{"id":261868,"date":"2023-06-13T09:58:03","date_gmt":"2023-06-13T07:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=261868"},"modified":"2023-06-13T09:58:06","modified_gmt":"2023-06-13T07:58:06","slug":"net-zero-isnt-working-but-conservatives-refuse-to-grasp-the-nettle-charles-moore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=261868","title":{"rendered":"Net zero isn\u2019t working \u2013 but Conservatives refuse to grasp the nettle-Charles\u00a0Moore"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Paul Homewood<\/p>\n\n\n\n

h\/t Philip Bratby<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most conservative-minded people do not expect to lead political or intellectual fashion. Indeed, we are rather proud that we don\u2019t. Not for us the delusions of celebrity: we rather complacently boast that we are playing a longer and wiser game.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the late 1960s, for example, the fashion \u2013 even among most Conservatives with a big C \u2013 was that you could control inflation only by prices-and-incomes policies. True conservatives (first Enoch Powell, then Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher) saw this was nonsense, because inflation is a disease of money. By about 1982, they were proved right.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, conservatives are often proved wrong \u2013 the poll tax was a famous example. But, on the whole, we are less wrong than our opponents because we are neither utopians nor catastrophists. If someone says, \u201cLet\u2019s abolish war!\u201d or \u201cThree weeks left to save the planet!\u201d, our instinct tells us this is silly.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore conservatives tend to be <\/em>sceptical about climate change policy<\/em><\/a>. We differ among ourselves about how to judge the scale of climate change and remedy its problems. Some of us are techno-optimists; others are romantic ruralists. But we usually agree that \u201cemergency\u201d timetables, targets and other measures to banish climate change will have serious unintended consequences (poverty, instability, shifts of political power against the West) and are, at a global level, unattainable. We doubt the capacity of government to set the world to rights.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 (or any precise date) is profoundly unconservative, yet Conservative governments have chosen to worship at that shrine. Net zero demands a completeness which human society can never achieve.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We conservatives say this now and again and wait to see how long it is before hotter heads come round to our view. Under governments which, for nearly 20 years, have called themselves Conservative, we have fared badly. Climate-change dogma has been imposed on schools and become entrenched in academia. It is pretty much a career requirement for holding public office or achieving corporate eminence.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regulators such as Ofgem, originally charged with safeguarding the interests of consumers, are being suborned by net-zero \u201cmandates\u201d. Since the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street fell swooning into the arms of Governor Mark Carney 10 years ago, the dogma has even been enshrined in the remit of the Bank of England. It is to the 21st century what the 39 Articles were to the 17th.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing impatient, conservatives have made the classic mistake of arguing that because something cannot work, it won\u2019t happen. Politicians \u2013 Tories, just as much as any others \u2013 don\u2019t mind about that. They exploit time lags to promise the impossible. Green measures are announced with fanfare. Their full cost is postponed into a future just too distant to damage their progenitors at the next election.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This cannot go on and yet, even after Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, British politics has been agonisingly slow to adjust. In both urban and rural settings, the talk is shifting from virtue-signalling to complaint. Two years ago, your dinner-party standing was improved by boasting about your electric car. Last month, however, I sat next to someone whose brother\u2019s Tesla had failed (just out of warranty), apparently because of water in its battery. The cost of a new battery was \u00a317,000. He got a reconditioned one for a mere \u00a310,000.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In London, everyone\u2019s story is about the jams and diversions caused by Ulez. In the country, the talk is of the vast cost (well into five figures) and ineffectiveness of air heat pumps. This week, a plumber told a friend that he now removes two such pumps a month because their owners despair of them. In Germany, the banning of new domestic oil or gas furnaces from next year threatens the governing coalition.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet still our Government has hardly moved. Yes, Rishi Sunak is pushing for more oil and gas exploration licences in the North Sea. He also, though far too timidly, is promising to cut windfall taxes of oil and gas profits.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sir Keir Starmer said recently that he intends to prevent new explorations. His stance, which he already seems to be backing away from, brings out a division in the Labour Party between those who live within the M25 and the rest. Labour\u2019s bicycling London haute bourgeoisie \u2013 and their Extinction Rebellion offspring \u2013 are very different from those people, going by the old-fashioned name of \u201cworkers\u201d, who minister to our continuing need for fossil fuels. Gary Smith of the GMB union, their eloquent spokesman, knows that oil and gas, especially gas, are the essential underpinning of any energy transition.