Prime Minister Rishi Sunak
By Jo Nova
Was this the “Peak NetZero” moment for the British Isles?
Perhaps the threat of jailing people for owning the wrong fridge was a step too far?
On Monday the UK government was insisting the ban on petrol cars by 2030 would still go ahead. Today, in a rush, it’s been delayed 5 years, along with slowing down the forced push to get rid of gas boilers. About a fifth of all householders apparently won’t ever have to buy a wildly expensive heat pump they could not afford. (Shame the other four fifths will). People won’t be getting seven different recycling bins, taxes on meat, flying and new rules on car sharing, at least not yet. Here’s hoping they’ll get delayed forever.
Naturally the PM is insisting this is “not a short term decision aimed at winning the next election” — because in a democracy, that would be a terrible thing, right. Imagine trying to appeal to voters. The Sin of it!
Labor immediately promised to undo this travesty of allowing the public to choose whatever kind of car they want for another five years. Which is good news. If Rishi Sunak really does this, and the election becomes “a climate vote”, the people of the UK might get a choice.
We know this is step in the right direction because Al Gore, Greenpeace and the Grantham institute people have already said they don’t like it.
h/t MrGrimNasty, and NetZeroWatch
Rishi Sunak takes axe to Tory net zero plans warning current 2030 target would cost families £15,000:
PM waters down ban on gas boilers and petrol and diesel cars, scraps plans for seven bins per home and says there will be no extra tax on flights or meat
The Prime Minister hosted a Downing Street press conference to confirm plans to delay a ban on new petrol and diesel car sales by five years to 2035. And about a fifth of all households will be covered by an ‘exemption’ from ever having to remove their gas boiler and replace it with a heat pump.
‘We are not going to save the planet by bankrupting the British people.’
— Home Secretary Suella Braverman, Sky News
NetZeroWatch welcomes this and points out it was inevitable given the retreat in other nations and the impossibility of it all:
Net Zero Watch has long warned that current Net Zero plans are astronomically costly, technologically impossible and politically unsustainable. As European governments have begun to retreat from their own Net Zero plans, it was just a question of time before the UK, which has even more utopian targets, had to make a U-turn, and return to the path of economic and technological realism.
A few small truths come out…
‘Unacceptable costs’: Britain delays petrol car ban, weakens net-zero targets
Sydney Morning Herald
Sunak, who said governments “of all stripes” had not been “honest with the public” about the costs of net-zero…
He said the debate around climate change had been charged with “too much emotion and not enough clarity” and that the approach should shift to “consent, not imposition, honesty not obfuscation, pragmatism not ideology.”
“If we continue down this path, we risk losing the consent of the British people and the resulting backlash would not just be against specific policies, but against the wider mission itself,” he said.
What consent do they risk losing? The fake one created with ambiguous polls, loaded questions and by calling people “deniers”?