February 8, 2025 - 8:00am
Governing is about choices, and the indication is that this government is choosing economic prosperity over Net Zero. In the wake of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves’s push for growth, Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband looks chastened. He has now had to concede his previous opposition to expanding Heathrow Airport, and also appears likely to approve the Rosebank oilfield. Once again, it clearly isn’t easy to be green.
Though the minister stresses that there is no conflict between Net Zero and economic growth, these policy moves suggest otherwise. Building bigger airports and extracting more oil are hardly climate-friendly moves, but both mean jobs and investments. Labour, for the time being, seems to be choosing the latter. If more decisions like this follow, the UK’s bold commitments on Net Zero could be in danger.
With the Government scrabbling around for growth ideas, however, and still conscious of the cost of living, fiscal demands will likely trump green credentials for a while. That could mean a greater reluctance to adopt the sort of changes which hit businesses and voters in the pocket. The difficulty is that these are often some of the most effective environmental measures.
Avoiding them will perhaps mean making tougher decisions elsewhere. It will also mean looking at the real challenges of reducing carbon, where some things that are popular or often of short-term benefit tend to be detrimental in the long run. Measures such as reducing plastic, for example, can cut the use of oil products but end up generating more waste and emissions. Future governments will have to get to grips with these sorts of problems if they want to build a credible road towards Net Zero.
There will be further looming battles about the things that need to be built to manage the transition. From grid infrastructure to housing, there is a real need to build newer, greener alternatives. These often come into conflict with ecological groups, who object to the immediate effects of building regardless of the future potential for carbon savings. These are difficult political conflicts to manage, as the Government is already seeing protests planned against its current wave of infrastructure building.
Managing public opinion around Net Zero could prove far trickier than dissent in Cabinet. Overall, the UK public has bought into environmental responsibility. A majority believe in human-driven climate change and want to stop it. As a headline idea, Net Zero is largely popular. This falls away, however, when voters are pushed on many of the policies that deliver it. People are protective of their individual polluting habits and are reluctant to embrace policies that reduce their quality of life or cost them too much.
These moves might be a sign that the tides are shifting against Net Zero. The flagship promise came in 2019, before energy price rises and security issues shocked the UK — and before the lack of growth seemed so stubbornly locked in. The target sought to constrain the choices of future administrations, putting them on a path where reducing carbon emissions trumped other concerns. Now, it seems like economic progress is again the priority for both voters and politicians. With even Miliband yielding on Heathrow, pragmatic environmentalism is likely to become the order of the day.
John Oxley is a corporate strategist and political commentator. His Substack is Joxley Writes.
Mr_John_Oxley
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Subscribe“Overall, the UK public has bought into environmental responsibility”
The UK public has bought into a few things: the false idea that CO2 is the greatest threat to our environment, along with the false idea that rapid decarbonisation is compatible with prosperity, combined with the false idea that pursuit of Net Zero in the UK will make the blindest bit of difference to global emissions.
We should focus on building a resilient society, with food security, energy security, border security and social cohesion, so that we’re ready for whatever the world throws at us, whether it’s warming, cooling, war, or solar flares.
Poll after poll clearly demonstrate that support for net zero collapses as soon as a cost is attached to it. People like the idea of a carbon free economy. Not so much the reality of it.
“Everybody wants to change the world, nobody wants to change themselves”
As the rock band “Nothing More” so perceptively put it.
People like the idea of a carbon free economy because they like Utopia. From afar
I find support drops the moment you compare U.K. carbon emissions to those of other countries who are not signed up to the Net Zero Bankrupt the West scheme. U.K. 0.8% compared to China 32 % for example.
Politicians can only pretend for so long that the cost and consequence will have minimal impact on people. There are significant costs and that is now becoming very apparent to consumers.
It is not just a financial cost, it’s a very significant increase in the involvement of government (local and national) in the decisions that used to be reserved for individuals as freedom of choice. Where you can go, at what time, in which vehicle, for how long, how you might heat your house, design choices, the list goes on. We aren’t very far away from eco-crimes and lagging by neighbours on those who break council edict on something or other deemed imperative in the ‘Long March’ towards Net Zero.
Unthinkable? Think about what has happened to free speech and the people arrested in their homes for ‘wrong speak’ or possessing a worldview deemed offensive if expressed on social media. The relationship between citizens and governments has been upended. It is very difficult to see who is the servant of whom.
The problem lies in the ‘social media’ bit. Take that away, and people who want to express stupid and offensive opinions in public have to take the consequences right away and on the chin. Some will, most (as we have always been accustomed to) won’t. If we binned the phones that have helped to generate all this bad behaviour, there would be a chance to calm things down and get back to personal and direct social accountability, but we won’t. Off we go down the ski slope.
I totally agree with your suggestions for the best areas on which we should focus. On the other hand your claims about net zero aims and the science behind it are overblown. Personally, I would rather EM took a balanced approach than the extremes of ‘net zero is all good’ or ‘all bad’.