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All those aggrieved and damaged by net zero measures add up to an impressively mixed constituency from leafy shires to Red Wall. At one end, you get landlords, now confronted with the need for revised Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) on all the properties they let. EPCs now insist on double-glazing, sealed doors and other net zero measures which, for older houses, are shockingly expensive and unsuitable. You also get country people with substantial houses who face cold cheerlessness without their wood-burning stoves. In business, you find banks and corporations hemmed in by the demands of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance investing) which chill investment in many essential and profitable fields such as fossil fuels or defence industries.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Its shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, <\/strong><\/em>ditched the promise<\/strong><\/em><\/a> she made two years ago to spend, if back in office, \u00a328 billion a year on green projects. Her excuse sounds sweetly innocent: \u201cThe truth is I didn\u2019t foresee what the Conservatives would do to our economy\u201d; but she must know that her own party\u2019s policies would have done the same, only more so<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

At the other end, you get \u201cworkers by hand\u201d (as Labour\u2019s famous Clause 4 used to put it) and pensioners, for both of whom grotesquely high energy costs are such a problem that increasing their hardship to help save the planet is insulting.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is an obvious benefit for the first political party to feel such people\u2019s pain. You might have thought that the Tories, being less doctrinaire than Labour on green issues, could move faster.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, however, it was Labour that switched. Its shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, <\/em>ditched the promise<\/em><\/a> she made two years ago to spend, if back in office, \u00a328 billion a year on green projects. Her excuse sounds sweetly innocent: \u201cThe truth is I didn\u2019t foresee what the Conservatives would do to our economy\u201d; but she must know that her own party\u2019s policies would have done the same, only more so.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter, Ms Reeves is doubly right to make this move, both because it shows a glimmer of economic sanity and because it gets there first. If Labour no longer espouses endless \u201cgreen growth\u201d, the Tories are left high and dry \u2013 or, rather, low and wet. If they try to out-green Ms Reeves, they will lose what remains of their natural supporters. And she has just stolen from Mr Sunak and Jeremy Hunt their previously unique selling point of financial responsibility.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The language needed for energy policy should come naturally to conservatives. Its key words are \u201csecurity\u201d (of supply), \u201creliable\u201d, \u201caffordable\u201d and, but only if those prior conditions are met, \u201crenewable\u201d. Security also requires reasonably low external political risk. Russia is the most lurid current cause of the insecurity our net zero obsession exacerbates. China, which has not the slightest intention of hitting net zero, is the biggest long-term threat.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change is presented as an emergency, when it is better seen as a long process which requires adaptation. Energy insecurity, with its threats of blackouts, soaring costs, financial instability and bullying from unfriendly foreign powers, is not far short of an emergency. Successive Conservative governments have missed these threats almost entirely. We small-c conservatives have only the melancholy comfort of being proved right.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2023\/06\/09\/net-zero-isnt-working-conservatives-refuse-to-grasp-nettle\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the late 1960s, for example, the fashion \u2013 even among most Conservatives with a big C \u2013 was that you could control inflation only by prices-and-incomes policies. True conservatives (first Enoch Powell, then Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher) saw this was nonsense, because inflation is a disease of money. By about 1982, they were proved right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":261872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818056,691820154,691820155,691818154],"class_list":{"0":"post-261868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-conservatives","10":"tag-energy-performance-certificates","11":"tag-net-zero","13":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/0ORWELL-1984-ANT.jpg?fit=1800%2C1012&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-167G","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":290310,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=290310","url_meta":{"origin":261868,"position":0},"title":"Rishi Sunak suffers large rebellion against the Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"07\/12\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Zero Emission Vehicle mandate \u2018likely to cause enormous harm\u2019 to companies and consumers, warns letter from MPs and peers From Net Zero Watch London, 5 December \u2013 In a vote late on Monday night, 38 MPs voted against the legislation bringing in the Government\u2019s Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate. 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