Home » Posts tagged 'UK' (Page 72)
Tag Archives: UK
Fossil Fuel Subsidies ‘Bad for Business’ Say $2.8 Trillion Investor Group
by John Brian Shannon
Originally posted at kleef.asia
In advance of the G20 Hamburg Summit in July 2017 investor groups that control $2.8 trillion in assets report that fossil fuel subsidies are counterproductive to G20 economies.
This latest call to remove fossil fuel subsidies came two years after the G20 Brisbane Summit where leaders announced their intention to, “reaffirm our commitment to rationalise and phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption.” — G20 Brisbane Leaders’ Communiqué (November 2014, Item #18)
The 16-member mega-investor group says G20 nations should set a clear timeline “for the full and equitable phase-out by all G20 members of all fossil fuel subsidies by 2020,” and mobilize “to accelerate green investment and reduce climate risk” in a report submitted to G20 foreign ministers preparing for the upcoming G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany.
G20 fossil fuel subsidies total $452 billion a year according to the Overseas Development Institute and Oil Change International.
A Must Read: Empty promises:
G20 subsidies to oil, gas and coal production
Annual G20 Fossil Fuel Subsidies (2015)
Meanwhile, annual subsidies for renewable energy in the G20 nations amounts to only 1/4 of the annual subsidy awarded to fossil fuels, which have received mega-billions of subsidy dollars every single year since 1918.
Annual G20 Fossil Fuel Subsidies = $452 billion. Renewable Energy Subsidies = $121 billion (2015)
For the next few paragraphs, let’s look at the United States exclusively…
1918-2009 Fossil Fuel Subsidies vs. Renewable Energy Subsidies in the U.S. The Historical Role of Federal Subsidies in Shaping America’s Energy Future: What Would Jefferson Do?
The average annual subsidy for Oil and Gas alone in the U.S. from 1918-2009 totals $4.86 billion.
Adding all those (oil and gas only) subsidy years together gets you the astonishing figure of $442,260,000,000. in total from 1918-2009 — that’s half a trillion dollars right there, folks.
Which doesn’t include wars to protect foreign oil exporters to the United States.
Nor does it include so-called ‘externalities’ which are the negative costs associated with the burning of oil and gas — such as the 200,000 annual premature deaths in the U.S. caused by airborne pollution, along with the other healthcare costs associated with air pollution, the environmental costs to farmers and to the aquatic life in our rivers and marine zones, and higher infrastructure (maintenance) costs.
Fossil Fuel Subsidies chart from DBL Investors What Would Jefferson Do? which shows the capital gains allowance (a type of subsidy) enjoyed by the U.S. coal industry that totals $1.3 billion over the 2000-2009 timeframe.
This chart shows only the U.S. capital gains allowance! There are other coal subsidies, direct and indirect, at play in America — in addition to the externality costs of coal.
On the Externality Cost of Coal
Harvard Medicine
Each stage in the life cycle of coal—extraction, transport, processing, and combustion—generates a waste stream and carries multiple hazards for health and the environment. These costs are external to the coal industry and are thus often considered “externalities.”
We estimate that the life cycle effects of coal and the waste stream generated are costing the U.S. public… over half a trillion dollars annually.
Many of these so-called externalities are, moreover, cumulative.
Accounting for the damages conservatively doubles to triples the price of electricity from coal per kWh generated, making wind, solar, and other forms of non-fossil fuel power generation, along with investments in efficiency and electricity conservation methods, economically competitive. — Full Cost Accounting for the Life Cycle of Coal (Harvard Medicine)
Fossil Fuels = High Subsidy Costs, High Externality Costs and Lower Employment: When Compared to Renewable Energy
In addition to the direct and indirect subsidy costs of fossil fuels, there are the externality costs associated with carbon fuels, but almost more important, is the ‘lost opportunity cost’ of the carbon economy.
Over many decades in the U.S., conventional energy producers have tapered their labour costs to only a few persons per barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) while renewable energy hires more workers per BOE, which will result in a significant net gain for the U.S. economy.
You will find more statistics at Statista
Even with the paltry subsidy regimes presently in place for U.S. renewable energy in the year 2017 — once fossil fuel subsidy costs, the externality costs of fossil fuels, and the ‘missed opportunity’ costs (fewer jobs per BOE) are factored-in to the equation, renewable energy really begins to shine.
