The COP26 summit is unlikely to be
an outright flop. There has been no
shortage of drama, with speakers
seeming to compete with each other to see
who could use the most histrionic language.
Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
went so far as to compare the attending leaders to Nazi appeasers. He later apologised.
Some progress, albeit small, is being
made. A hundred countries have been persuaded, some on the promise of sweeteners
worth £14 billion, to sign a pledge to end
deforestation by 2030. Brazil, the most
important of all, is among them. India has
agreed, for the first time, to set itself a date
for achieving net-zero greenhouse gas
emissions — although its target, 2070, is
two decades beyond what the United
Nations would have liked. Most leaders at
Glasgow will be dead by then.
One thing is unlikely to have changed by
the end of the two-week conference. For all
the pledges made and aspirations expressed
by countries around the world, Britain will
remain one of a tiny handful of countries to
have turned its carbon-reduction pledges
into law. Almost all the others will do as they
have previously done and allow themselves
some wriggle room. Pointedly, China’s short-term carbon-reduction targets are expressed
‘per unit of GDP’ — emphasising that it has
no intention of sacrificing economic growth
on the altar of tackling climate change.
What our own government needs — but there is scant sign it has yet — is a Plan B in the event of decarbonisation technology failing to advance
This leaves Britain with a very serious
problem: what to do if some of the technology which will be required to reach net zero
disappoints? It is very noble to want to set
an example to the rest of the world by legally committing yourself to eliminating carbon emissions. It will not look so clever in, say, 15 years’ time if we are still struggling to
store copious quantities of energy generated on sunny and windy days for sunless and
becalmed days when our wind farms and
solar farms are generating next to nothing.
The Prime Minister insists there is nothing ‘hair-shirt’ about his decarbonisation
plans, yet for this to be true he would need
technology that has not yet been invented
and no one really expects to be any time
soon. Technology does often surprise on
the upside — nobody could have predicted
the scale of the computing revolution we have seen in recent years. It can also disappoint. Half a century ago, nuclear fusion was
seen by many as the answer to all our energy needs, providing almost limitless quantities of energy at next to no cost. Yet had
we wagered our future on its success at that
point, closing down all alternative sources of
power, we would now be living in the dark.
In 2019, parliament waved through the
net-zero target without even a Commons
vote. MPs relied at that point on an estimate by the Committee on Climate Change
that achieving net zero would cost in the
order of £1 trillion by 2050. Two years on,
the Treasury says it cannot put a figure on
the costs — and no wonder, when much of
the technology which will be required either
doesn’t exist or has yet to be scaled up. All
we can be sure about is that the policies so
far announced, such as banning new gas
boilers by 2035, will cost households many thousands of pounds — both in buying alternative heat pumps and in insulating homes
to make them effective.
It is highly improbable that other countries will choose to make their people poorer,
or colder, in order to meet arbitrary carbon
reduction targets. Even Germany — seen by
many as one of the more enlightened countries in tackling climate change — has signalled its intent by responding to the spike
in global gas prices by upping coal-burning.
Like Britain, it had been phasing out coal,
but it will not do that at the price of leaving
the country short of affordable power.
What our own government needs — but
there is scant sign it has yet — is a Plan B
in the event of decarbonisation technology
failing to advance in the way that is hoped.
Specifically, is Britain prepared to relax the
2050 deadline if it becomes clear that to
proceed means undermining our remaining heavy industry and causing severe economic hardship? So far, the government has
not attempted to answer this question. For
now, its main agenda seems to be to up the
rhetoric of doom, so as to argue that there is
simply no alternative to achieving net zero
by 2050 — that to fail to do so would be to
lay waste to the Earth and the economy likewise. This is hyperbole, deployed to conceal
the lack of a clear plan.
Glasgow was supposed to mark the
moment when the rest of the world shifted
towards sharing Britain’s sense of urgency on
climate change. Yet for all the progress which
has been made this week, there is little sign
that other countries are prepared to go along.
People want to know: how can net zero be
reached without trapping millions of people
in poverty? There is still no answer.
This is the leading article from this week’s Spectator, out tomorrow.
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