AEP In La La Land

By Paul Homewood

There appears to be two Telegraphs – one on Planet Earth, the other in some alternate universe on Planet LaLa Land, where Ambrose Evans-Pritchard regularly writes.

This week he launched into a bizarre attack on Kemi Badenoch, for what he called her “Net Zero rant”. I have read her speech, and it was a very modest critique, which could and should have been much stronger.

He also accuses her of “pitting herself against science”. Whenever anybody says something like this, you know they have lost the argument before it has even started!

In LaLa land, of course, Net Zero will make us all thousands of pounds a year better off, create millions of green jobs and free us from the clutches of those wicked petrostate dictators in America and Norway. Instead we will be ruinously dependent on President Xi.

We must believe all of this because the nice men from the IMF and IEA tell us it is true.

In LaLa Land, where up is down, and black is white, the rest of the world are busily cutting emissions, so we must not get left behind.

There is the usual nonsense about how cheap solar power is, ignoring the fact that it is worthless in winter in the UK. And how we have lots of wind to power our wind mills. But no suggestion as to what we are supposed to do when the wind stops blowing.

But curiously AEP makes no mention of the fact that NESO say we will need to spend £240 billion in the next five years, just to duplicate an electricity system which works perfectly well already. Or that we will probably have to spend as much again upgrading the LV distribution network so it can cope with the extra demand from EVs and heat pumps.

Neither does he explain how people will miraculously be better off, when they are compelled to spend £15000 on a heat pump and buy an EV, that they cannot afford and may not even be able to recharge at home.

Of course, in La La Land money grows on trees!