In this newsletter:
1) Putin's German 'Climate Foundation' plans to pay back 12 million euros to Gazprom
Welt am Sonntag, 17 July 2022
2) Martin Lewis compares UK to the Titanic as it approaches iceberg of 'cataclysmic' energy price rises
Wales Online, 13 July 2022
Wales Online, 13 July 2022
3) Tory hopeful Kemi Badenoch refuses to accept 'damaging' Net Zero target
Metro News, 15 July 2022
4) Alok Sharma hints he could quit if new PM is ‘weak’ on Net Zero agenda
London Evening Standard, 17 July 2022
5) ‘Deeply worrying’: fears for UK’s Net Zero goal under new Tory leader
5) ‘Deeply worrying’: fears for UK’s Net Zero goal under new Tory leader
6) Craig Mackinlay: Net Zero - the £3 trillion black hole in the Conservative leadership election
Sunday Express, 17 July 2022
8) Rupert Darwall: The next Tory leader should commit to ditching Net Zero
The Spectator, 16 July 2022
9) How the West brought economic disaster on itself
Unheard, 11 July 2022
Sunday Express, 17 July 2022
7) Francis Mention: In the UK, some political movement on the climate scare
Manhattan Contrarian, 15 July 2022
Manhattan Contrarian, 15 July 2022
The Spectator, 16 July 2022
9) How the West brought economic disaster on itself
Unheard, 11 July 2022
Full details:
1) Putin's German 'Climate Foundation' plans to pay back 12 million euros to Gazprom
Welt am Sonntag, 17 July 2022
The controversial Climate and Environmental Protection Foundation wants to transfer twelve million euros to the Gazprom subsidiary Nord Stream 2 AG in Switzerland. The planned financial transfer is politically and legally delicate.
The Climate and Environmental Protection Foundation wants to settle its liabilities to the Gazprom subsidiary Nord Stream 2 AG. The ailing company based in Switzerland expects to get back twelve million euros. This was announced by the head of the foundation and ex-Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Erwin Sellering to an editor of WELT AM SONNTAG after his institution had been ordered by the Schwerin district court to provide the relevant information.
Welt am Sonntag, 17 July 2022
The controversial Climate and Environmental Protection Foundation wants to transfer twelve million euros to the Gazprom subsidiary Nord Stream 2 AG in Switzerland. The planned financial transfer is politically and legally delicate.
The Climate and Environmental Protection Foundation wants to settle its liabilities to the Gazprom subsidiary Nord Stream 2 AG. The ailing company based in Switzerland expects to get back twelve million euros. This was announced by the head of the foundation and ex-Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Erwin Sellering to an editor of WELT AM SONNTAG after his institution had been ordered by the Schwerin district court to provide the relevant information.
According to this, ten million euros are attributable to proceeds from the “sale of machines, devices and materials” and the purchase of which Nord Stream 2 had once financed. The foundation wants to repatriate another two million because it stopped work on the Baltic Sea pipeline after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for which it had previously accepted advance payments.
The financial transfer planned by Sellering is politically and legally sensitive. US President Joe Biden had instructed his administration to impose punitive measures against Nord Stream 2 the day before the war broke out. To this day, they are directed against private companies that continue to maintain business relationships with the Swiss Gazprom subsidiary.
Against this background, the Climate Foundation will find it difficult to find a financial institution that will transfer the millions to accounts associated with the sanctioned company. However, if Sellering does not succeed in repaying the amount, there is a risk of a year-long legal dispute.
After the pipeline project was stopped, Nord Stream 2 is in acute danger of insolvency. A grace period runs until mid-September, during which a trustee will check whether rescue is possible. A Swiss lawyer told WELT AM SONNTAG that he could not provide any information on the claims against the climate foundation.
Sellering, in turn, reports that talks are being held with Nord Stream 2 to cut all connections. The aim is a “release agreement”. So far, however, it has “not yet been clarified” whether the foundation is “hindered by sanctions law” from transferring the money.
The facts that have now become known show how closely the climate foundation set up by the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Nord Stream 2 - which was ultimately controlled by the Kremlin - were intertwined. This applies above all to the foundation's business operations, which are to be completed by the end of September.
It was set up in early 2021 to complete the construction of the pipeline threatened by US sanctions. Sellering had long dismissed questions about how the company worked. The former SPD politician told the news portal T-Online at the beginning of the year that it was a matter of countering "attempts at intimidation contrary to international law" from Washington. That would "not be the subject of public discussion".
In the meantime, Sellering has had to provide this editorial team with detailed insights into the economic business operations on several occasions. He concluded 119 contracts with 80 service providers and suppliers, for example about “helicopter crew transport” or “pre-commissioning services in Russia”. At the same time, eight machines were purchased, including the "Blue Ship", a large special ship for rock placement.
Translation Net Zero Watch
3) Tory hopeful Kemi Badenoch refuses to accept 'damaging' Net Zero target
Metro News, 15 July 2022
Kemi Badenoch was the only Tory candidate saying she would not commit to the current net-zero pledge.
(Left-right) Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and Tom Tugendhat at the television debate for the candidates for leadership of the Conservative party. Victoria Jones/PA Wire
Trans rights, the net-zero carbon target, and whether Boris Johnson is honest were key talking points during the first Tory leadership debate.
Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch clashed over Ms Mordaunt’s stance on gender identity, while former chancellor Rishi Sunak took aim at the other candidates over their ‘fairytale’ tax cut plans. [...]
Kemi Badenoch was the only candidate saying she would not commit to the current net-zero pledge.
The Government is currently working towards a target to cut carbon emissions to zero by 2050.
While the other four candidates said they would still work towards this deadline as prime minister, Ms Badenoch said she would not.
She dismissed international environment minister Lord Goldsmith’s warning that it would be ‘political suicide’ to drop the 2050 net zero target.
She said: ‘I think he’s wrong.
‘The pledge was made in 2018 for 2050, none of us are going to be here as politicians in 2050, it’s very easy to set a target you are not going to be responsible and accountable for when the time comes.
‘The important thing is to make sure that we do this in a sustainable way.
‘Many of the things we are doing could economically damage our country.’
Full story
5) ‘Deeply worrying’: fears for UK’s Net Zero goal under new Tory leader
The Guardian, 15 July 2022
What worries proponents of climate action is less any overt move from the next Tory leader to renege on net zero than the possibility that the target will be allowed to moulder on the policy scrapheap.
When it comes to the future of the planet, the Tory leadership contest has got off to a dismal start. Rows erupted over the government’s flagship climate policy – the target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – almost as soon as Boris Johnson sagged back into No 10 after his resignation speech.
Several leadership candidates cast doubt on the net zero target, vowed to change it in some way, or took stances against some of the green policies needed to reach it. Several of these candidates have since been eliminated, and on Friday four of the five remaining candidates committed to preserving the net zero target, with only Kemi Badenoch still holding out.
However, campaigners believe the lack of enthusiasm for climate action among some MPs does not bode well for future action. A new prime minister could easily ascend to 10 Downing Street paying lip service to the net zero goal, while failing to push forward any of the concrete policies needed to achieve it.
Yet the target is vital not just for the UK, but for the world at a crucial time. Tackling the climate crisis was linked to tackling the cost of living crisis, as cutting emissions meant ending reliance on volatile fossil fuels, said Tom Burke, a veteran government adviser and co-founder of the E3G green thinktank. “They are closely linked. High gas prices are the problem; insulation is the quickest way to bring down bills,” he said.
