It was three years ago, almost to the day, when COP26 in Glasgow came to a close. A final deal, which ran into overtime, culminated in a five minutes to midnight change from India and China; a change apparently so disastrous that it struck shame in the hearts of the nation, sent shockwaves throughout the developing world and even made the chairman of COP, Alok Sharma, cry.
But what was this dramatic change? A non-legally binding agreement to phase out the global use of coal, a cheap and plentiful fuel, was modified to ‘phase down’.
Well, three years later, we have the same histrionics echoing from Baku. Developing nations stormed out of talks which ran into 30 hours of overtime.
But this time, developed nations, that means you, the UK taxpayers have promised £300 billion a year in climate and reparations to developing nations, which apparently isn’t enough.
Jacob Rees-Mogg says it’s time to scrap net zero
GB NEWS
You may remember when the Prime Minister said this:
‘What we’re not going to do is start telling people how to live their lives. We’re not going to start dictating to people what they do. It is an ambitious target. It’s a realisable target, but it’s not going to be one in which we tell people how to live their lives.’
Ed Miliband is spearheading the Government’s green agendaPA
I’m afraid it’s not the first time that Reverend Starmer may not have been entirely accurate about this.
The Labour chairman of the Energy Committee, Bill Esterton, in a cat out of the bag moment, has said people will absolutely have to change their lifestyles to reach Labour’s targets.
Indeed, Labour’s new carbon targets are based on climate change committee projections, which assume a halving of meat and dairy consumption.
The chairman of the climate change committee has said people will have to switch to electric cars and heat pumps to reach these targets too.
And it’s these lifestyle changing policies, like the petrol diesel ban and the boiler ban, that is causing huge problems for consumers and manufacturers alike. Visit Port Talbot if you don’t believe me.
It’s time to accept that we live in a different time. Donald Trump has been elected and almost certainly withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords.
The next Tory Party manifesto ought to pledge to do the same, then we can begin to enable British industry and businesses to be truly competitive again with cheap energy, no net zero driven market restrictions and free choices for consumers.
No nation has ever achieved anything by making itself voluntarily poorer, which is why it’s time to scrap net zero altogether.