 80s.

ricardo81 3y ago
Indeed, great points. Generally these articles use 1990 as a frame of reference. To be fair based on the initial graph shown alone, the UK has almost reached 50% of 1990 values also, though perhaps other countries have already achieved 50% of 1970 values.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

baby 3y ago

There’s a real problem of transparency and opacity of actual numbers when it comes to contribution to global warming, diseases, and other issues at scale. It’s a shame and it’s not clear how we can do better without some real technological breakthrough in measurement

_3u10 3y ago
Maybe just measure CO2 in the atmosphere? And maybe put international pressure on the largest emitters? (China and India)
- netsharc 3y ago
  China is where Walmart gets their cheap crap (and Apple their iPhones ), tax the CO2 and the people shopping at Walmart get mad that everything's more expensive. Slash, the manufacturers look for other countries where maybe the CO2 expulsion is under the limit, or the reporting isn't that robust... Because hey if they're not competitive price-wise, the customers look elsewhere for their cheap crap...
  - snowpid 3y ago
    je vous presente https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Border_Adjustment_Mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Border_Adjustment_Mecha...
  - thworp 3y ago
    Ah yes, clearly it's only those people shopping at Walmart that would not be happy about price increases. More than that, it's only that cheap crap that they buy that would get more expensive. Enlightened people like you will just stand above it and buy nothing but organic, locally sourced crap!
    - _3u10 3y ago
      With a high carbon footprint due to the price local labour is paid and the amount of stuff they purchase. When you buy from China and India you know people are only getting paid enough to just buy food and a small place to live, drastically reducing their carbon footprint.

flohofwoe 3y ago

I wonder if it's a similar effect like after the German reunification, but caused by Brexit instead? Total emissions for Germany as a whole dropped by around 35% during the 90's because the non-competitive East German industry was essentially shut down overnight. 35% emission drop looks great in headlines, but only if one ignores the economic side effects (of turning the lives of 16 million people upside down). PS: looking at the graph the sharp downward turn already started in 2006, so probably not Brexit...

tonyedgecombe 3y ago
It really started with the "dash to gas" [1] in the nineties. We had gone through some painful labor disputes in the coal industry which the government was keen to avoid. Alongside that the generating industry was privatised. This encouraged a lot of investment in gas. Also we were getting a ton of grief from Norway about all the acid rain from sulphur which had to be dealt with [2]. The Tory government which has been in power since 2010 was somewhat sceptical about wind power and shut down new onshore development when they came in. Fortunately their coalition partner negotiated the continued development of offshore which has been huge since then. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_for_Gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_for_Gas [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain
- LargeTomato 3y ago
  Hi, sorry but how can the Tories have coalition partners? The UK has 3 major parties and the other 2 are generally the coalition, right? I'm not too familiar with UK politics.
  - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
    Really two major parties. In 2010 neither of those parties gained enough seats in parliament to gain a majority so they formed a coalition with one of the minor parties which tipped the scales in their direction. The system is somewhat archaic and well overdue reform but neither of the major parties wants that for obvious reasons.

ajsnigrutin 3y ago

> As noted in another comment, some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere and the UK becoming more of a service economy. This would be an interesting metric... instead of carbon emissions being calculated by the location of "chimneys", a better metric would be a total carbon emissions by all consumpton of the country. Sure, EVs are clean if you buy them in (eg.) UK, but all the polution is done elsewhere, from the dirty lithium production and dirty rare earths production, energy intensive metalworks, etc., but the car is still bought and used in UK, and the UK consumer is the cause for those emissions. Also many even local policies don't take that in effect, because many things where we 'force' users into 'greener alternatives' are not so green if you count the manufacture (which is done elsewhere, and again, noone cares about that). In many cases, extending the life of a device (car, appliance,...), even with bad energy usage and/or emissions is still greener (looked globally) than buying a new appliance/car and disposing of the old. Sure,the new small EV is "green", but driving your old VW golf for 5 more years could have been greener (again, depends on the distance driven, etc.).

gambiting 3y ago
>>the UK consumer is the cause for those emissions. Sure, but counting it as UK emissions would mean you count it twice, no? If other countries that mine lithium report their own CO2 emissions then if you add the CO2 cost of using electronics made with lithium and used in UK to UK's CO2 emission, that means you have counted the same emissions twice,no?
- patmorgan23 3y ago
  If you are trying to total all CO2 admissions? Yes. If you're trying to determine which countries have the biggest impact it could be a valuable metric.
- mirekrusin 3y ago
  It needs to be done at planet level, otherwise it's emission shifting, not reduction. Moving it from one place to another on the same planet doesn't reduce emissions.
- 3y ago

dan-robertson 3y ago

Trade adjusted emissions are also down. The percentage due to trade has increased over time: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-trade?tab=chart https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-tra... Note: 1. the US hasn’t seen such a big change so this thinking doesn’t really carry over to there. 2. The chart is a percentage of domestic production so decreasing domestic production while holding emissions due to trade constant would make the line go up.

