Introduction

I wrote the following just after watching the BBC Conservative Leadership debate between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, which prompted me to finally start writing about the climate crisis. In that interview there was only one question on the climate and it focussed on what individuals can do rather than what politicians and governments can do. A ridiculous question, which rightly received lots of criticism.

So that’s why I wrote this, and here it is:

How will we reach these goals?

Reaching these climate goals is inevitably going to involve heavy state intervention in all areas, including business regulation to force companies to create and uphold climate pledges, possible nationalisation of energy networks in order to quickly cut oil and gas consumption and invest in green energy.

Green incentives

It will also involve green incentives to negate so-called “green premiums” - where picking the green option is more expensive and thus less accessible for millions of people. For example, picking plant-based food alternatives will require them to be at most the same price, if not less expensive, than their meat counterparts in order for consumers to meaningfully consider switching to them en masse.

Other green incentives involve making electric cars a cheaper and more convenient alternative to ICE cars. I will address both of these and more later.

How will we pay for it?

How will we pay for this level of public spending?

In part, borrowing. Return on investment for green investment will be huge in the long run, and definitely worth the cost. In fact, I cannot think of anything that is more important than this to spend on. The alternative of not spending this money at all, is not an alternative at all as we will miss all climate targets completely and irreparably destroy the planet, killing millions of people and pushing most of the world into absolute poverty in the process. So really, there is no choice to be made here. The first country to reach net zero will have new technologies and robust policies that they can point to as being a success, which will accelerate the rest of the world’s adoption of similar technologies and policies.

Selling green electricity and/or new technologies that have been developed by governments releasing millions of pounds in research grants into new green technologies will provide a huge return on investment.

Similarly, we need to encourage private capital from investors and entrepreneurs into green technologies and sustainable business models. The returns could be massive for private investors too. If this doesn’t happen, alternatives like massive tax rises for unsustainable business practices could be implemented (however rewards and tax cuts for green progress are obviously preferable).

One way which we should avoid is taxing carbon consumption - as this will unfairly target poorer communities who tend to use more carbon as it is generally cheaper than the alternative.

Creating change quickly

We have to reach net zero by 2050 and reduce our CO2e emissions in half in the next eight years. How do we create such rapid change? I don’t think consumer choices are not going to create the market change that is required for the extensive and fast change that needs to happen across the country. The more conservative, free market view is that consumer demand will force businesses to adopt climate pledges. However, this relies on alternative companies that are already offering a climate-friendly alternative existing, and as long as their products/services are more expensive than the alternative, consumers will either be less inclined or not able to pick this option.

This change will also take years and years, as patterns in consumer habits will take years to be proven and businesses will be unlikely to spend the required money before they see an appreciable drop in profits as consumers switch to greener options.

The faster alternative is legislation to force businesses to adopt climate change pledges that can be independently monitored so that necessary rewards can be given, or punishment like tax increases will occur. These tax increases could be further invested towards green targets.

What is the point in waiting for companies to make the change they will inevitably have to make? Let’s get them to change now.

Once our economy is net zero and fully sustainable, most of this regulation can be removed and we can return to a more conservative, small-state model of government. However, we must adopt a period of a few decades of intense government intervention or we will not reach these targets.

Switching to thinking about immediate climate goals

Too much attention (both from the public and the media) is placed on the 2050 target of net zero emissions. 2050 sounds far too far away, and this does not do justice to the scale of the problem at hand. We cannot decide in 2049 or even 2040 to suddenly reach this target. It involves decades of reduction across all sectors which will take a long time. A far more important target is 50% reduction in CO2 / CO2 equivalents (CO2e) by 2030 - which is just over 7 years away. In order to reach the 2050 target we have to meet the 2030 target. If we miss 2030, we will undoubtedly miss 2050.

For this reason, I believe all parties entering a general election must have a manifesto that has a full plan to meet the target of 50% reduction in CO2e by 2030. This goal is incredibly near and thus will likely occur within the first term of any new government, so a plan must be in the works.

Carbon capture

Carbon capture is going to play a massive part in reaching net zero by 2050. Reaching a 50% reduction by 2030 will be the easiest 50% of emissions to cut, but the last 10% in particular are unlikely to ever be able to go neutral (unless new technology comes along to replace current methods). These emissions will have to be offset (at least in the mid-term) using carbon capture.

I believe carbon capture should be regulated. Only companies and projects that cannot currently be made carbon neutral (such as farming, manufacturing, etc.) should be allowed to offset their emissions. Otherwise, all of our capture capture capacity will be bought up by companies who are opting for a cheaper alternative to architecting the changes to their business to make it carbon neutral. By allowing only companies and businesses that are currently unable to achieve net zero to buy carbon capture we are ensuring that we are maximising the carbon capture resources we have.

Global view

Climate change is a global issue. Even if we manage to reach net zero by 2050, we will probably be among only a handful of countries to do so. This is why we need to go further, faster, and help the rest of the world in the transition.

We need to aspire to become the first net zero country. I believe that countries should only be considered “developed” until they are fully sustainable. Developing countries are at extraordinary unfair risk from climate change. It’s the developed countries like the USA, UK, China and other countries with large industries that have emitted the vast majority of emissions in the past decades, yet it is the developing countries that live in conditions that are being rapidly degraded by the consequences of these emissions. Indeed, it is because of our use of materials such as concrete (which creates lots of emissions) that we have been able to rapidly increase our living standards and economy. We therefore cannot morally take action against this country’s use of such materials. They cannot be penalised trying to fix the problems that we have created.

We must, therefore, consider a global fund to decarbonise developing countries without decreasing their standard of living or their country’s economic growth.

Shifting responsibility away from the consumer

Individual consumer behaviours are not going to in themselves allow us to reach our climate goals. If we all decided to become vegan tomorrow, our food supply would collapse. Not to mention that this isn’t the silver bullet in terms of emissions caused by food production. Growing plants requires fertiliser, which releases methane, and crops are likely to be heavily impacted by the effects of climate change that are already being felt around the world. Indeed, some countries are facing severe droughts or flooding caused by climate change which is jeopardising their food supply and posing an existential threat to them.

We also cannot rely on individuals to drive the change needed. As I stated previously, green premiums make it inaccessible to those on low incomes, and there are no incentives for people who can afford it to pick the climate friendly option. Only a tiny amount of emissions are actually produced by behaviours of individual people.

Understanding the scale of emissions

For the most part, media and political focus on the climate emergency focusses on electric cars, but transportation only accounts for 14% of our emissions and that includes global shipping and aviation. Media attention is also consistently focussed on renewable energy as if electricity production is the single biggest problem or even synonymous with climate goals. It isn’t, for a multitude of reasons. Primarily, we have the solution already in the form of wind, solar and tidal energy. We just need to spend the money. Secondly, there are vast swathes of the global economy that are rarely talked about like manufacturing and food production that contribute to large percentages of our global emissions.

Conclusion

I’m going to expand on all of the points made in this essay (and more) in separate articles, including adding citations/references. I would also like to recommend Bill Gates’ book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster” which I thought was very good at focussing on lots of the big issues and pragmatic solutions. I’m probably going to write an article about the key takeaways of this book soon.

Thanks for reading!

David