The UK public is largely pragmatic. If theres two options of doing something that cost roughly the same, then most would want to go with the clean option over the polluting one. Where possible they’d rather not see loads of gases pumped into the air or sewage dumped into the rivers, however they also don’t want to ruin the economy to do so.
As technology improves and becomes cheaper then it should be utilised, but there’s little support for the utopian ideals of people such as Miliband
Net zero is dead in the water. Not happening. Period. The only question is how much economic damage you cause before facing reality. Unfortunately, Britain will likely have to endure a lot more pain before the clowns in Westminster figure it out.
So true for Canada as well. Trump effectively ended Net Zero for everyone. How is there a viable economic argument to stay the course and claim “maybe the US isn’t doing Net Zero but we’re still on board”. Future PM hopeful Mark Carney wants us to believe that Canada can continue Net Zero by just making a few tweaks to create the illusion taxpayers won’t be paying for it.
‘The only question is how much economic damage you cause before facing reality.’
This is always the way it works with our numbskull elites. In Ukraine it’s not just economic damage, it’s how many Ukrainian lives will be lost before their narrative slams into the brick wall of reality.
“In Ukraine it’s not just economic damage, it’s how many Ukrainian lives will be lost before their narrative slams into the brick wall of reality” – Ukrainians don’t like population replacement you already agree with in your country
It was obvious from the outset that the magical thinking and bogus targets of Net Zero would have to be abandoned at some stage: the kicker to economic stagnation delivered by the Reeves’ budget has simply accelerated the process somewhat. Personally I had thought Miliband might make it to 2027. As always, what is most infuriating is that he will bear no responsibility for the waste and economic damage he has caused with his failed pet project, and the price of removing him will probably be a peerage.
Net zero will always be a dream, an aspiration. Whilst we do what we can on an individual basis in the Uk, around the globe there are huge numbers of people wanting, and needing, energy and products that take a hammer to our efforts here. When the good people of Arizona learn how to line dry their washing instead of using tumble dryers, when in Florida, Arabia, India, south east Asia , South Africa and southern Europe etc, people can live without air conditioning and we all travel less, then we might make a collective impact. And, when they stop trying to cool down the sidewalks in Las Vegas with ice cold blowers, I would accept some of us are learning something.
The point is that…without NetZero, Miliband is a big fat zero. He has no point. So he has only one choice; to go deeper and deeper into the mire because he will look stupid if he stops.
You mean more stupid?
There’s a whole industry built on “Net Zero” and there will be thousands of big fat zeros if it is abandoned. So expect plenty of resistance.
An industry but not a lot of people. Forty or fifty years ago an industry meant thousands of people losing their livelihoods. Now it means banks and financiers.
Miliband already looks 100% stupid so what’s new?
Net Zero is not ‘green’.
Grow or reduce oil and gas use. Halt for the Green Cop, and die.
I didn’t vote for net zero, and none of the main parties oppose it. Democracy in action. It’s a silent green coup d’état.
It’s not a coup d’état if the party with NZ in its manifesto gets elected. You buy the full package. If you voted, and all the parties available in your constituency were pro-NZ, then by definition you voted for NZ. If you found a party that didn’t, and voted against NZ, then as a good democrat you just suck it up. All this ‘not in my name’ rubbish is profoundly anti-democratic and a good indicator of political naivety.
The “3rd runway” is pure distraction therapy. The UK economy is heading down the toilet right now – by the time they might get round to building the runway, it is possible nobody will have the money to make it needed.
One of the many factors crippling our economy is sky high energy prices and Labour are telling outright lies when they claim “Green energy” will bring them down – the exact opposite is true. That is the real discussion they need to have, not one about 3rd runways.
I like the ‘feet up a ladder’ analogy to really bring home to people what this bill would achieve, in terms they can readily understand.
We all know that increasing height results in a drop in temperature. It is colder up a mountain than at sea-level. The adiabatic lapse rate is about 2 degrees per 1000 feet.
If Britain went Net Zero tomorrow, the effect on global temperature would be roughly the same as going 15 feet up a ladder.
If Britain keeps emitting CO2 at the current rate, in about 30 years, Britain will emit enough CO2 to increase the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere by about 1 part per million by volume.
Miliband could stand by his principles and resign.
That assumes Miliband has principles he can stand by .
Set ’em up CB, I’ll bat ’em away.
My question is, why does Ed Miliband believe what he believes about climate change? Ditto the buy-in into the belief by the author. The flip of course is, why am I skeptical about climate change? Why does anyone believe what they believe, on the for or against side, about climate change?
Answers are possible at multiple levels. The first point to make, is that there is a very large element of ‘inherited belief’ – in all of us of course. One proof of this is that many of the most vehement believers, on both sides of the argument, cannot possibly be doing other than spouting secondhand beliefs they have no means to verify or even reason through rationally on their own (for example Greta Thunberg in her early teens). It then speaks volumes about all the people, many in very senior positions of authority, who fêted her – given that many of them were not on the face of it idiots, the only possible conclusion I can reach is that they did it for cynical reasons. I try not be cynical about peoples beliefs and actions because I am aware my own assessment of my own biases is flawed. For example if I were a cynic, I would note that the author is a ‘corporate strategist’, and project that climate change skepticism in a corporate strategist would not necessarily be good for businesses. But I’m not a cynic, so of course I make no such imputation – perish the thought.