throw0101b 3y ago

> As noted in another comment, some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere and the UK becoming more of a service economy. Consumption-based emissions are also down for the UK from a peak of 750 Mt down to 500 Mt: * https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 33% is still pretty good.

asdajksah2123 3y ago

Britain has been one of the highest trading nations in the world for centuries. That's what their colonies were for. So I don't think it's as simple as British manufacturing all having moved overseas. A lot of British consumption was being manufactured overseas even before the last few decades. It's entirely possible that this is because of that, but I don't think one should be so quick to jump to that conclusion specifically for a country that is famous almost entirely for their "Empire".

riffraff 3y ago
British manufacturing is still in decline, e.g. Bloomberg published a graph yesterday showing how the British car industry output shrunk by half since Brexit in 2016.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  Brexit didn't happen in 2016, just the vote to begin the process, so the fact that Bloomberg are making this claim is misleading. Additionally when Brexit actually did get implemented it's had no effect on trade, in fact trade with the EU is up slightly. But that's all expected for anything to do with the UK in the media these days. They will keep lying and manipulating people on this topic forever.
  - kolektiv 3y ago
    You don't need a final legislative change to impact inward investment and manufacturing location when everyone knows it's coming. The Brexit vote hit investment confidence and manufacturing long before the final withdrawal agreement because the writing was on the wall and manufacturers avoid risk. "No effect on trade" is definitely not true, I've personally had multiple exporting clients go bust due to trade restrictions and even if their volume of trade is exactly replaced, the balance and make up of trade is different (it isn't just that, however).
    - nvm0n2 3y ago
      No it didn't. The economy was growing at the time of the vote and continued to grow after it, a bit faster even. Unemployment hit record lows. You may be thinking of the predictions of the remain campaign which very heavily featured the idea that even the vote itself, without any actual legal changes, would trigger a recession due to "uncertainty". But that was wrong, it never happened. Check the trade stats for yourself. Trade is down but that's because of the huge damage of lockdowns and other terrible policies. Brexit would show up as a reduction in trade with the EU faster than elsewhere, but that didn't happen, the proportion remained about the same. This data comes from the government itself. Seeing any Brexit effect in the recorded data just isn't possible. That's surprising given that even most leave campaigners accepted that there would be some impact, no but in the end it seems the single market was basically a mirage. It never did much for services which is the bulk of the UK economy. Again, if you don't believe me, check the data for yourself.

Podgajski 3y ago

There’s a Chinese saying, that if you apply weights and measures people will use the weights and measures to cheat and steal. This time we stop measuring emissions and just focus on reducing emissions. And that would mean reducing consumption.

pjc50 3y ago
I'm as much of an anti-Taylorist as anyone, but how do you even know whether emissions are reduced without measurement? Reducing "consumption" (of what? measured how?) is probably impossible in a democratic economy - that's known as a recession and tends to cause a change of party.
- Podgajski 3y ago
  We have a seal what increases emissions: driving, flying, buying things, heating, cooling,… I mean, it’s pretty obvious. Focusing on those, rather than trying to quantify, the emissions, released, is much easier. It’s much easier for me to know how much I buy then to try to find out how much admissions are omitted between the things I buy. For example, trying to figure out the emissions created by buying a Tesla for a high mileage, gas powered car. What really matters most? The best answer is buying neither of them. Second best sensor is buying and driving it much less, those both matter more than how much admissions are created by the creation or use these vehicles. They still arguing about how much emissions are caused by elect versus high-efficiency, gas, powered vehicles. In fact, we have something that easily quantifiable versus something that’s almost unquantifiable. We all just need to do a lot less. But that’s why people focus on emissions and not use, because it’s the thing they don’t want to hear.
  - physicles 3y ago
    “We just need to do less” “But that’s called a recession. It won’t happen” “WE JUST NEED TO DO LESS” For better or worse, in a democracy anyone who tells the populace to scale back their lifestyle will not get elected. “We need to do less” is not a solution. It’s wishful thinking. What other solutions are there? Make our current lifestyle less carbon-intensive over time. Yeah it’s not as good as perfect collective action, but it has the advantage of actually being possible.

dukeyukey 3y ago

> some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere and the UK becoming more of a service economy. Worth remembering the UK still manufactures more than France, and had a comparable amount of manufacturing as a percentage of GDP as other Western countries.