The UK also risked missing out on economic opportunities, warned Nick Molho, of the Aldersgate Group, representing businesses with an interest in net zero. “This is about investment in industries, like steel, cement, chemicals, that will go elsewhere, go to competing countries, if it doesn’t come here,” he said.
Turning away from climate action would have global repercussions, as the UK currently holds the leadership of the UN climate talks, until Egypt takes over this November. Lord Adair Turner, a former chair of the committee on climate change and of the CBI employers’ organisation, who now chairs the Energy Transitions Commission, said: “It would be a catastrophic loss of international credibility, gained at [ Cop26 [climate summit] in Glasgow, to move away from our commitment to net zero. If the UK were to pull back on net zero, it would be a shock to our global reputation for consistent policy and for our responsibility in the world.”
Senior Tory figures understand the danger. “Economically, environmentally and electorally it would be a retrograde step for us to resile from this policy [of net zero]. It’s a road to nowhere,” warned Alok Sharma, the cabinet minister who presided over Cop26, in an interview with the i newspaper.
Theresa May, a former prime minister and chair of the Aldersgate Group of businesses, told a reception: “What we must remember is that whatever else happens, this is absolutely critical for the future of our planet, for the future of people’s lives and their jobs and their prosperity. And we must not take the foot off the accelerator at all.”
Voices across the political spectrum and beyond have joined in. Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, tried to keep the debate on a sound factual basis, holding a briefing in parliament on Monday on climate science. It was attended by only 70 MPs and peers.
Green campaigners, meanwhile, have pointed out that a strong majority of public opinion, in poll after poll, is firmly behind net zero policies and strong climate action, particularly in “red wall” seats that Labour will look to win back in the north of England, and blue wall seats where Liberal Democrats are challenging the Tories in the south. The latest Opinium poll this week found more than half of Conservative party members think the government is doing the right thing in acting on the climate crisis, or should be doing more.
Pat Venditti, the acting executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “Green policies could be the saving grace for any future leader. They’re hugely popular with voters, and will neatly tackle the urgent multiple crises we’re facing.”
Businesses have also weighed in, including household names such as Amazon, Coca-Cola, Unilever and Lloyds Banking Group – companies that would normally be assured a sympathetic hearing by the Conservative party – warning any dilution of the net zero target risked jobs and economic prosperity.
Eliot Whittington, the director of CLG UK, which organised a letter from businesses, said: “The Conservative party has a significant track record of climate leadership. Their new leader will have a choice between building on this track record and delivering for the UK economy and society, or abandoning it and condemning the country to fall behind on the energy transition and face unnecessary costs and risks.”
Yet despite these pleas and interventions, the row over net zero and the future of climate policy looks set to rage on as the Tory leadership contest spools out over the coming weeks, in ways that spell danger for the prospect of strong action on the climate in the crucial next few years, and with repercussions for many more years to come.
For many on the right of the Tory party, net zero has taken over where Brussels left off, as an object of hate and blame for the UK’s myriad ills. Lord Frost, the civil servant who negotiated Brexit and was elevated to the Lords by Johnson, has moved his focus from berating the EU to railing against the fracking ban and expanding North Sea gas. Similar calls to ditch net zero have risen from a chorus of Tory grandees, from Charles Moore, a former editor of the Telegraph, to the former party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith.
The prize for such agitators would be to make net zero a culture war issue, dividing the nation much as Brexit did, and gaining support for new fossil fuel exploration in the UK that they argue would bring down the cost of living, despite strong evidence to the contrary. Their model is the US, where almost all Democrats want action on the climate but only about half of Republican voters do, while Republican politicians stand firmly in the way of climate policies in Congress.
So for climate sceptics – “always a small minority within the party, but some of the candidates have come from that tradition” according to Sam Hall, of the Conservative Environment Network – the resignation of Johnson, a stout defender of green issues, offered an irresistible opportunity.
First to throw his hat in the ring, in an interview with the Guardian, was the arch-Brexiter and rightwinger Steve Baker, vowing to make reviewing net zero the key plank of his platform. It was a gesture without much chance of success, given his lack of experience and reputation as a fringe figure, but calculated as a challenge to other rightwing candidates to take a similar line.
Sure enough, Suella Braverman, the attorney general, took it up, announcing her own pledge to postpone net zero if not scrap it entirely, and Baker withdrew his challenge in order to endorse her. She was swiftly followed by Badenoch, the former levelling up minister standing on an “anti-woke” platform, who wants to change the net zero target in ways yet to be fully laid out. With Braverman now eliminated, many of her votes are expected to go to Badenoch.
Mark Lynas, a veteran environmentalist and co-founder of the RePlanet green campaign group, was aghast at the spectacle of so many candidates resiling from such a vital target. “It’s deeply worrying that the net zero commitment seems to be increasingly called into question by the right wing of the Tory party. Boris Johnson was no green, but the idea that we could have a minister who wants to ditch net zero is an appalling prospect,” he said. “As virtually the entire northern hemisphere bakes in unprecedentedly high temperatures, time is running out to avoid devastating climate impacts.”
Given this onslaught, it may seem a paradox, but the UK’s current climate target – to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – has probably never been more secure. None of the experts, inside and outside the Tory party, contacted by the Guardian thought there was any serious danger of its repeal.
Changing the target would require legislation, which despite the government’s 80-strong majority would be unlikely to pass. The likelihood of the Conservatives campaigning in the next general election on an explicit platform of abandoning net zero is also small, as public opinion is strongly in favour of climate action.
What worries proponents of climate action is less any overt move from the next Tory leader to renege on net zero than the possibility – perhaps a probability, in the case of some candidates – that the target will be allowed to moulder on the policy scrapheap.
Full story
Craig Mackinlay MP chairs the Parliamentary Net Zero Scrutiny Group
8) Rupert Darwall: The next Tory leader should commit to ditching Net Zero
The Spectator, 16 July 2022
The Conservative party faces a choice: either it is the party of net zero or it is the party of low taxes. It cannot be both. Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch both appeared to recognise this.
‘We’re all Keynesians now,’ Richard Nixon reportedly said in 1971 before ushering in a decade of high inflation. In the twilight of his premiership, Boris Johnson’s chief political legacy to the Conservative party is likely to be cakeism – the political philosophy that denies the existence of trade-offs and asserts you can have it all. And nowhere does that apply more than his embrace of net zero, which has been embraced by virtually all the Tory leadership candidates.
Cakeism is the antithesis of Thatcherism, which was about the politics of making hard choices. Cakeism also represents the negation of strategy. In his famous 1996 paper ‘What is strategy?’ the management guru Michael Porter wrote, ‘Without trade-offs, there would be no need for choice and thus no need for strategy.’ The absence of strategy and the discipline of making choices is the reason why the outgoing prime minister’s former policy adviser Dominic Cummings compared Johnson to an out-of-control shopping trolley. Strategy gives a government coherence and a sense of purpose. It tells voters what the government stands for and helps explain its policy choices. Without a strategy, governments appear adrift and purposeless. Cakeism is the underlying cause of Boris Johnson’s political demise.
On climate and net zero, cakeism reigns supreme. It comes in the form of the claim that we can decarbonise the economy and have strong growth economic growth and rising living standards all at the same time. In an important article earlier this week, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, notes Britain’s ‘dreadful’ economic performance caused by a longer-term stagnation in productivity and incomes. Yet Wolf also argues that investment in renewable energy and accelerating the decarbonisation of the economy will boost productivity. The evidence suggests otherwise. In 2021, output per hour of the energy sector was 42 per cent lower than its peak in 2003. This is worse than stagnation. It represents a massive productivity contraction. It’s fair to say that when it comes to net zero, we’re all cakeists now.
