Institute of Economic Affairs 
Does the drive to net zero punish the poorest in society? Is maintaining the 2050 target unrealistic considering the growing threat to energy security? Or is net zero the only way to combat climate change and would the economic, social, and environmental costs be far greater if we abandoned the policy?
Speakers:
Emily Carver (Chair), Head of Media, Institute of Economic Affairs
Bim Afolami MP
Steve Baker MP
Soumaya Keynes, Britain Economics Editor, The Economist
Andy Mayer, COO and Energy Analyst, Institute of Economic Affairs
Rt Hon Chris Skidmore MP, Member of Parliament for Kingswood
source
About The Author
iđCO2, you should too
FACT: deep oceans, where any extra thermal energy eventually resides, are warming at 0.002C per year [sic]. the IPCC obscure this in their latest assessment report by changing the units to YotaJoules which sound a lot scarier. there is no problem for at least several centuries. it is called thermal lag and is observed in the Vostok ice cores.
Without a government that has the political will to put forward a sound energy policy based on what was discussed here, not only can we not afford it but it is completely unachievable. A sound energy policy has to provide reliable and cheap energy for domestic, business and industrial users. Green levies, carbon taxes prices, ESG investment guidelines and a failure to invest will all prevent that. Reliable and cheap energy has to be fossil fuel based until there are sufficient nuclear power station, be they PWR, SMR, MSR or even fusion. But what about wind and solar? Not reliable and they will always require a back up, always. That backup will always be gas or coal, until sufficient nuclear power comes on stream.
I have to say that the suggestion of solving climate change by balancing what we take out of the ground by what we emit is ludicrous. An easier way to describe it may be that Climate Change is really the altering of the planets climate from very cold, such as an ice age, through warming, to climates such as the one we get now. There have been varying climate on planet in the last few centuries alone, from the medieval warm period, the little ice age, to today's, warmer period.
What Andy Mayer is describing is more like pollution, if his description was true, then how do you explain changes in the climate prior to the industrial revolution? It is utterly misleading. If he thinks he can solve climate change then he is talking about maintaining a single, unchangeable climate on a planet wide scale which takes no account of the warming effect of the sun, of solar flares or any other solar event.
BP funded fossil fuel lobby group misleads the public as usual
Net zero watch is a fossil fuel lobby group. Their claims are either cherry picked or flat out misleading. Deloitte says failure to reach the net zero target will result in global climate change damage costs of 178 trillion dollars by 2070. Net zero comes with benefits of 43 trillion dollars by 2070.
Steve Baker misleads. It doesn't need to be a high emissions scenario to be highly damaging. Even mid level scenarios have significant damaging impacts and remember that Steve wants to expand fracking and gas extraction which increase emissions of methane massively, methane being a very strong greenhouse gas.
If Greg really wants to feed more people then stop eating meat. It pushes up food prices and if everyone shifted to a plant-based diet we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%. Global hunger would end.
You can leave a whatsapp group even if your are the admin, you just give the admin rights to someone else. If that didn' thappen the first person you added becomes admin anyway. Is it true Steve Baker doesn't know this or is he misleading people?
Why is everyone here pro Net Stupid Zero , its like a Labour Forum
As the UK emisions are less than 1% of the worlds emissions, even if we were to achieve net zero, it wouldn't make any difference. The world needs to focus on the big culprits such as China, India etc…
Who funds you ? Where can we find out who your donors are and what you are promoting on their behalf ?
Regarding wind and our coastlines. We are utilising them. We opened the worlds biggest wind farm, and will also be opening an even bigger one in next 5 years. But, these things cost money and take a lot of time – the idea that wind is cheap is only true if you donât include the extremely high costs involved in building infrastructure. The factory alone that produces the monopiles for SeAH cost ÂŖ300m (overseas investment too) and at best can only produce 150 monopiles per year. The other issue is that coastal towns tend be deprived/disadvantaged and therefore suffer from skilled labour shortages. Furthermore itâs hard to attract people to work in these places because theyâre not nice places to live. We have a huge issue in Teesside where 73% of the 100,000 jobs created over the last ten years have required a level 4 or above. Meanwhile, less than a third of the local population possess this level of educational attainment. The issue is far more complicated than âwe just need to use wind because itâs cheapâ. People need to wake up and start living in reality.
asteroids, spaceship….this shows how non-sensical disillutional lefties are.
Can we not afford net zero ? – floods are getting more frequent and severe in the country while the budget for flood defences is being cut due to inflation and budget cuts by the government.