The process of imbibing belief is of course more complicated. My observation of what is happening, is that beliefs on one side of an argument are selectively emphasised repeatedly within an individual, due to a combination of personal temperament and surrounding personalities – and here it could happen that someone goes against the surrounding orthodoxy simply because contrariness is their temperament rather than any merit for or against the belief. The proof would be how well the stance of contrariness would survive if the surrounding environment turns hostile.
Another observation I can make is that there is a very big ‘immediacy’ bias visible in the types of connections or correlations people make, often based on a sample size as small as one. They have no underlying models of how the world works of their own to test the theory against, so they pin the causality on borrowed models and beliefs, without ever putting them to the test. The guardianista type arguments that for example the Los Angeles fires were down to climate change. No doubt when the San Andreas faultline cracks open and the whole city disappears down into a black hole, the same authors will put it down to climate change.
There is lots more to say about the nature of belief, but I have already droned on too long, so I conclude by saying: it requires a conscious effort to sit there and dispassionately pick apart arguments on both sides, and this is very difficult because our cognitive makeup gets in the way.
Excellent observations. What fascinates me is how individuals might acquire their ‘predisposition’, for instance to contrariness. Since it’s almost impossible to unravel the DNA, very early life experiences and familial context of individuals alongside actual cognitive skills involving the five senses and also native IQ, i suspect we’ll never know the answer and that’s what makes human discourse the drama it is, now supercharged via the internet.
This is where studies of ‘twins separated at birth’ are very revealing. By no means completely, but by and large they indicate genes play the biggest role. My observation is that there are many people not best pleased with these types of conclusions, to the point of not even being willing to acknowledge them.
One reason I have not bought into the “climate crisis” scam is that I have heard it all before in my 75 years. In that time I have been told that the world will boil, freeze ,drown or everyone and everything die of drought if we don’t follow their instructions. The end may well be nigh but I’ve seen it forecast so many times before I think I’ll just miss out on this particular panic. I will just continue to plant many trees and hope that helps.
From my perspective of 77 years I completely agree. O/T I have seen many changes of government, only to realise that it doesn’t matter much which one is in power. They serve themselves. It has always been so.
Planting trees is good. They will outlive you, your children, their children and their children’s children.
The onus is on climate alarmists to prove that there is cause for their alarm; what they have done instead is made their assertions and then suppressed those who disagree.
The onus is not on us to disprove it but for the alarmists to prove it. It is not a 50/50 debate as you imply.
Climate change now is something of a “culture war” issue. This is not true of everyone, but many Left-leaning people believe in climate change because it’s the sort of thing Left-leaning people believe in, and Right-leaning people oppose it because they oppose “Leftie stuff”.
> From grid infrastructure to housing, there is a real need to build newer, greener alternatives.
Citation needed.
The fact that the UK CO2 emissions have halved since the 1990s, I think the UK has done enough de-industrialising and de-carbonising. Doing more will lead us to regular power cuts like the ones I remember in the 1970s.
Future governments will have to get to grips with these sorts of problems if they want to build a credible road towards Net Zero. There is no credible road towards Net Zero.
Tackling climate change was always going to run into the reality that while people are concerned about it and supportive of tackling it, they are not willing to make the kind of sacrifices demanded by the green lobby to achieve it. Lazy (or cult-like) policy-making won’t work any longer. Governments are going to have to identify ways to achieve net zero consistent with the reasonable expectations of their voters for their lifestyles.
Either that, or abandon the idea completely. After all, that is what the US is going to do, and India and China were never interested.
The majority only believe in the climate crisis and hence net zero because of the constant barrage of msm propaganda and disinformation while censoring and smearing credible climate realists.
Let it not be forgotten that it was a Conservative Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who committed UK to the Net Zero policy – which was enthusiastically promoted by his successor, Theresa May – long before Ed Milliband climbed onto the bandwagon.
The Tory legacy of overwhelming immigration, Net Zero bigotry, knackered public services, rampant inflation in reality and a failing economy has been disastrous.
Boris Johnson was Theresa May’s successor, not the other way around.
Correct!
It was May who put Net Zero 2030 into law. Boris didn’t become an eco nut zealot until he got hooked up with Carrie Princess Nut Nut and her coterie of climate goons. Sunak attempted to reign it in a bit. Milliband has taken it to another level of idiocy.
Yeah, the problem with Miliband is that he actually believes all this “global warming” stuff, and he’s not just engaged in a bit of greenwashing to keep the chattering classes happy.
Miliband is a Marxist ideologue whose father was a Marxist intellectual (whatever that means!).
The ‘climate change’ agenda has been conceived by Marxists as a vehicle for the transfer of wealth from the rich developed world to the poor under-developed nations, who’ve suffered the climate and financial consequences of the nasty history of the rich nations.
You are so correct about Princess Carrie Nut Nut!