Well, of course, a union would say this

From the GMB General Secretary (via press release):

“But, our future requires a mix of energy sources – new nuclear, renewables, hydrogen, and oil and gas.

“It would be a huge mistake to put all the nation’s eggs in one energy basket.“

We can’t say we disagree with that and we do indeed think that the replacement for fossil fuels is going to be a bit of this and a bit of that. The grand joys of fossils is that they are general purpose, the problem with so many of the mooted replacements is that they solve specialist problems. So, we’ll need a number of solutions. Assuming there’s a problem that needs to be solved, of course.

However, we vehemently disagree with this:

“They believe in plans not bans.

“Plans built around unionised, decent jobs.”

We don’t want any jobs associated with these plans at all. Think on it. If someone invented a magic box that provided the nation’s energy desires with the labour of just the one bloke turning the knob every Monday morning we’d be overjoyed. We’d have hundreds of thousands of people who could go do ballet, teach kids, work in the NHS, play footie and prepare puddings for us to enjoy rather than labouring in the electricity mines.

Jobs, that is, are a cost, not a benefit.

Unionised, decent, jobs are even worse as they cost us even more.

Now, of course, a union leader would say the above, obviously. But that doesn’t mean that the rest of the society needs to be taken in by the special pleading. Whatever it is that we do about climate change - or any other thing - we want to employ the minimum of human labour possible in doing that thing.

After all, the art of economic advance is in working out how to destroy jobs, kill ‘em stone dead.