Wind and solar energy are inherently inefficient ways of generating electricity. They are low density, which means they require vast amounts of capital to produce and transmit the same amount of electricity as traditional power stations. Plus, they are intermittent, so investment and staffing of parallel generating capacity are needed to keep the lights on. Wind and solar might reduce emissions of carbon dioxide – much depends on the parallel capacity running in the background – but this is not cost free. Growing crops to turn into biofuels is also highly inefficient, as is shipping wood pellets across the Atlantic to exploit a carbon accounting loophole that zero-rates their emissions. None of these things boosts productivity and raises living standards. All of them stunt the economy’s growth potential.
The former Chancellor Rishi Sunak is positioning himself as the grown-up in the race to succeed Johnson. Unlike his rivals pledging immediate tax cuts, Sunak says he’ll cut them when – not if – inflation has fallen. This plausible sounding promise defies past experience. In the mid-1990s, two of his predecessors, Norman Lamont and Ken Clarke, had to present a series of tax raising budgets after inflation had been brought under control. The other side of the inflation hump could well reveal a vista of considerably larger deficits, as happened in the early 1990s.
Economic growth is therefore essential to maintaining fiscal sustainability and enabling a Conservative chancellor to cut tax rates and fund increased public spending. Productivity growth is the only sustainable answer to the cost-of-living crisis. By contrast, net zero guarantees the continuation of Britain’s dismal productivity record which, since 2008, has seen Britain as the worst performing member of the G7 other than Italy.
Sunak says he will run the economy like Mrs Thatcher. But pursuing net zero is not a growth strategy; it is, to borrow from Michael Porter, a choice not to prioritise economic growth. The structural adjustments required of net zero are colossal and will involve pain, particularly for people on low incomes and those losing their jobs in the transition.
At last year’s Glasgow climate conference, Sunak announced that the government will force companies to publish net zero transition plans. According to the Treasury website, Sunak’s plan for the financial system will see the government overseeing financing flows to ensure support for the shift to net zero, in effect, socialising people’s savings. He imposed a windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas production, which oil executives told him will undermine attempts to attract fresh investment to Britain.
The Conservative party faces a choice: either it is the party of net zero or it is the party of low taxes. It cannot be both. Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch both appeared to recognise this.
Braverman, before she was ousted in the contest, argued that Britain should suspend ‘the all-consuming desire’ to achieve net zero to tackle the energy crisis. Badenoch has gone further, saying that net zero overburdens the economy and there are better ways of doing things. At least the leadership election has revealed that not all Conservatives are cakeists. If it is to restore its reputation as the party of low taxes, it is the non-cakeists who represent their party’s future.
The financial transfer planned by Sellering is politically and legally sensitive. US President Joe Biden had instructed his administration to impose punitive measures against Nord Stream 2 the day before the war broke out. To this day, they are directed against private companies that continue to maintain business relationships with the Swiss Gazprom subsidiary.
Against this background, the Climate Foundation will find it difficult to find a financial institution that will transfer the millions to accounts associated with the sanctioned company. However, if Sellering does not succeed in repaying the amount, there is a risk of a year-long legal dispute.
After the pipeline project was stopped, Nord Stream 2 is in acute danger of insolvency. A grace period runs until mid-September, during which a trustee will check whether rescue is possible. A Swiss lawyer told WELT AM SONNTAG that he could not provide any information on the claims against the climate foundation.
Sellering, in turn, reports that talks are being held with Nord Stream 2 to cut all connections. The aim is a “release agreement”. So far, however, it has “not yet been clarified” whether the foundation is “hindered by sanctions law” from transferring the money.
The facts that have now become known show how closely the climate foundation set up by the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Nord Stream 2 - which was ultimately controlled by the Kremlin - were intertwined. This applies above all to the foundation's business operations, which are to be completed by the end of September.
It was set up in early 2021 to complete the construction of the pipeline threatened by US sanctions. Sellering had long dismissed questions about how the company worked. The former SPD politician told the news portal T-Online at the beginning of the year that it was a matter of countering "attempts at intimidation contrary to international law" from Washington. That would "not be the subject of public discussion".
In the meantime, Sellering has had to provide this editorial team with detailed insights into the economic business operations on several occasions. He concluded 119 contracts with 80 service providers and suppliers, for example about “helicopter crew transport” or “pre-commissioning services in Russia”. At the same time, eight machines were purchased, including the "Blue Ship", a large special ship for rock placement.
Translation Net Zero Watch
2) Martin Lewis compares UK to the Titanic as it approaches iceberg of 'cataclysmic' energy price rises
Wales Online, 13 July 2022
'Everything I am saying right now is deliberate and deliberately provocative in an attempt to ring a national alarm about what is coming this winter'
The UK is approaching energy bill rises in the same way the Titanic approached the iceberg
Martin Lewis warned energy prices will rise to 'catastrophic levels' when the price cap goes up again in October. He compared the UK to the Titanic approaching an iceberg as he said he was duty-bound to warn people of what was ahead of us.
The money saving expert was speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live about the impact a predicted energy price cap rise up to £3,244 in October would have. He said speed was of the essence if we wanted to stop people dying this winter, which he said was a "plausible and realistic outcome" of the "hideous" cost rises we will see.
Speaking to presenter Nihal Arthanayake, he said: "When you are on the deck of a ship and you see it heading into an iceberg. If you believe that's what's going to happen, you are duty-bound to ring the alarm.
"And everything I am saying right now is deliberate, and deliberately provocative, in an attempt to ring a national alarm about what is coming this winter.
"I believe we need to ring that alarm because we need, both as individuals to know it's coming so we can try and protect ourselves as much as we can, and we need the state actors to do what they can to try and protect people.
"By ringing that alarm loudly, by using words such as catastrophic or cataclysmic, by talking about this in the number of lives that will be lost, I hope I am raising that alarm.
"What I would dearly love is to be proved completely wrong because the warnings I have given meant the preventative measures are put in place that this is nowhere near as bad as I think it was."
And if people eventually said he was scaremongering and it was the end of his career, he said "so be it."
Martin also said 'warm spaces' would need to be made available in public places such as libraries or universities this winter where people are invited to spend time and keep warm because they can't afford their own heating.
Mr Lewis has told his followers on Twitter that the cap is now expected to go up by 64 per cent in October, which could see Brits spending £3,244 a year on their bills. It comes after Ofgem predicted in May that the October cap would rise to around £2,800.
The latest estimates come from Cornwall Insight, one of the country’s premier energy consultancies, and are based on what an average household spends on gas and electricity in a year. Cornwall also predicted that the price cap could go up by another £360 more than previously thought in January.
Wales Online, 13 July 2022
'Everything I am saying right now is deliberate and deliberately provocative in an attempt to ring a national alarm about what is coming this winter'
The UK is approaching energy bill rises in the same way the Titanic approached the iceberg
Martin Lewis warned energy prices will rise to 'catastrophic levels' when the price cap goes up again in October. He compared the UK to the Titanic approaching an iceberg as he said he was duty-bound to warn people of what was ahead of us.
The money saving expert was speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live about the impact a predicted energy price cap rise up to £3,244 in October would have. He said speed was of the essence if we wanted to stop people dying this winter, which he said was a "plausible and realistic outcome" of the "hideous" cost rises we will see.
Speaking to presenter Nihal Arthanayake, he said: "When you are on the deck of a ship and you see it heading into an iceberg. If you believe that's what's going to happen, you are duty-bound to ring the alarm.
