In the final days of Theresa May’s premiership, the UK’s net-zero target, like the landmark 2008 Climate Change Act before it, entered the statute book with hardly any resistance.
Well-founded complaints were made that it did not match the pace and scale required to address climate breakdown, but, as in 2008, across parliament there appeared to be an underlying consensus that “something had to be done”. Outright climate-change denial was kept to a faint background hum.
Now, however, this consensus seems to be falling apart. Behind the scenes, a faction of Tory MPs is manoeuvring, Brexit-style, to systematically undermine the government’s stated climate efforts. With the Conservative party in meltdown, it looks like Britain’s net-zero policy is becoming just another political football to be kicked around the government backbenches.
Make no mistake, the UK government’s current stance on the climate falls gravely short of what’s needed. The “something” that must be done has always been a matter of contentious debate, with activists and experts despairing at Tory inadequacy. The Johnson government is hailed as world-leading in setting targets, but accused of only paying lip service to – rather than ensuring real policy dividends for – decarbonisation efforts.
But the newly formed Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) is launching an attack from the other end of the political spectrum. It reportedly has around 18 members in the Commons and is being run by dissident MPs Steve Baker and Craig Mackinlay, a Tory MP who was once the deputy leader of Ukip.
This is hardly the first time that small Tory factions have organised to upend a whole political agenda. The NZSG appears to be modelled on the European Research Group – also chaired by Baker – whose membership in the years leading up to the EU referendum never exceeded 26 MPs, but who successfully changed the shape of European politics. Just as with Brexit, Baker is gunning for an “enormous political explosion” around net zero.
The group rejects the characterisation that they are climate sceptics. Their focus is on blaming climate policy for the cost-of-living crisis, particularly soaring energy bills. They take climate “delayism” to extremes, not only arguing that we can act later, but that government should support the further exploitation of fossil fuels. Via the hashtag #CostofNetZero, members associated with the group have been making interventions across the media, calling to shelve the green levy on energy bills (which pays for insulation for those in fuel poverty and subsidises renewable energy).
This totally mischaracterises the energy crisis – which is ultimately a cost-of-gas crisis, meaning major corporations have reaped billions in profits. When we should be doubling down on climate measures, such as insulation and renewable energy, as well as a windfall tax on fossil fuel companies, the NZSG is pulling lines straight out of the climate denial playbook: spreading easily refutable claims about the cost of renewables and future of fossil fuels.
Their alternative solutions to the gas crisis? Antiquated proposals such as drilling for more North Sea oil and gas while bemoaning the phasing out of coal. Ultimately, anyone advocating for the continued use of oil and gas does not understand the threat that climate breakdown poses.
This climate cost conspiracy is being manufactured by both internal Tory agitators and the usual suspects on the populist right. Although Nigel Farage has “retired” from politics, he is throwing his weight behind the latest incarnation of the Brexit party, Reform UK. In a piece for the Telegraph earlier this month, he wrote about Reform’s lines of attack. Two of the three are familiar: Brexit and the arrival of asylum seekers. But the third is new – the net-zero strategy, he says, is supposedly placing the UK at “a significant disadvantage”.
We underestimate the Net Zero Scrutiny Group at our peril. These seemingly small configurations can hugely influence policy. Tiny cracks of “climate scepticism” have the ability to activate huge rifts in attempts to limit temperature rises to 2C.
Things are so bad that “greener” MPs in the Tory party have been forced to speak out. In a direct challenge to his colleagues, Chris Skidmore has set up a “Net Zero Support Group” to keep climate hopes alive; Alok Sharma has cautioned against delayed action on climate change; while Nick Fletcher and Richard Graham have written in favour of net zero. But there is yet to be a proper crackdown on climate delayism inside the governing party.
This is all compounded by the current fragility of Boris Johnson’s position. The prime minister’s perceived proximity to the net-zero strategy could mean MPs (such as those in the 100-strong Conservative Environment Network) are nervous to come out and make a strong case for net zero, lest it appear to be a vote of confidence in Johnson at this febrile time.
And the two frontrunners to replace him – Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss – have questionable green credentials at best. Johnson’s fall from power could represent an opportunity to make sure the UK’s decarbonisation strategy falls off the priority list altogether. Only recently, the Treasury floated that it is reviewing the green levy on energy bills, a move that could be read as Sunak throwing a bone to the NZSG.
The electorate care about climate breakdown, with concern at an all-time high last November during Cop26. But without rigorous myth-busting around the cause of high gas prices, and interventions that tackle the cost of living and emissions at the same time, the supposed “cost of net zero” could breed popular resentment that sets tackling the climate crisis even further back.
Activists and opposition parties should beware – we could be entering an era in which we are not just pushing to transform promises into action, but battling to get climate on to the agenda at all.
Eleanor Salter writes about climate, culture and politics
