Partygate has suggested that the prime minister has, shall we say, a flexible approach to the rule of law. The laws of physics, you would think, cannot be treated so carelessly – yet that is what is happening inside the Conservative party. There has been a relentless push by some MPs for the UK to abandon our climate targets and slow down, or even abandon, the transition to net zero emissions.
The goal of net zero by 2050 at the latest is not some fashionable green meme or virtue signalling by the comfortable middle classes. It is the measure we must take to keep the already painful and life-threatening impacts of climate change within the bounds of the manageable. This goal is shared not just by scientists and environmental campaigners but by 192 governments, more than 90 major banks and all of the world’s major investment managers.
Action on climate change is one of the few remaining areas where Britain has a credible claim to global leadership. Only three months ago, we were hosting the UN climate summit, Cop26, the most important international gathering in the UK for decades. We have set the pace in decarbonising our own economy and creating the global governance system to manage the response to the climate crisis. We have done so because it is in our national interest, as successive governments, Labour and Conservative, have recognised. We cannot ask other countries to aim for net zero if we abandon our commitment to it ourselves.
Yet that is just what the tiny group of Conservative MPs in the Net Zero Scrutiny Group are trying to make us do, in the latest salvo of their eccentric opposition to sound science. Led by Steve Baker and Craig Mackinlay and some of their faithful cheerleaders in the rightwing press, they are demanding the prime minister abandons the green levies that help finance Britain’s drive to net zero, out of apparent concern over soaring energy bills.
They are right to be worried about the impact of energy price rises on everyone in Britain, especially low-income households. The welfare of millions of people is at risk, potentially threatening social cohesion. But their crocodile tears about the impact on the least well-off would be more credible if their party’s action hadn’t contributed to the state we’re in, because the Conservative government’s decision to “get rid of all the green crap” a decade ago means that the UK’s energy bills are £2.5bn higher than they would otherwise have been.
Meanwhile, the Cameron government’s cut to energy-efficiency subsidies has had a dramatic effect on the programme to insulate Britain’s notoriously draughty housing stock. In 2012, over 1.5m homes in Britain had their lofts insulated, cutting energy bills and providing a large number of jobs all over the country. Last year, only 32,000 lofts were insulated. Scrapping the zero carbon homes standard, as the Conservatives did in 2015, has led to more than a million new homes being built to lower energy efficiency than they would otherwise have had, resulting in higher bills for those living in them.
There is something deeply confused about the Baker-Mackinlay attack on green levies as a burden on poorer people, when those levies have played a significant part in keeping energy bills down. Wind and solar generators in the last quarter of 2021, far from being a charge on bills, actually contributed £160m to lowering them. Furthermore, the MPs’ supposed concern for the least well-off in society didn’t stop them voting this month for a new “green” levy to finance nuclear power stations that will put bills up.
In any case, as has frequently been pointed out by energy experts, global gas prices are overwhelmingly responsible for the spike in energy bills, not green levies. Baker and Mackinlay and their ilk are paying more attention to energy lobbyists than the markets. Why else would they be arguing for more fracking or further North Sea gas investment, supposedly to drive bills down, when they know that any gas produced would sell at today’s global gas prices and simply feed windfall profits?
But there is a growing risk that in his efforts to keep his job the prime minister will be tempted to add green levies or Britain’s climate targets to the “red meat” being thrown to the Baker-Mackinlay groupuscule, to the concern of climate diplomats such as the architect of the Paris agreement, Laurence Tubiana.
The government would do better to take its ideological foot out of its mouth and keep its manifesto promise to spend £9bn of public money on the energy efficiency that would actually help consumers as well as the planet.
Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion
