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There is a curious idea that makes the rounds to the right: this climate change is real, that it is caused by human activity, but that European countries cannot be significantly shaped if the world reaches zero net and is thus able to limit warming. Adding a new fear of the flight, Kemi Badenoch has chosen to use this week of heat waves to go to Stansted airport and criticize the “ideological” accent of the Labor government on the net zero.
What is unexpected in this line is that there is a good point in there somewhere. It may well be that, despite the major progress of solar and renewable energies, the world will not reach Zero in mid-century half-century. It may well be that small countries must accept that the battle against climate change is lost for the moment.
It is also true, as the OBR reiterated last week, that the costs of not reaching zero net are considerably higher than the costs of reaching it. If you think we will have to spend these much more important sums anywaySo it is not unreasonable to think that we have to prioritize the measures that decarbonize and adapt to a warmer world at the same time. (For example, the fact that the British government is currently granting subsidies to heat pumps, as long as these pumps cannot also provide air conditioning, is perverse.)
What these criticisms of Net Zero really seem to consider is not a world in which states pass to spend money on climate transition to more important expenses for adaptation and resilience, but in which we and the planet agree to put all this inconvenience behind us and spend money for either.
The world considered by Badenoch seems to be the one in which the United Kingdom accepts that it cannot comply with its zero net obligations, as well as that in which our Victorian infrastructure, all these buildings designed for moderate temperatures, manages, by the force of the will or another miracle, to hold very well, even if the climate changes.
You can have reasonable arguments on the combination of adaptation and attenuation policy is the right one. If you do not choose any attenuation, you always continue your own tail as climate change costs increase and increase. But without adaptation, you accept more and more summer like this, in which many people in Europe will die before their time due to excessive heat.
Regarding its impact on the future, climate change is the most important of the crises with which the world is confronted: but the magic thought that surrounds it can be found almost everywhere. Take the fact that most rich democracies have aging populations, with a share in narrowing of individuals of the working age. They also have public policy obligations, which were concluded when they were much younger countries, and from which there is no plausible political route. Even autocracies cannot escape the need to pay pensions and although democracies can find ways to finish what and how they pay, anyone thinks that “simply reducing” is a viable option if you want to keep power, laughs.
Like climate change, aging populations are something that obliges states to do things differently: they impose limits for the day’s politicians to reach and give them obligations.
It is this feeling of friction under unwanted obligations that makes politicians so eager to find a way to think about climate change. Most people do not go to politics because they want to manage crises – instead, they want crises because they sink the time and energy they prefer to spend on the reasons why they have gone to politics, whatever their thumb.
The reason why it is tempting to imagine that we can simply declare a net incompatible zero and moved on is that, for many politicians, it means being able to focus on what excites them, whether social policy or the economy or regulation. Likewise, ignoring the aging population allows you to postpone difficult conversations with your electorate or group on how, exactly, you will provide health care and well-being for all.
The problem is that neither the evolution of the climate nor the aging populations will expect politicians who prefer to think of something else. They will not carry out a speed that meets the desires of their electorates to avoid higher taxes and / or higher immigration. Authentic realism in politics is to recognize that you have to deal with the circumstances you are really confronted, not those you want. The truly “ideological” decision is to think that the pressures of our planet and our public finances can be deferred in favor of easier subjects and smaller challenges.
Stephen.bush@ft.com