"And everything I am saying right now is deliberate, and deliberately provocative, in an attempt to ring a national alarm about what is coming this winter.
"I believe we need to ring that alarm because we need, both as individuals to know it's coming so we can try and protect ourselves as much as we can, and we need the state actors to do what they can to try and protect people.
"By ringing that alarm loudly, by using words such as catastrophic or cataclysmic, by talking about this in the number of lives that will be lost, I hope I am raising that alarm.
"What I would dearly love is to be proved completely wrong because the warnings I have given meant the preventative measures are put in place that this is nowhere near as bad as I think it was."
And if people eventually said he was scaremongering and it was the end of his career, he said "so be it."
Martin also said 'warm spaces' would need to be made available in public places such as libraries or universities this winter where people are invited to spend time and keep warm because they can't afford their own heating.
Mr Lewis has told his followers on Twitter that the cap is now expected to go up by 64 per cent in October, which could see Brits spending £3,244 a year on their bills. It comes after Ofgem predicted in May that the October cap would rise to around £2,800.
The latest estimates come from Cornwall Insight, one of the country’s premier energy consultancies, and are based on what an average household spends on gas and electricity in a year. Cornwall also predicted that the price cap could go up by another £360 more than previously thought in January.
3) Tory hopeful Kemi Badenoch refuses to accept 'damaging' Net Zero target
Metro News, 15 July 2022
Kemi Badenoch was the only Tory candidate saying she would not commit to the current net-zero pledge.
(Left-right) Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and Tom Tugendhat at the television debate for the candidates for leadership of the Conservative party. Victoria Jones/PA Wire
Trans rights, the net-zero carbon target, and whether Boris Johnson is honest were key talking points during the first Tory leadership debate.
Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch clashed over Ms Mordaunt’s stance on gender identity, while former chancellor Rishi Sunak took aim at the other candidates over their ‘fairytale’ tax cut plans. [...]
Kemi Badenoch was the only candidate saying she would not commit to the current net-zero pledge.
The Government is currently working towards a target to cut carbon emissions to zero by 2050.
While the other four candidates said they would still work towards this deadline as prime minister, Ms Badenoch said she would not.
She dismissed international environment minister Lord Goldsmith’s warning that it would be ‘political suicide’ to drop the 2050 net zero target.
She said: ‘I think he’s wrong.
‘The pledge was made in 2018 for 2050, none of us are going to be here as politicians in 2050, it’s very easy to set a target you are not going to be responsible and accountable for when the time comes.
‘The important thing is to make sure that we do this in a sustainable way.
‘Many of the things we are doing could economically damage our country.’
Full story
4) Alok Sharma hints he could quit if new PM is ‘weak’ on Net Zero agenda
London Evening Standard, 17 July 2022
The Cabinet minister who led last year’s landmark UN climate change summit in Glasgow has indicated he could resign if the next prime minister is not fully committed to the net zero agenda.
Cop26 president Alok Sharma said that while it was “absolutely a leadership issue”, some of the remaining candidates in the Tory leadership race had been only “lukewarm”.
In an interview with The Observer, he urged them to “proactively” set out their support for the net zero agenda and “green” growth (sic).
“Anyone aspiring to lead our country needs to demonstrate that they take this issue incredibly seriously, that they’re willing to continue to lead and take up the mantle that Boris Johnson started off,” he said.
Asked if he could resign if candidates were weak on net zero, Mr Sharma said: “Let’s see, shall we? I think we need to see where the candidates are. And we need to see who actually ends up in No 10.
“I hope every candidate realises why this is so important for voters generally and why it’s important for Conservative supporters. And I hope that we will see, particularly with the final two, a very clear statement that this is an agenda that they do support.”
Pressed a second time, he added: “I don’t rule anything out and I don’t rule anything in.”
Of the five remaining candidates in the contest, only Kemi Badenoch has said she does not support the UK target of getting to net zero emissions by 2050, describing it as “unilateral economic disarmament”.
The others have indicated varying degrees of enthusiasm for the policy, which is unpopular with some sections of the party amid concerns about the impact on the economy.
On Friday, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said she would impose a temporary moratorium on the green levy on domestic energy bills, arguing there were better ways to achieve the net zero target.
London Evening Standard, 17 July 2022
The Cabinet minister who led last year’s landmark UN climate change summit in Glasgow has indicated he could resign if the next prime minister is not fully committed to the net zero agenda.
Cop26 president Alok Sharma said that while it was “absolutely a leadership issue”, some of the remaining candidates in the Tory leadership race had been only “lukewarm”.
In an interview with The Observer, he urged them to “proactively” set out their support for the net zero agenda and “green” growth (sic).
“Anyone aspiring to lead our country needs to demonstrate that they take this issue incredibly seriously, that they’re willing to continue to lead and take up the mantle that Boris Johnson started off,” he said.
Asked if he could resign if candidates were weak on net zero, Mr Sharma said: “Let’s see, shall we? I think we need to see where the candidates are. And we need to see who actually ends up in No 10.
“I hope every candidate realises why this is so important for voters generally and why it’s important for Conservative supporters. And I hope that we will see, particularly with the final two, a very clear statement that this is an agenda that they do support.”
Pressed a second time, he added: “I don’t rule anything out and I don’t rule anything in.”
Of the five remaining candidates in the contest, only Kemi Badenoch has said she does not support the UK target of getting to net zero emissions by 2050, describing it as “unilateral economic disarmament”.
The others have indicated varying degrees of enthusiasm for the policy, which is unpopular with some sections of the party amid concerns about the impact on the economy.
On Friday, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said she would impose a temporary moratorium on the green levy on domestic energy bills, arguing there were better ways to achieve the net zero target.
5) ‘Deeply worrying’: fears for UK’s Net Zero goal under new Tory leader
The Guardian, 15 July 2022
What worries proponents of climate action is less any overt move from the next Tory leader to renege on net zero than the possibility that the target will be allowed to moulder on the policy scrapheap.
When it comes to the future of the planet, the Tory leadership contest has got off to a dismal start. Rows erupted over the government’s flagship climate policy – the target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – almost as soon as Boris Johnson sagged back into No 10 after his resignation speech.
Several leadership candidates cast doubt on the net zero target, vowed to change it in some way, or took stances against some of the green policies needed to reach it. Several of these candidates have since been eliminated, and on Friday four of the five remaining candidates committed to preserving the net zero target, with only Kemi Badenoch still holding out.
However, campaigners believe the lack of enthusiasm for climate action among some MPs does not bode well for future action. A new prime minister could easily ascend to 10 Downing Street paying lip service to the net zero goal, while failing to push forward any of the concrete policies needed to achieve it.
Yet the target is vital not just for the UK, but for the world at a crucial time. Tackling the climate crisis was linked to tackling the cost of living crisis, as cutting emissions meant ending reliance on volatile fossil fuels, said Tom Burke, a veteran government adviser and co-founder of the E3G green thinktank. “They are closely linked. High gas prices are the problem; insulation is the quickest way to bring down bills,” he said.
The UK also risked missing out on economic opportunities, warned Nick Molho, of the Aldersgate Group, representing businesses with an interest in net zero. “This is about investment in industries, like steel, cement, chemicals, that will go elsewhere, go to competing countries, if it doesn’t come here,” he said.
Turning away from climate action would have global repercussions, as the UK currently holds the leadership of the UN climate talks, until Egypt takes over this November. Lord Adair Turner, a former chair of the committee on climate change and of the CBI employers’ organisation, who now chairs the Energy Transitions Commission, said: “It would be a catastrophic loss of international credibility, gained at [ Cop26 [climate summit] in Glasgow, to move away from our commitment to net zero. If the UK were to pull back on net zero, it would be a shock to our global reputation for consistent policy and for our responsibility in the world.”
