It's always worth examining green and environmental numbers

The examination being to see if they’re telling us what it is said they’re telling us:

The UK’s low carbon economy is now worth more than £200bn, four times the size of the country’s manufacturing sector, with growth expected to accelerate in the coming years, according to new analysis.

That would mean that manufacturing is £50 billion, which in a £2 trillion economy (all rounded numbers, obviously) is 2.5%. We know that manufacturing has shrunk as a portion of the economy even as it is within a whisker of all time production still but it’s not that small. More like 10% or so still.

The report itself is not quite as helpful in explaining its methodology as one might hope. But our impression is that they are counting intermediate sales meaning that this is not comparable to GDP at all - which counts only final sales.

There’s also the obvious point that some goodly part of the “low carbon” economy is in fact manufacturing - folks hammering on windmills is not services now, is it?

But the really big error here is that this is all considered to be admirable.

Despite what experts say has been lacklustre and patchy support from central government, the analysis found more than 75,000 businesses from wind turbine manufacturers to recycling plants employ more than 1.2 million people in the green economy.

Experts say the sector not only has the potential to help tackle the climate crisis but also create sustainable jobs and improve people’s quality of life – with cleaner transport, reduced air pollution and better insulated homes.

Look at how many businesses there are! How much employment!

At which point the correct observation is yes, look at those costs. For the claim - let’s accept here their £200 billion of a £2 trillion economy - is that 10% of all economic efforts within society are being devoted to this low carbon idea. That is, 10% of everything is the cost of the low carbon efforts.

All those people and their labour, all that steel, energy, effort and work cannot be devoted to sating other of our myriad needs and desires. Sure, it might even be righteous that they are being devoted to this specific problem. But opportunity costs are the only true measure of the costs of some activity. What is it that we give up to gain this specific thing?

The portion of our economy that is devoted to low carbon is the cost to us all of low carbon, not the benefit. And here’s the rub. It’s not possible to get even accounting right let alone economics if we get the credits and debits in the wrong column. Which means that we’ve got to stop lauding our costs as our benefits, doesn’t it?