And best of all — by 2020 and without any subsidies (yes, really!) renewable energy will regularly beat highly subsidized conventional energy generators at their own game — by lowering electricity costs, by lowering healthcare and infrastructure costs, and by creating thousands of new, good-paying jobs.
Who was saying that renewable energy was a pipe-dream?
Bonus Video:
A Special EU Status for London?
by John Brian Shannon | February 14, 2017
It has become fashionable in recent weeks to talk about arranging some kind of special status for the City of London so that EU citizens can easily travel to London without the need to pass through UK customs.
Which would be convenient, wouldn’t it?
No pesky border guards to answer to, no briefcases opened and searched, and no wasted time for important EU-centric bankers and their European Union customers — and that applies whether they’re travelling for family vacations, to arrange financing for an EU business, or to meet their mistress in Calais.
Soon, bankers from every country will move to the UK to have all the advantages of EU access, combined with the privileges of living in Britain: A veritable banker’s paradise where the financial industry informs the UK government exactly how things will be.
Look now, it’s happening — just that it’s happening in slow-motion and nobody is seeing it for what it really is.
The Painfully Obvious Future of a ‘Special EU Status’ London
It’s so obviously in the EU’s interest to contrive a situation whereby London residents vote in a referendum to join the European Union, even as the rest of the UK continues to leave it (effectively sectioning-off London from the rest of the UK via the London Ring Road and Gatwick Airport) at which point the rest of the United Kingdom no longer held together by the economic gravity of London would probably dis-unite.
If Britain grants London ‘Special EU Status’ eventually it will become an EU City-state, Principality or Duchy, and Britons will need a passport to visit London.
Therefore, I can see why Brussels would want to contrive a ‘Special EU Status’ (SEUS) plan for the city of London, and I’m astonished at the innocent naiveté of Britons.
London, UK at night. Image courtesy of Leave.eu
Recently, German Chancellor Angela Merkel practically ‘mansplained’ to British Prime Minister Theresa May how “The UK will not be allowed to cherry-pick the bits of the EU it likes” — even as EU negotiators do their own cherry-picking — with London as the plumpest and richest cherry in all of Europe.
READ: EU negotiator wants ‘special’ deal over access to City post-Brexit
Allowing this plan to come to fruition will create a weaker and less-united United Kingdom and it will handover the ‘gold’ (London) to the EU. And there’s not a thing Britain can do to prevent it once the City of London is granted any kind of EU-centric special status.
Yes! It’s a wonderful plan if you’re a member-state of the European Union, a Europhile, or a London banker who wants to avoid the hassle of going through customs with the little people.
Apparently the thinking goes along these lines; The world already has a global ‘1 percent class’ who own more than 50 percent of the world’s wealth and will own 80 percent of the world’s total wealth by 2035, so it’s obvious that the world should have a distinct ‘banker class’ and their friends the global elites can accomplish that via alternately bullying and schmoozing the UK government into a customs-free zone with the EU. Which seems to be working.
“Oh, and a peon holiday every Monday in London, Elizabeth. We don’t like Monday morning traffic. Cancel their other holidays to make up for it. Sniff.”
I would like to ask the UK government; Where else in the world are bankers allowed to travel without passing through customs because the bankers arranged the passing of a law that allowed them to do so? And where else in the world would a country that is leaving a Union, leave behind their own capital city with most of the country’s wealth?
The answer is; Nowhere on Earth has this happened, and for obvious reasons!
Rather than incrementally handing Britain’s most historic and important city to the European Union, it would be smarter to simply invite the EU-centric part of London’s financial sector to leave. Ah, Paris in the spring!
READ: The language of love sweet-talks the City
Losing the EU-based financial sector that operates out of London is surely preferable to losing the entire city of London to the EU — which WILL happen over time if the Special EU Status zone is approved, resulting in the consequent dissolution of the United Kingdom.
Is There a Precedent for Integration that leads to Assimilation?
All law functions on precedent and there is a rather large precedent for this in business law — the case of the United States vs. General Motors in the 1960’s. It’s a fascinating story.
In the early part of the 20th-century many manufacturers built vehicles for the American public who were decidedly pro-automobile. Ford was the first company to utilize innovative automotive production line assembly techniques and the company grew exponentially — in fact, they couldn’t keep up with the demand for their car, the Model T.
At the time, General Motors built trucks and other vehicles for the U.S. military, and heavy industry vehicles for the mining and forestry sectors and GM was heavily subsidized by the U.S. government. Meanwhile, Chevrolet simply fed off the demand that Henry Ford’s company couldn’t meet.