Senior Tory figures understand the danger. “Economically, environmentally and electorally it would be a retrograde step for us to resile from this policy [of net zero]. It’s a road to nowhere,” warned Alok Sharma, the cabinet minister who presided over Cop26, in an interview with the i newspaper.
Theresa May, a former prime minister and chair of the Aldersgate Group of businesses, told a reception: “What we must remember is that whatever else happens, this is absolutely critical for the future of our planet, for the future of people’s lives and their jobs and their prosperity. And we must not take the foot off the accelerator at all.”
Voices across the political spectrum and beyond have joined in. Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, tried to keep the debate on a sound factual basis, holding a briefing in parliament on Monday on climate science. It was attended by only 70 MPs and peers.
Green campaigners, meanwhile, have pointed out that a strong majority of public opinion, in poll after poll, is firmly behind net zero policies and strong climate action, particularly in “red wall” seats that Labour will look to win back in the north of England, and blue wall seats where Liberal Democrats are challenging the Tories in the south. The latest Opinium poll this week found more than half of Conservative party members think the government is doing the right thing in acting on the climate crisis, or should be doing more.
Pat Venditti, the acting executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “Green policies could be the saving grace for any future leader. They’re hugely popular with voters, and will neatly tackle the urgent multiple crises we’re facing.”
Businesses have also weighed in, including household names such as Amazon, Coca-Cola, Unilever and Lloyds Banking Group – companies that would normally be assured a sympathetic hearing by the Conservative party – warning any dilution of the net zero target risked jobs and economic prosperity.
Eliot Whittington, the director of CLG UK, which organised a letter from businesses, said: “The Conservative party has a significant track record of climate leadership. Their new leader will have a choice between building on this track record and delivering for the UK economy and society, or abandoning it and condemning the country to fall behind on the energy transition and face unnecessary costs and risks.”
Yet despite these pleas and interventions, the row over net zero and the future of climate policy looks set to rage on as the Tory leadership contest spools out over the coming weeks, in ways that spell danger for the prospect of strong action on the climate in the crucial next few years, and with repercussions for many more years to come.
For many on the right of the Tory party, net zero has taken over where Brussels left off, as an object of hate and blame for the UK’s myriad ills. Lord Frost, the civil servant who negotiated Brexit and was elevated to the Lords by Johnson, has moved his focus from berating the EU to railing against the fracking ban and expanding North Sea gas. Similar calls to ditch net zero have risen from a chorus of Tory grandees, from Charles Moore, a former editor of the Telegraph, to the former party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith.
The prize for such agitators would be to make net zero a culture war issue, dividing the nation much as Brexit did, and gaining support for new fossil fuel exploration in the UK that they argue would bring down the cost of living, despite strong evidence to the contrary. Their model is the US, where almost all Democrats want action on the climate but only about half of Republican voters do, while Republican politicians stand firmly in the way of climate policies in Congress.
So for climate sceptics – “always a small minority within the party, but some of the candidates have come from that tradition” according to Sam Hall, of the Conservative Environment Network – the resignation of Johnson, a stout defender of green issues, offered an irresistible opportunity.
First to throw his hat in the ring, in an interview with the Guardian, was the arch-Brexiter and rightwinger Steve Baker, vowing to make reviewing net zero the key plank of his platform. It was a gesture without much chance of success, given his lack of experience and reputation as a fringe figure, but calculated as a challenge to other rightwing candidates to take a similar line.
Sure enough, Suella Braverman, the attorney general, took it up, announcing her own pledge to postpone net zero if not scrap it entirely, and Baker withdrew his challenge in order to endorse her. She was swiftly followed by Badenoch, the former levelling up minister standing on an “anti-woke” platform, who wants to change the net zero target in ways yet to be fully laid out. With Braverman now eliminated, many of her votes are expected to go to Badenoch.
Mark Lynas, a veteran environmentalist and co-founder of the RePlanet green campaign group, was aghast at the spectacle of so many candidates resiling from such a vital target. “It’s deeply worrying that the net zero commitment seems to be increasingly called into question by the right wing of the Tory party. Boris Johnson was no green, but the idea that we could have a minister who wants to ditch net zero is an appalling prospect,” he said. “As virtually the entire northern hemisphere bakes in unprecedentedly high temperatures, time is running out to avoid devastating climate impacts.”
Given this onslaught, it may seem a paradox, but the UK’s current climate target – to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – has probably never been more secure. None of the experts, inside and outside the Tory party, contacted by the Guardian thought there was any serious danger of its repeal.
Changing the target would require legislation, which despite the government’s 80-strong majority would be unlikely to pass. The likelihood of the Conservatives campaigning in the next general election on an explicit platform of abandoning net zero is also small, as public opinion is strongly in favour of climate action.
What worries proponents of climate action is less any overt move from the next Tory leader to renege on net zero than the possibility – perhaps a probability, in the case of some candidates – that the target will be allowed to moulder on the policy scrapheap.
Full story
6) Craig Mackinlay: Net Zero - the £3 trillion black hole in the Conservative leadership election
Sunday Express, 17 July 2022
How much will Net Zero end up costing us? This is the big question facing our country and it is the big question facing the Conservative leadership candidate.
We know that whoever wins will have to deal with the energy crisis both in supply and cost as a top item in their in-tray, while at the same time being bound by the legislative strait-jacket bequeathed to them to meet the Net Zero emissions target.
Having a solution to the utter mess that we have made of energy policy should be the number one question being posed to the contenders. But I am afraid it seems the big debate topic of Net Zero has only lightly been touched.
There have been some positive noises. Most of my colleagues now realise that getting energy prices down is the priority. What we now need is detail: a concrete plan that sets us free from the rigid pursuit of Net Zero and towards a more flexible approach that deals with the fundamental truths.
The reality is that building more wind turbines and devoting arable land to solar is not going to provide us with the reliable energy we need. The combination of the coal phase out and a failure to invest in nuclear has left us critically exposed to the price of gas. We should be doing everything we can to get the price of gas down, including lifting the senseless moratorium on shale gas extraction.
Two weeks before the new Prime Minister takes office, voters will learn from Ofgem the level of the new price cap from October. The news will be devastating. Some analysts are predicting that bills will go up by 65pc to £3,244 a year.
This is a catastrophe borne in significant part upon a naivety of trying to keeping energy prices down whilst forcing through ideological green targets which has restricted domestic supply. We have ended up with legislation that prioritises getting emissions down at the expense of people’s living standards and the export of high energy industries and jobs abroad.
Nevertheless, there is no need for a binary conversation that pits everyone as either ‘for’ or ‘against’ Net Zero. This is about having practical solutions to the immediate problem of sky-high energy prices, and in the long-term reducing emissions in a way that protects jobs and doesn’t harm Britain’s competitiveness. We all agree with these objectives, so let’s crack on and find solutions.
A report by the Office of Budget Responsibility put the cost of meeting Net Zero at £1.4 trillion, and the Climate Change Committee also put the gross cost at this level, although they believe it will be partly offset by benefits arising from the policy. Other organisations, such as National Grid and the Global Warming Policy Foundation, warn that the cost could be as high as or even in excess of £3 trillion.
Whoever you believe, these are mind-boggling numbers. This is the mighty elephant in the room stalking the candidates to be PM.
Right from the outset, climate change policy has been driven from the centre of Westminster, with barely a hint of dissent and no proper debate that deals substantially with some of the difficult trade-offs involved. Nor have the public been properly consulted about the big changes politicians are planning for their lives. The time has to be now for a genuine debate about Net Zero, or the Party will live to regret it.
Sunday Express, 17 July 2022
How much will Net Zero end up costing us? This is the big question facing our country and it is the big question facing the Conservative leadership candidate.
We know that whoever wins will have to deal with the energy crisis both in supply and cost as a top item in their in-tray, while at the same time being bound by the legislative strait-jacket bequeathed to them to meet the Net Zero emissions target.
Having a solution to the utter mess that we have made of energy policy should be the number one question being posed to the contenders. But I am afraid it seems the big debate topic of Net Zero has only lightly been touched.
There have been some positive noises. Most of my colleagues now realise that getting energy prices down is the priority. What we now need is detail: a concrete plan that sets us free from the rigid pursuit of Net Zero and towards a more flexible approach that deals with the fundamental truths.
The reality is that building more wind turbines and devoting arable land to solar is not going to provide us with the reliable energy we need. The combination of the coal phase out and a failure to invest in nuclear has left us critically exposed to the price of gas. We should be doing everything we can to get the price of gas down, including lifting the senseless moratorium on shale gas extraction.
Two weeks before the new Prime Minister takes office, voters will learn from Ofgem the level of the new price cap from October. The news will be devastating. Some analysts are predicting that bills will go up by 65pc to £3,244 a year.
This is a catastrophe borne in significant part upon a naivety of trying to keeping energy prices down whilst forcing through ideological green targets which has restricted domestic supply. We have ended up with legislation that prioritises getting emissions down at the expense of people’s living standards and the export of high energy industries and jobs abroad.
Nevertheless, there is no need for a binary conversation that pits everyone as either ‘for’ or ‘against’ Net Zero. This is about having practical solutions to the immediate problem of sky-high energy prices, and in the long-term reducing emissions in a way that protects jobs and doesn’t harm Britain’s competitiveness. We all agree with these objectives, so let’s crack on and find solutions.
A report by the Office of Budget Responsibility put the cost of meeting Net Zero at £1.4 trillion, and the Climate Change Committee also put the gross cost at this level, although they believe it will be partly offset by benefits arising from the policy. Other organisations, such as National Grid and the Global Warming Policy Foundation, warn that the cost could be as high as or even in excess of £3 trillion.
Whoever you believe, these are mind-boggling numbers. This is the mighty elephant in the room stalking the candidates to be PM.
Right from the outset, climate change policy has been driven from the centre of Westminster, with barely a hint of dissent and no proper debate that deals substantially with some of the difficult trade-offs involved. Nor have the public been properly consulted about the big changes politicians are planning for their lives. The time has to be now for a genuine debate about Net Zero, or the Party will live to regret it.
Craig Mackinlay MP chairs the Parliamentary Net Zero Scrutiny Group
7) Francis Mention: In the UK, some political movement on the climate scare
Manhattan Contrarian, 15 July 2022
It has long been my view that the whole climate scare thing will fade away and disappear once the costs and risks of the insane zero carbon agenda become clear to the voting public.
As much as I’ve been deeply involved in efforts to expose the fake “science” behind the scare, the science arguments so far have had very little success in convincing anyone, particularly anyone (and this is most people) who is subject to appeals to fear. But now, over in the UK, the costs and risks of pursuing an aggressive “climate” agenda are starting to hit home. And with the selection of a new Prime Minister now getting started, we can see the first glimmerings of political impact.
You might think that, since I am on the board of an organization that is an affiliate of a group based in the UK, I might have some special insights on where the PM race is going. In fact, what my UK contacts tell me is that the PM race is wide open, and anything could happen. But there is one remarkable thing, which is that suddenly it is no longer disqualifying to express skepticism about green orthodoxy. As of this writing, an actual overt skeptic — at least, a skeptic as to fossil fuel suppression — might even win; and whoever wins is likely at the minimum to start a quiet retreat from the existing Net Zero program.
Here in the U.S., we have had climate skepticism in the Republican Party for a good while, although only in the last several years — really, since the election of Trump in 2016 — has opposition to fossil fuel suppression become near universal among Republicans. (Recall that the Republican presidential candidates in both 2008, McCain, and 2012, Romney, were on board with fossil fuel suppression to “save the planet.”).
But in Europe, including the UK, it has been different. Even today, there is no major political party anywhere in Europe taking an avowedly skeptical position on anything relating to the climate alarm movement. This is true not just as to questioning the underlying “science,” such as it is, but also as to questioning the demanded mitigation measures of suppressing fossil fuels and building wind turbines and solar panels everywhere. There has been something as close to political unanimity on the issue as one ever sees.
In the UK, the push for Net Zero has been backed by all political parties. The first targets for greenhouse gas reductions were set by the Climate Change Act of 2008, when a Labor government was in power; but significantly more ambitious targets, including a legally-binding net zero commitment by 2050, were then adopted by amendments to that Act in June 2019, during a Conservative government led by Theresa May.
According to the BBC here, the amendments passed in Parliament on June 24, 2019 “without a single objection”:
It was a rare display of parliamentary unity that the government said would set a benchmark for the world to follow.
Boris Johnson then became Prime Minister the next month, July 2019, and, along with his cabinet, he has enthusiastically and aggressively pushed forward with the Net Zero agenda ever since, without significant opposition.
The ground really only began to shift in the latter part of 2021, as prices for fossil fuels including oil and natural gas began an increase that has continued since. The UN COP 26 climate conference in Glasgow in October was the catalyst for the first steps to form a Parliamentary group to question the aggressive Net Zero program. Then on January 1, 2022 five members of Parliament came into the open with a letter to the Telegraph newspaper (behind paywall) calling for action in light of impending massive increases in household energy bills. In a piece on March 3, 2022, the BBC interviewed Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay on the subject of how the group came to be formed:
"Mr Mackinlay and the net zero rebels were alarmed by "some of the more outlandish and unachievable proposals" being put forward. "There were so many daft policies being proposed that would make Britain colder and poorer," he said. "We thought it was time to have a proper debate about these things."
As of March, the BBC said that there were approximately 19 MPs in the group, which had taken the name Net Zero Scrutiny Group. At that time, the war in Ukraine had just begun, accompanied by an additional large spike in energy prices, to which the UK had been left completely vulnerable by, among other things, a total ban drilling for oil or natural gas by means of fracking. Energy prices to consumers, which had been suppressed by price controls for several months, then were allowed to approximately double in April, and further large increases are expected later in the year, which will take energy prices to consumers to triple or more where they were at the start of 2022. There are currently approximately 50 or more members of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group in Parliament.
And now on to the race for Prime Minister. Since the Conservatives hold a majority of seats in the Parliament, the race is held within the Conservative party on rules that it sets internally. The rules call for multiple preliminary rounds, where the voters are the Conservative MPs. In each round, a higher number of votes is required to make it to the next round, until finally the number of candidates is reduced to two. The final two will then go to a vote of the full “membership” of the Conservative party, something of which we do not have an analog here in the U.S. I understand that there are around 180,000 “members” of the Party.
As of today, after two rounds of voting have been completed, and several candidates eliminated, here are the remaining contenders:
Rishi Sunak, until a week ago Chancellor of the Exchequer. (He resigned just before Johnson resigned.)
Liz Truss, current Foreign Secretary.
Penny Mordaunt, former Defense Secretary under Theresa May who has since held lower-level cabinet positions.
