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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

This figure likely came at a large cost to the economy. GDP/capita isn't looking good compared to the rest of the western world...

Turns out when you tell everyone they have to sit in a barely-heated house and shouldn't drive their car or fly, GDP goes down.

Eg. https://twitter.com/MortenORavn/status/1538160446150156292

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Understandable point but it would seem that the price of natural gas has had a far greater bearing on the economy.

e.g. the "energy price guarantee" of last Winter cost something of the order of ~£30bn to the taxpayer, all due to the national grid's pricing system being largely dependent on the cost of natural gas, and the UK's relatively higher reliance on natural gas for heating.

Poor GDP is a complex question to answer but lowering the heating by a degree doesn't seem like the best attempt at exploring it(!).

Transport might be a better part of the explanation, but more because of the lack of investment in decent transportation beyond London (the recent HS2 cancellation being one example).

For me, I suspect poor GDP performance is due to a lack of investment/success in manufacturing and science, in part because of an over-emphasis on the city/finance and other (in-part) rent-seeking activities which has sucked in talent and energy, but also because of a general incompetence of government over the last 20 years.

Lots of European countries and the United States have had emissions fall. The lack of productivity growth is relatively unique to the U.K. (and some countries like Italy)

No it isn't - UK productivity is on-par with Canada and Australia, and consistently above New Zealand and Japan.

Did GDP go down 50%? I don’t think so.

no - far from it. But any GDP loss today compounds over generations.

What an odd mix of short and long term thinking. Obviously the destruction of the environment will also have a compounding effect on GDP over generations.

Yup, so we're trading one thing for another. Nothing is so cut and dry.

Well, there might be other externalities not captured by GDP as a result of destroying the environment.

Further comment would involve breaching HN guidelines.

GDP per capita in the UK is on-par with France and within a few percentage points of Canada. It's really not an outlier at all.

This is indeed the typical spin article.

While in itself it is good that emissions are going down, most of the underlying reasons and explanations for this 50% drop are actually negative or unrelated to "environmental progress".

How so?

I think the peak was achieved earlier than most countries because of the switch from coal to natural gas when North Sea gas started to be exploited, combined with the decimation of industry at the same time and later. Further down the line, the economy has stalled since 2008.

Sure renewables are growing like they do everywhere, but overall the energy policy, if there is one at all, is chaotic.

So, to me, praising "environmental progress" and how well the UK is doing is pure spin.

The masses demand taxes. Likely poverty will increase further as a result. No disposable income means no spending means no economy. But good luck explaining that to communist sympathisers.

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