Why we need "Net zero"

[SimonD]

24 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Think we are well capable, but politics gets in the way

 

I think this is akin to the general excuse that regulation gets in the way of projects, but it goes far further than that. It's not necessarily the regulation itself, it's more the interpretation of the policy and regulation and the processes put in place, often with incorrect interpretations of the policy and regulations.

 

It's also that in the UK we typically see these large scale projects as technical/engineering projects rather than larger social ones, which leads to mass hysteria, misunderstanding, resistance and a lack of support. In the UK I think there is a cultural tendency to spend more time and effort trying to avoid or circumvent regulations than just go with them and do it - I see this all the time in construction, from small businesses to large scale developer. But it's also about how the 'experts' in the system can continue to apply out of date or irrelevant models used to understand the projects and on which to base decisions. For example, the use of 25 year discount rates when building infrastructure that lasts and provides positive cash flow for a lot longer than that. Or we have the known issue of optimism bias.

 

A good few years ago I looked at doing another Master's degree and looked at the areas of sustainable energy/engineering and the environment and I looked at both UK and overseas Universities. It struck me then that the perspectives of the UK and USA courses tended to focus more on the issues we're facing as being engineering ones, whereas European Universities took at more balanced view considering the social aspect to a greater extend. This seems to me to reflect the problems we're actually facing as we have all the technology we need already, we don't need to rely on new uninvented technology, we just need to learn how to apply it in a way that people can go along with and also, from a political perspective, we actually need to tell companies how and what they're going to do for us and that's where we need politics to step in rather than step out.