Kemi Badenoch, former “Equalities Minister” (yes, they have such a thing).
Tom Tugendhat, a back-bench member considered a “moderate.”
Of the five, Badenoch has given strong signals that she is not on board with the Net Zero program, primarily because of its cost. Launching her campaign, she gave an interview with the Telegraph, quoted here in Business Green,:
"Badenoch insisted she was "not someone who doesn't believe in climate change", but she argued it was "wrong of us to set a target without having a clear plan of the cost and knowing what it would entail. . . . "Setting an arbitrary target like that is the wrong way to go… There is a better way of going about these things," she added.
Badenoch is also running as the “anti-woke” candidate. She was born in London of Nigerian parents, and grew up mostly in Nigeria. She was initially considered an outsider and total long-shot, but has survived two rounds of balloting so far. Here is a picture:
Meanwhile, the other candidates have been much quieter on their positions as to Net Zero. But Mordaunt and Truss have been talking up tax cut proposals, which one might say are inconsistent with massive government spending to promote Net Zero. And according to the BBC March 3 piece, Sunak has “pushed for six new North Sea oil and gas fields to be given licences this year.”
Reality takes hold ever so slowly. I would suggest to my Conservative friends in the UK that the abandonment of Net Zero is inevitable, and they need a leader who can take them through that process without being embarrassed about it, and who can proudly stand up and accuse the other side of seeking to impoverish the middle class.
Meanwhile, Badenoch is my candidate.
Manhattan Contrarian, 15 July 2022
It has long been my view that the whole climate scare thing will fade away and disappear once the costs and risks of the insane zero carbon agenda become clear to the voting public.
As much as I’ve been deeply involved in efforts to expose the fake “science” behind the scare, the science arguments so far have had very little success in convincing anyone, particularly anyone (and this is most people) who is subject to appeals to fear. But now, over in the UK, the costs and risks of pursuing an aggressive “climate” agenda are starting to hit home. And with the selection of a new Prime Minister now getting started, we can see the first glimmerings of political impact.
You might think that, since I am on the board of an organization that is an affiliate of a group based in the UK, I might have some special insights on where the PM race is going. In fact, what my UK contacts tell me is that the PM race is wide open, and anything could happen. But there is one remarkable thing, which is that suddenly it is no longer disqualifying to express skepticism about green orthodoxy. As of this writing, an actual overt skeptic — at least, a skeptic as to fossil fuel suppression — might even win; and whoever wins is likely at the minimum to start a quiet retreat from the existing Net Zero program.
Here in the U.S., we have had climate skepticism in the Republican Party for a good while, although only in the last several years — really, since the election of Trump in 2016 — has opposition to fossil fuel suppression become near universal among Republicans. (Recall that the Republican presidential candidates in both 2008, McCain, and 2012, Romney, were on board with fossil fuel suppression to “save the planet.”).
But in Europe, including the UK, it has been different. Even today, there is no major political party anywhere in Europe taking an avowedly skeptical position on anything relating to the climate alarm movement. This is true not just as to questioning the underlying “science,” such as it is, but also as to questioning the demanded mitigation measures of suppressing fossil fuels and building wind turbines and solar panels everywhere. There has been something as close to political unanimity on the issue as one ever sees.
In the UK, the push for Net Zero has been backed by all political parties. The first targets for greenhouse gas reductions were set by the Climate Change Act of 2008, when a Labor government was in power; but significantly more ambitious targets, including a legally-binding net zero commitment by 2050, were then adopted by amendments to that Act in June 2019, during a Conservative government led by Theresa May.
According to the BBC here, the amendments passed in Parliament on June 24, 2019 “without a single objection”:
It was a rare display of parliamentary unity that the government said would set a benchmark for the world to follow.
Boris Johnson then became Prime Minister the next month, July 2019, and, along with his cabinet, he has enthusiastically and aggressively pushed forward with the Net Zero agenda ever since, without significant opposition.
The ground really only began to shift in the latter part of 2021, as prices for fossil fuels including oil and natural gas began an increase that has continued since. The UN COP 26 climate conference in Glasgow in October was the catalyst for the first steps to form a Parliamentary group to question the aggressive Net Zero program. Then on January 1, 2022 five members of Parliament came into the open with a letter to the Telegraph newspaper (behind paywall) calling for action in light of impending massive increases in household energy bills. In a piece on March 3, 2022, the BBC interviewed Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay on the subject of how the group came to be formed:
"Mr Mackinlay and the net zero rebels were alarmed by "some of the more outlandish and unachievable proposals" being put forward. "There were so many daft policies being proposed that would make Britain colder and poorer," he said. "We thought it was time to have a proper debate about these things."
As of March, the BBC said that there were approximately 19 MPs in the group, which had taken the name Net Zero Scrutiny Group. At that time, the war in Ukraine had just begun, accompanied by an additional large spike in energy prices, to which the UK had been left completely vulnerable by, among other things, a total ban drilling for oil or natural gas by means of fracking. Energy prices to consumers, which had been suppressed by price controls for several months, then were allowed to approximately double in April, and further large increases are expected later in the year, which will take energy prices to consumers to triple or more where they were at the start of 2022. There are currently approximately 50 or more members of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group in Parliament.
And now on to the race for Prime Minister. Since the Conservatives hold a majority of seats in the Parliament, the race is held within the Conservative party on rules that it sets internally. The rules call for multiple preliminary rounds, where the voters are the Conservative MPs. In each round, a higher number of votes is required to make it to the next round, until finally the number of candidates is reduced to two. The final two will then go to a vote of the full “membership” of the Conservative party, something of which we do not have an analog here in the U.S. I understand that there are around 180,000 “members” of the Party.
As of today, after two rounds of voting have been completed, and several candidates eliminated, here are the remaining contenders:
Rishi Sunak, until a week ago Chancellor of the Exchequer. (He resigned just before Johnson resigned.)
Liz Truss, current Foreign Secretary.
Penny Mordaunt, former Defense Secretary under Theresa May who has since held lower-level cabinet positions.
Kemi Badenoch, former “Equalities Minister” (yes, they have such a thing).
Tom Tugendhat, a back-bench member considered a “moderate.”
Of the five, Badenoch has given strong signals that she is not on board with the Net Zero program, primarily because of its cost. Launching her campaign, she gave an interview with the Telegraph, quoted here in Business Green,:
"Badenoch insisted she was "not someone who doesn't believe in climate change", but she argued it was "wrong of us to set a target without having a clear plan of the cost and knowing what it would entail. . . . "Setting an arbitrary target like that is the wrong way to go… There is a better way of going about these things," she added.
Badenoch is also running as the “anti-woke” candidate. She was born in London of Nigerian parents, and grew up mostly in Nigeria. She was initially considered an outsider and total long-shot, but has survived two rounds of balloting so far. Here is a picture:
Meanwhile, the other candidates have been much quieter on their positions as to Net Zero. But Mordaunt and Truss have been talking up tax cut proposals, which one might say are inconsistent with massive government spending to promote Net Zero. And according to the BBC March 3 piece, Sunak has “pushed for six new North Sea oil and gas fields to be given licences this year.”
Reality takes hold ever so slowly. I would suggest to my Conservative friends in the UK that the abandonment of Net Zero is inevitable, and they need a leader who can take them through that process without being embarrassed about it, and who can proudly stand up and accuse the other side of seeking to impoverish the middle class.
Meanwhile, Badenoch is my candidate.
The Spectator, 16 July 2022
The Conservative party faces a choice: either it is the party of net zero or it is the party of low taxes. It cannot be both. Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch both appeared to recognise this.
