Kemi Badenoch is right to ditch calamitous net zero, writes Tim Newark. Repealing environmental laws could knock as much as £50,000 off the price of a new house and bring down food prices. It could also generate the kind of growth to fund her Iron Dome-style missile defence for the UK.
Plans to scrap green requirements
The fight-back against Labour’s net-zero tyranny began with Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith announcing at the Tory Party Conference plans to scrap the requirement for developers to install heat pumps and solar panels in new homes – amounting to some £30,000 per house – with further savings gained from not insisting on electric vehicle chargers and water efficiency rules.
Abolishing environmental quangos with radical agendas, such as Natural England and the failing Environment Agency, would free farmers from costly red tape. It would also save developers from ludicrously costly demands, such as the £100million bat preservation tunnel forced on the HS2 rail project.
Impact on housing and infrastructure
Natural England stands accused of blocking construction on 160,000 homes because of nutrient neutrality regulations to lower river pollution. It even imposed a £700million acoustic deterrent system at nuclear power station Hinckley Point C, which was estimated to save just one salmon every 12 years.
It is this kind of well-meaning but bonkers green legislation that is increasing the environmental “lawfare” that makes any building or infrastructure project in Britain so expensive and slow. With Labour still dithering about Heathrow expansion, a much-needed third runway at the airport would get full backing from the Tories.
Economic consequences and political divide
On top of this, Griffith has pledged to abolish Labour’s Grocery Tax on food packaging that has pushed up food inflation by 0.8% and is costing British retailers some £3billion a year. Re-opening North Sea gas and oil fields, plus moth-balled refineries, would certainly help to provide more diesel fuel in our domestic market, helping to bring down prices on most household goods. Ms Badenoch is backing this.
A Tory reversal of the suicidal net-zero project would help struggling energy-dependent industries, stem the deindustrialisation of the UK and kick-start growth across the entire economy. With policies like this, clear blue water is finally opening up between the Conservatives and Labour – long criticised as the “uni-party” by Nigel Farage.
A call to abandon net zero
From well-meaning roots, environmentalism has become a socialist racket where anti-capitalism has been rebranded as saving the world. Tory support for such policies stem in part from a 2012 book written by right-wing philosopher Roger Scruton, who argued that looking after our countryside should be a naturally conservative concern. It was about this time that former PM David Cameron jetted up to the Arctic Circle to show his concern for climate change. But later, faced with rising energy prices, he reputedly urged George Osborne to cut the “green crap”.
As PM Theresa May enshrined a legally binding target of net-zero by 2050. Embraced wholesale by Labour, this forced Britain on a suicidal path of carbon reduction that has meant de-industrialisation on a vast scale and given us some of the most expensive energy in the world.
The entire programme has been the most colossal example of virtue-signalling by a political elite that doesn’t care about the thousands of jobs lost because of net-zero. It has been utterly futile too, as Britain produces less than 1% of the world’s carbon emissions compared to the whopping 34% coming out of China who uses cheaper carbon energy to undercut our industries. And yet, our one-time energy minster Ed Miliband insisted on leading the world in de-carbonisation – as though anyone would care would we, as a declining industrial state, did. It’s not really the kind of international competition you want to win. And at the same time, the US, China and India are laughing all the way to the bank – drilling, fracking and burning coal and oil to superboost their economies. There is also an argument that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has led to a greening of the globe with longer growing seasons and increased harvests.
For all these reasons net-zero must be viewed as a defunct concept that should be binned before it does any more damage to Britain’s economy. Ms Badenoch is to be applauded for her stance. With time running out before Britain drifts into complete economic irrelevance, let’s hope our other political parties see sense too – and soon.