It was a brilliant strategy for Chevrolet. They adopted Ford’s assembly line manufacturing innovations and met most of the consumer demand that Henry couldn’t.
So successful was the Chevrolet plan, that the first car to outsell the Model T was the 1934 Chevrolet Coupe, which was Chevy’s version of the Model T which was available in every colour imaginable — unlike the Model T that was only available in black. Henry Ford painted all his cars black because that allowed the largest number of cars to be built in the shortest amount of time and at the lowest cost-per-unit. (No fussing with colours)
Ford grew, Chevrolet grew, and General Motors grew.
By the 1950’s, Chevrolet decided to turn the tables on its main competitor (Ford) by taking a note from Henry Ford’s playbook — outsourcing. Chevrolet lowered costs by outsourcing some manufacturing to the massive General Motors Corporation which accommodated Chevy’s request to build a few hundred thousand engines per year at a lower cost than Chevrolet could have ever imagined.
GM even asked Chevy to send over their engine specs and said they would build Chevy’s engines exactly how Chevrolet wanted. And with higher manufacturing standards.
It worked so well for Chevrolet that they later asked GM to supply transmissions, window glass, seats and door panels, and finally car bodies for Chevrolet. And General Motors happily obliged.
One sunny morning, GM began a hostile takeover of Chevrolet. Chevrolet objected and so did the U.S. government — and understandably Ford, Chrysler, Studebaker and the other automakers strenuously objected to the hostile takeover.
But during the discovery process to verify which company owned what, and which company was most responsible for Chevrolet’s massive success — even Chevrolet’s legal team couldn’t make a clear distinction. Neither could the FBI or U.S. Department of Justice investigators. Nor could the U.S. Supreme Court judges deciding the case who were left with no recourse but to allow the merger to proceed, as nobody could tell them exactly what constituted Chevrolet and what constituted General Motors!
Everyone in the industry was furious. Yet Ford, Studebaker, Chrysler, the new American Motors Company (AMC) and others couldn’t do a thing about it. And the U.S. Department of Justice wasn’t happy either.
It took approximately 25 years for GM to absorb Chevrolet, but in retrospect they could have done it in 18 years if they weren’t so busy playing it safe. (To better ensure their assimilation plan worked)
Chevrolet became a victim of its own brilliant success, while General Motors had a stellar plan all along; Integrate until nobody can tell the difference.
Assimilate London is exactly what the European Union will do with a separate-customs-arrangement-London.
It would be criminally naive to think otherwise.
Britain’s Economy Firing on All Cylinders until 2050
by John Brian Shannon | February 10, 2017
Under the expert care of Exchequer Philip Hammond, Britain’s growth rate will outperform all developed nations until 2050
What a relief it must be for Prime Minister Theresa May that the UK economy is expected to grow strongly every year until 2050, with a growth rate that surpasses all developed nations.
Britain will grow faster than any other major advanced economy over the next three decades as the EU’s share of global output diminishes, according to PwC.
UK economic growth is predicted to outpace the US, Canada, France and Germany between 2016 and 2050, with average annual growth of 1.9pc.
This is also double the average annual pace of growth expected in Japan and Italy. — The Telegraph
The chart below shows the average annual real GDP growth rate of G7 countries from 2016 to 2050.
According to a forecast from PwC, Brexit is only going to prove a bump in the road for the UK’s economy. Even though it may take a significant financial hit as a result of it’s exit from the European Union, the UK’s economy is set to grow faster than any other major advanced economy up until 2050. PwC predicts an average annual growth of 1.9 percent over the next 30 years. That’s more than double the expected growth rate of Japan and nearly twice that of Italy.” — by Niall McCarthy | You will find more statistics at Statista
And to show where the UK ranks in terms of global GDP here is another graphic for you.
You will find more statistics at Statista
It seems that Brexit will barely register as an economic hiccup and that Britain’s economy will continue to thrive in a post-Brexit world — and that, after many dire reports to the contrary were published prior to, and since the June 23 2016 referendum on EU membership.
You see? The sky isn’t falling, it’s snowing. Get outside and enjoy it! The UK is going to be just fine.
Related Articles:
- Brexit will not affect UK economy’s long-term future (The Independent)
- The World in 2050: Will the shift in global economic power continue? (PriceWaterhouseCoopers)
Letter to Britain 