Net Zero is the New Brexit

Net Zero is the new Brexit, “where Parliament is so hopelessly out of touch with the country”, Nigel Farage has said. The Telegraph‘s Michael Deacon agrees: as people realise the true cost of eco-zealotry they are turning against it. Here’s an excerpt.

Nigel Farage would have been well suited to the job [of newspaper editor], because he possesses an almost uncannily sharp news sense. That is, he has a special knack for identifying issues that matter to ordinary people yet have been missed or dismissed by those who grandly assume they know better. Free movement, for example, or the small boats. He was banging on about these problems long before most of his rivals grasped the true scale of their salience. In short: like an experienced editor, he always seems to know what the next big story is going to be.

All of which is why I think it would be a grave mistake for his opponents to ignore his latest comments about Net Zero. Speaking to the Sun on Sunday, Mr Farage said: “This could be the next Brexit, where Parliament is so hopelessly out of touch with the country.”

The Reform leader’s foes seem convinced that, in fact, he’s the one who’s out of touch. Look at the polls, they scoff. According to the Observer, “Polling experts believe the attacks on Net Zero could backfire on Reform”, because “the policy is overwhelmingly supported by the public”.

Hmm. I wouldn’t be so sure. Many people may indeed have told pollsters that they support Net Zero. But are we quite certain that they meant it?

Personally, I tend to feel that, if you really want to know whether the public supports Net Zero, the question to ask is not, “Do you support Net Zero?” Instead, the question to ask is: “To help achieve Net Zero, what sacrifices would you personally be willing to make? Would you be willing to give up flying? How much more would you be willing to pay in green taxes? Exactly how much poorer are you willing to be? And, given that Britain is responsible for less than 1% of the planet’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, how much difference do you think it would make to global temperatures even if this country somehow achieved Net Zero tomorrow? Oh, and before you answer: did you see the FT headline from February, which read: ‘China’s Construction of Coal-Fired Power Plants Reaches Highest in a Decade’?”

Even asking those questions, however, wouldn’t necessarily lead us to the truth. Because public opinion isn’t always what it seems.

For years before the EU referendum, polls consistently gave the impression that the British public had very little interest in the EU, one way or the other. A week before the 2015 general election, for example, Ipsos asked the public what it considered to be the most important issues facing Britain. The EU didn’t even make the top 10.

Yet, just a little over one year later, 17.4 million people voted to leave the EU. This suggests one of two things. Either a very large number of voters had always held rather stronger views about the EU than they were willing to admit to pollsters. Or, once they were finally forced to consider the issue in real depth, they swiftly formed views that were an awful lot stronger than the ones they’d held before.

Worth reading in full.