‘We’re all Keynesians now,’ Richard Nixon reportedly said in 1971 before ushering in a decade of high inflation. In the twilight of his premiership, Boris Johnson’s chief political legacy to the Conservative party is likely to be cakeism – the political philosophy that denies the existence of trade-offs and asserts you can have it all. And nowhere does that apply more than his embrace of net zero, which has been embraced by virtually all the Tory leadership candidates.
Cakeism is the antithesis of Thatcherism, which was about the politics of making hard choices. Cakeism also represents the negation of strategy. In his famous 1996 paper ‘What is strategy?’ the management guru Michael Porter wrote, ‘Without trade-offs, there would be no need for choice and thus no need for strategy.’ The absence of strategy and the discipline of making choices is the reason why the outgoing prime minister’s former policy adviser Dominic Cummings compared Johnson to an out-of-control shopping trolley. Strategy gives a government coherence and a sense of purpose. It tells voters what the government stands for and helps explain its policy choices. Without a strategy, governments appear adrift and purposeless. Cakeism is the underlying cause of Boris Johnson’s political demise.
On climate and net zero, cakeism reigns supreme. It comes in the form of the claim that we can decarbonise the economy and have strong growth economic growth and rising living standards all at the same time. In an important article earlier this week, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, notes Britain’s ‘dreadful’ economic performance caused by a longer-term stagnation in productivity and incomes. Yet Wolf also argues that investment in renewable energy and accelerating the decarbonisation of the economy will boost productivity. The evidence suggests otherwise. In 2021, output per hour of the energy sector was 42 per cent lower than its peak in 2003. This is worse than stagnation. It represents a massive productivity contraction. It’s fair to say that when it comes to net zero, we’re all cakeists now.
Wind and solar energy are inherently inefficient ways of generating electricity. They are low density, which means they require vast amounts of capital to produce and transmit the same amount of electricity as traditional power stations. Plus, they are intermittent, so investment and staffing of parallel generating capacity are needed to keep the lights on. Wind and solar might reduce emissions of carbon dioxide – much depends on the parallel capacity running in the background – but this is not cost free. Growing crops to turn into biofuels is also highly inefficient, as is shipping wood pellets across the Atlantic to exploit a carbon accounting loophole that zero-rates their emissions. None of these things boosts productivity and raises living standards. All of them stunt the economy’s growth potential.
The former Chancellor Rishi Sunak is positioning himself as the grown-up in the race to succeed Johnson. Unlike his rivals pledging immediate tax cuts, Sunak says he’ll cut them when – not if – inflation has fallen. This plausible sounding promise defies past experience. In the mid-1990s, two of his predecessors, Norman Lamont and Ken Clarke, had to present a series of tax raising budgets after inflation had been brought under control. The other side of the inflation hump could well reveal a vista of considerably larger deficits, as happened in the early 1990s.
Economic growth is therefore essential to maintaining fiscal sustainability and enabling a Conservative chancellor to cut tax rates and fund increased public spending. Productivity growth is the only sustainable answer to the cost-of-living crisis. By contrast, net zero guarantees the continuation of Britain’s dismal productivity record which, since 2008, has seen Britain as the worst performing member of the G7 other than Italy.
Sunak says he will run the economy like Mrs Thatcher. But pursuing net zero is not a growth strategy; it is, to borrow from Michael Porter, a choice not to prioritise economic growth. The structural adjustments required of net zero are colossal and will involve pain, particularly for people on low incomes and those losing their jobs in the transition.
At last year’s Glasgow climate conference, Sunak announced that the government will force companies to publish net zero transition plans. According to the Treasury website, Sunak’s plan for the financial system will see the government overseeing financing flows to ensure support for the shift to net zero, in effect, socialising people’s savings. He imposed a windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas production, which oil executives told him will undermine attempts to attract fresh investment to Britain.
The Conservative party faces a choice: either it is the party of net zero or it is the party of low taxes. It cannot be both. Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch both appeared to recognise this.
Braverman, before she was ousted in the contest, argued that Britain should suspend ‘the all-consuming desire’ to achieve net zero to tackle the energy crisis. Badenoch has gone further, saying that net zero overburdens the economy and there are better ways of doing things. At least the leadership election has revealed that not all Conservatives are cakeists. If it is to restore its reputation as the party of low taxes, it is the non-cakeists who represent their party’s future.
9) How the West brought economic disaster on itself
Unheard, 11 July 2022
Financial analyst Louis Gave unpacks the West's self-made crisis
The starting point of any economy, according to financial analyst Louis Gave, is ‘energy transformed’. Without energy, producing anything becomes impossible. “The West has had 20 years of extreme good luck on this front”, he told Freddie Sayers in the UnHerd studio.
Between 2000 and 2011 China multiplied its coal production sevenfold and in 2011 the US shale revolution produced another 10 years of cheap energy. During these two decades, the American economy soared, but it did not last. The shale revolution started running on fumes, Gave tells us, and at the same time the West entered into two-front war.
On one front are sanctions against Russia responding to the invasion of Ukraine. In February, the EU cancelled long-term, favourable contracts which sent the West into an unprecedented energy crisis. Gave puts the hastiness of these decisions down to the pressures of social media activism, or what he calls the ‘something must be done’ attitude: “Confiscating the Russian oligarchs assets, that’s something. Tearing up long-term gas contracts, that’s something.”
At the same time, on the other front, the effects of the West’s war against climate change are being brought into sharp relief. In 2000, 86% of world energy needs were met by carbon. According to Gave, the West decided that climate change was such an existential threat that it “made it impossible to invest in carbon and poured money into solar and wind” instead. Much of the EU and US even forwent nuclear power, which was the reliable alternative.
Now both fronts are being fought at once, the West seems to have created the perfect conditions for its own economic crisis. For financial analysts like Gave, the real origins of the West’s economic downfall are almost entirely self-made.
Watch the full interview here
Unheard, 11 July 2022
Financial analyst Louis Gave unpacks the West's self-made crisis
The starting point of any economy, according to financial analyst Louis Gave, is ‘energy transformed’. Without energy, producing anything becomes impossible. “The West has had 20 years of extreme good luck on this front”, he told Freddie Sayers in the UnHerd studio.
Between 2000 and 2011 China multiplied its coal production sevenfold and in 2011 the US shale revolution produced another 10 years of cheap energy. During these two decades, the American economy soared, but it did not last. The shale revolution started running on fumes, Gave tells us, and at the same time the West entered into two-front war.
On one front are sanctions against Russia responding to the invasion of Ukraine. In February, the EU cancelled long-term, favourable contracts which sent the West into an unprecedented energy crisis. Gave puts the hastiness of these decisions down to the pressures of social media activism, or what he calls the ‘something must be done’ attitude: “Confiscating the Russian oligarchs assets, that’s something. Tearing up long-term gas contracts, that’s something.”
At the same time, on the other front, the effects of the West’s war against climate change are being brought into sharp relief. In 2000, 86% of world energy needs were met by carbon. According to Gave, the West decided that climate change was such an existential threat that it “made it impossible to invest in carbon and poured money into solar and wind” instead. Much of the EU and US even forwent nuclear power, which was the reliable alternative.
Now both fronts are being fought at once, the West seems to have created the perfect conditions for its own economic crisis. For financial analysts like Gave, the real origins of the West’s economic downfall are almost entirely self-made.
Watch the full interview here
The London-based Net Zero Watch is a campaign group set up to highlight and discuss the serious implications of expensive and poorly considered climate change policies. The Net Zero Watch newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.netzerowatch.com.
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