A hot messy summer

It's too damn hot. The fourth heatwave of the summer is underway, it hasn't rained since April, large swathes of Europe are on fire, and excess deaths are being measured in the tens of thousands. The Foreign Secretaries of the UK, France, and Spain have issued joint statements warning the wildfires afflicting the three countries are a direct "consequence of the climate crisis", as they vowed to work together to enhance climate resilience and accelerate global decarbonisation efforts. Across Europe, over 300,000 people have now been evacuated from their homes, firefighters have lost their lives, nuclear power plants have shutdown as river levels plummet, crop yields have dwindled, and the economic toll will almost certainly be measured in the tens of billions. The US and Iran are still at war and the Strait of Hormuz is still closed.

On the more positive side of the ledger, the clean technology revolution is continuing apace. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has upgraded its estimates for the electric vehicle (EV) market, with zero emissions models now on track to account for nearly 30 per cent of all auto sales globally this year. A technology that was a pipe dream only a decade ago is on course to dominate a market that has been defined by fossil fuels for over a century. Official government figures yesterday confirmed UK renewables generation smashed records again last year, accounting for over half of all power generated. Once again, a technology that was dismissed as a marginal concern is now the backbone of the energy system.  

But despite this progress global emissions are still rising, driven in part by surging energy demand for AI data centres and air conditioning systems. Meteorologists warn the coming super El Nino over the next 18 months is almost certain to result in weather that is even more extreme than this summer's deadly heatwaves. Climate scientists note that the past few months are entirely in line with what they forecast - and their projections for the coming decades are more terrifying still. The harsh truth is temperatures will continue to spiral upwards until the global economy reaches net zero emissions or civilisation collapses, whichever comes first.

Meanwhile, on the right of British politics tempers are fraying and rational thought has apparently gone on vacation - it is unclear whether it will ever return. Against a backdrop of low key climate apocalypse and cascading geopolitical risk, the UK's right-leaning press decided this was the week to trigger a debate about our collective response to climate change and the supposed costs of pursuing net zero emissions. The articles repeatedly appeared next to photographs of raging infernos. 

The Times ran a series of stories about the costs of decarbonising the grid, which culminated in an uncritical write up of a think tank report that argued meeting net zero targets would cost £40bn a year by 2030. It failed to mention that its modelling implied an alternative scenario where the gas required to run a gas-based power system is literally free (Carbon Brief's Simon Evans has more on this absurdity here). The Telegraph took a different approach, sparking an internal debate by allowing two of its columnists - Tim Stanley and Ambrose Evans Pritchard - to politely suggest the Conservatives and Reform may end up on the wrong side of both history and the voters thanks to their downplaying of climate risks that are increasingly self evident. Cue chaos, as their colleagues lined up to roundly condemn their analysis while explaining that renewables do not work and the UK would be better off to "scrap net zero and embrace Mediterranean life". They neglected to explain what people in the increasingly fire torn Mediterranean should do. To think, they get upset if you call them callous. 

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch then waded into the 'debate', writing to the Telegraph to explain that while "climate change is real", the UK's "net zero plans are not". "They are a political fiction, bankrupting the country, destroying British industry and perversely increasing carbon emissions," she wrote. "Banning oil and gas drilling from Aberdeen, which has a low carbon footprint, only to import oil and gas from places that drill in a dirty fashion makes no sense whatsoever." She added that she made "no apology" for insisting Conservative candidates must subscribe to her plan to ditch the UK's net zero targets. "If we are to grow our economy and secure good jobs in manufacturing and AI, we must tackle Britain's industrial energy prices, which are the highest in the developed world, and that means being honest that net zero by 2050 is impossible," she said.

It was only a short letter, but it still deserves an old fashioned 'fisking'. Badenoch may disagree with the UK's net zero plan, but it does exist and is surprisingly detailed. The claim net zero is bankrupting the country and destroying industry is highly contested and not backed by particularly compelling evidence. Green industries are growing fast and if the UK's economic and industrial performance has been disappointing over the past 20 years (a period during which the Conservatives were in power for a large majority of the time) there are factors beyond climate policy that have had an impact, austerity, underinvestment, and Brexit being chief among them. Carbon emissions have categorically not increased. They were 45 per cent below 1990 levels in 2019 when the net zero target was adopted and by last year they were 54 per cent below the baseline.

