Ouch! Tony Blair had only recently left office when Ed Miliband, a protégé of Gordon Brown, drove the Climate Change Act through the Commons, committing the UK government to cutting carbon emissions by 80 per cent, compared with 1990 levels, by 2050. That target was upgraded to a net zero target – with minimal debate and no Commons vote – during Theresa May’s final days in office in 2019. Miliband, back in his old job after a 14-year hiatus, has stuck doggedly to the target.
This is starting to look like the beginning of the end for Britain’s self-sacrificial net zero target
But now Blair says that policy – yes, Labour government policy – is ‘irrational’. A lot of current political leaders, he says, would like to say the same but are scared of being labelled ‘deniers’.
The most remarkable thing about Blair’s attack on Miliband’s policy – contained in the foreword to a paper published by Tony Blair’s institute – is that the former PM hasn’t really changed his view. This is no Road to Damascus conversion. He is merely repeating what he used to say in office: that technology would tackle climate change, not hairshirt policies of self-denial. Challenged after taking a Caribbean holiday, he said quite openly that he was not prepared to give up his holiday to cut carbon emissions; rather he expected technology to allow him – and everyone – to carry on flying while cutting emissions.
It isn’t Blair who has changed; it is the terms of political debate. As he observes, since he left office the debate has become hysterical. Moreover, it has become irrational because Britain is sacrificing economic growth and living standards to reach a UK net zero target while developing countries surge ahead with economic growth largely fed by fossil fuels – and climate imperialists in the West have no right to deny them the rapid wealth-creation we enjoyed on the back of cheap energy 200 years ago.
Blair makes another point he did while in office: that China continues to build coal plants at a rate that exceeds the West’s ability to close them. Britain, indeed, has no more to close. One thing has changed since Blair’s day as PM: China has embraced wind and solar as well as coal. But that doesn’t detract from its growth in coal power: power-hungry China wants all the energy it can muster, from whatever source. That is true of all developing countries; ultimately, whatever they say at COP conferences (often as a ruse to try to extract climate ‘reparations’), they will always choose growth over net zero targets.
Unlike Miliband – whose standard line is to claim that net zero will save us money and make us richer – others can see the obvious evidence to the contrary.
Will the government take any notice of Blair? Miliband can be expected to bat away Blair’s not-very-coded attack, impossibly claiming that he and Blair are really on the same page. But other members of the government may be less inclined to dismiss what Blair is saying – that Britain’s net zero policy is ‘doomed to failure’. Gradually, the political ground is beginning to shift. Britain’s sky-high energy prices (despite generating more of our power from wind and solar than most developed countries) and the fate of our steel industry have prompted moments of realisation.
It doesn’t – and shouldn’t – mean an end to the quest for cleaner energy. But this is starting to look like the beginning of the end for Britain’s self-sacrificial net zero target. What may have seemed an impregnable consensus until recently is crumbling rapidly.
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