Fears net zero is ‘next Brexit’ as oil crisis fuels political climate divide | Renewable energy
Could net zero be the “next Brexit”? That’s the fear that haunts climate advocates as the oil crisis caused by the war on Iran begins to bite.
A powerful coalition of the well-funded Reform Party led by Nigel Farage, the Conservative Party, some business interests and the UK’s right-wing media are on the offensive against the long-standing target of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Their main argument is that net zero worsens the oil crisis and yet drilling in the North Sea is the solution. Clear evidence that more North Sea oil will do nothing to reduce UK billsClimate action will reduce bills and protect the UK from future energy shocks.
Support for net zero remains strong among voters, with more than 60 percent backing climate action; Experts warn that the same techniques that won the Brexit referendum – albeit initially weakly – are now being applied to climate.
“These are mostly the same people [as those who campaigned for Leave] and they use similar arguments,” says Shaun Spiers, former chief executive of the Green Alliance think tank. “They blame climate action for everything that’s going wrong (cost of living, the economy) even though there’s clearly nothing to blame. They think it’s an easy target, it’s easy politics, and they present it. [scrapping the policies] as a panacea for people.”
James Meadway, director of think tank Verdant, added that Net zero may seem distant to people, which isn’t helpful. “Net zero, like the EU, is an idea that can seem big, vague, distant, technocratic and not easy to define,” he says. “People support it, they think it’s a good thing, but there’s a distance between net zero and how people live. It’s not something they think will impact them immediately.”
Even more worrying for the government is that while net zero challengers are outspoken and confident, supporters can appear weak. “This is what we saw with Remain during the Brexit debate, with advocates often reticent to speak positively about it,” says Luke Tryl, chief executive of the research group More in Common. “Some Labor politicians see net zero as a barnacle they are stuck with rather than a positive thing.”
Farage has made no secret of his intention to find a new dividing line on climate in British politics. HE He told the Sun on Sunday last year: “This could be the next Brexit where parliament is hopelessly disconnected from the country.” It is crucial to present net zero as an obsession of the “elites” against the interests of ordinary voters.
But people don’t see the climate that way, or at least they don’t currently. “People see many aspects of climate action as common sense, like renewable energy,” says Sam Alvis, deputy director of energy and environment at the Public Policy Research Institute think tank. “They want home-grown clean energy, it’s popular. There’s huge goodwill for climate action; UK people are actually very green.”
One problem, according to Tryl, is that climate is not currently a “salient” issue for voters, ranking eighth as a concern below more pressing day-to-day issues such as the cost of living and health. This is a big shift from a few years ago, when the UK successfully hosted the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021. More than half of people say the UK should meet its net zero target before 2050and the record-breaking summer of 2022, when temperatures rose above 40°C for the first time in the UK, ensured that climate remained among the top three concerns.
Alvis warns that voters who switch to Reform because they are convinced about their most salient concerns may later sway to Reform’s stance on other issues. “What Reformation is trying to do is draw people into their camp on issues like immigration and welfare,” he says. “Then they try to get them to adopt other positions on issues like climate. There’s evidence that this is happening.”
The cost of living has eclipsed long-term concerns, but the argument that climate action will cut bills (although made forcefully by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband) has yet to be heard so clearly from Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Whispers that Reeves wants to cut the North Sea windfall and encourage more drilling do not present a united front.
“I don’t remember the last time Reeves or Starmer spoke about support for net zero,” says Spiers. “They need to persuade people, and they need to do so both emotionally and rationally to talk about the threat of climate crisis, extreme weather and what avoiding them means for the UK.”
“If they [the most senior government politicians] “If action is taken, this could make a big difference,” says Alvis. “Messages only attract public attention when they are repeated consistently and consistently across government.”
Robbie MacPherson, a Kennedy scholar at Harvard University and former chair of the secretariat of parliament’s all-party climate group, adds that Labor has nothing to lose and everything to gain by going “all out” for net zero. “You have to show what the Labor Party stands for,” he argues.
“When you have a half-armed position, it increases popularity. People aren’t looking for half-assed politicians, they’re looking for people with authenticity. This government wins when it stays strong on what it believes in. Otherwise it has serious problems.”