What Badenoch was trying to say is that the carbon footprint of our oil and gas production is higher than it should, as we import 'dirty' fossil fuels rather than produce our own. There is some truth in this, but it is a marginal issue compared to the emissions that result from burning the resulting oil and gas and the wider effort to decarbonise the economy that has undoubtedly been aided by the policy framework provided by the Climate Change Act. Besides, most of our imported fossil fuels come from Norway where production emissions tend to be lower than the UK's. 

There is a political consensus that more needs to be done to tackle the UK's high industrial energy prices, but plenty of analysts maintain you are more likely to deliver lower costs in the long term through a mix of electrification and renewables than you are through increased reliance on gas, whether it is imported of produced domestically. It is simply not the case that "net zero by 2050 is impossible". It is extremely difficult, but the technologies exists to meet the target and there are veritable libraries of economic analysis explaining how it could be done while enhancing security and boosting prosperity and living standards.  

However, the worst part of Badenoch's argument is what is missing. If you accept climate change is real, but you don't want a target to reach net zero emissions by 2050 then what are you going to do about the wildfires, the food insecurity, the increased migration, and the huge disruption caused by the global clean tech boom, all of which is going to happen regardless?

In fairness to those Telegraph columnists taking issue with their more risk averse colleagues, they do have an answer, reckless as it is. They want to try and adapt to ever worsening climate impacts (while refusing to pay higher taxes to fund the necessary investment in climate resilience) and in the meantime they will cross their fingers and hope new clean technologies such as next generation nuclear plants will one day ride to the rescue. This plan is not in any way serious. It does not understand the escalating nature of the climate threat, nor the critical role of policy frameworks in driving clean tech innovation. It is utterly indifferent to the suffering climate impacts will wreak and fails to comprehend how they will keep getting worse.

But at least it provides the outline of a strategy and has a faint grip on intellectual coherence. Badenoch is currently failing to reach even this low bar. She accepts climate change is real, but then attacks net zero without ever acknowledging that climate change will keep getting worse until net zero is reached. She has promised a better alternative approach to tackling what is a global crisis, but a year after announcing she would repeal the Climate Change Act she has not provided any insight into what such a plan might entail. And she then accuses others of being unserious.

Meanwhile, some of the UK's largest businesses have written to the new Prime Minister to voice fears that climate impacts are getting so bad food security is now at risk and firefighters in Suffolk are fighting a blaze that is too close for comfort to the Sizewell B nuclear power plant. Both the literal and metaphorical fire alarms are blaring. Sadly, much of the political class is still choosing to ignore them. 

Update:

This morning Badenoch published a longer piece in the Telegraph insisting she was not a climate sceptic, but was instead a "net zero sceptic". She again attacked every aspect of the government's net zero plan and insisted a better plan would be forthcoming from the Conservatives at some point in the future. She also provided further hints of what that plan might entail, referencing the importance of nature, building new nuclear power plants, drilling in the North Sea, enhancing flood defences, and allowing markets and innovation to help tackle the climate crisis. 

As it stands, this does not constitute a credible plan and is unlikely to ever do so. All these approaches are already being deployed, including under the last previous government. If market forces alone could tackle the climate crisis without any form of carbon pricing the crisis would have been solved already. There is a case that net zero targets can become too prescriptive and are not flexible enough given the inherent uncertainties involved in the net zero transition. But if you get rid of them you still need to decarbonise at sufficient pace and build the necessary climate resilience. You also need to explain how that will be funded.

Badenoch may argue she is not a climate sceptic, but everything she says on the topic suggests she does not understand the true nature of the threat nor why net zero targets were adopted in the first place. They are Chesterton's Fence - a concept Conservatives used to understand. The current net zero plan may be flawed, but a plan based purely on market forces (except when it comes to nuclear subsidies), ever increasing amounts of climate adaptation, and indefinite reliance on fossil fuels is simply not credible.