The public doesn't hate Net Zero as much as RW politicians insist they do

They really aren’t traditional conservative values. Some of us have been round a while. I will never vote Tory again whilst she is in power.

Her dictator type of leadership(who is she to say who can and can’t stand)and forcing everybody to align with her very scary alienating views on scraping net zero and leaving the EHCR. Her views on autism and thinking that maternity rights have gone too far are appalling. Yes we see you Kemi and wanting to leave the EHCR thus clearing the way to scrap human and women’s rights in this country.

No thanks

I hate it

I don't think Labour are particularly as traditionally left wing as some people want. But they do embody traditional British pragmatism that used to be very common in UK politics across the spectrum. I think if you are American it can be quite confusing because the way politics in America works has always been a bit different, and there's more of an emphasis on idealism over pragmatism. Not saying either approach is wrong/right they are just different countries with different political histories and environments.

The PRC aims for peak carbon 2035. They have not started to get to net zero. That will be in 2050 according to state media. Their work is to bring forward their peak carbon.

Here is their official position:

China issues action plan for carbon peaking during 15th Five-Year Plan period (www.gov.cn)

Note, I am not saying good or bad re the PRC, just something I casually follow so have their statement handy.

I did do a speadsheet on their coal use V UK last year sometime. Using UK coal records and PRC state media and official figures, and I recall I found they mined and imported more coal in 2025 ( or maybe 2024) then the UK mined from the start of the industrial revolution to something like 1920. But that's from memory. I can have a hunt for the spreadsheet if you like.

I have been pleasantly surprised by Shabana. She's got pressure from the back benchers and pressure from British Pakistanis. She quite ably took on Diane Abbott as well. Definitely right leaning.

Labour pick and mix anyway. No to Rosebank it’s not good for net zero, yes to it and the other one because CoL.

Mahmood’s policies are to the right.

Labour sway with public opinion as much as any party, your confusion could apply to them too.

Currently about 0.1% of UK land is covered in solar panels. Golf courses alone cover seven times that amount.
In fact the majority of UK land is arable farmland (cows and sheep). Sheep and solar panels can coexist very well together and often do. So it's not even the case that farmland always has to be taken out of use for solar panels
Even where farmland is only used for solar panels it isn't concreted over or built on. Nothing bad happens to the soil. In fact, a lot of UK soil is overworked and would benefit from a period of not being used. You can install solar panels on land and after 20-30 years return it to farmland and it will be more productive than it was. So even the tiny percentage of land that is being used for solar panels and not being also used for sheep etc is not farmland that is "lost".

They are now more right than under Boris and it feels like being back to traditional Conservative values. God only knows what Boris was thinking during his tenure.

😂

I read the link and I still refute the suggestion that Kemi is far right!

They aren't exactly far right. But they are also a very very long way from what I'd consider traditional British conservativism. It's hard to know how to categorise them. Sometimes I think radical for the sake of being radical. Reactionary for the sake of being reactionary?
So radical reactionaries then!

It absolutely is. Did you not read my post or link.

Dungeness which has a Nuclear Power station is the UK's only area desiganted as a desert.

This. Also rather pointless not drilling for our own oil to virtue signal yet buying oil from Norway who is drilling and gas from Russia.

Most of my friends and I agree that covering farming land in solar panels, and cutting down trees, digging up vast swathes of land to lay concrete slabs for wind farms, doesn't seem like it helps the environment much. Importing oil and steel from abroad when we can produce our own, might look like it cuts our carbon emissions, but it doesn't help the planet.

This Conservative party is not far right. Dictatorship? Seriously.

The problem with that is, that economic growth and security also matter. We could finish what Thatcher started and close down all the innovative creators in this country and pay subsidies to those other countries to make stuff instead of us. Even if the argument was that would reduce carbon emissions it's madness.

Besides which, the UK is well set up for renewables. We have the best shoreline in the entire world for wind energy, a good climate for solar (the amount of overcast days is less than ideal but actually solar panels do better in UK temps than very hot countries). We also have Lithium deposits in Cornwall which are comparatively environmentally friendly to extract and good for the economy there. So the whole argument that the UK isn't well placed to reduce it's emissions is wrong.

The biggest growth for UK industry is the green energy sector. My suspicion is a lot of those in the right arguing against it are part of the old school, deindustrialisation gang. But the conversation has moved on there. We do actually need industry. But coal mining isn't ever going to be big anymore.

There’s huge money and interest being persuading us that oil and coal are good for the economy and that green options are bad for it. It’s very hard to see through the propaganda to the truth without going away and doing tonnes of research. Even if you do the research online, it’s hard for most people to judge what research is genuine and what is funded by financial interests.

YANBU, particularly the younger generations.

Aside from the fact Kemi is behaving like a dictator- you can no longer be a Conservative candidate if you don’t agree to abandoning net zero carbon policies and to withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyrjnwe8xlo

Shapes was about one of the only Tories I liked and one of the few with half a brain and a foot in the real world. Clearly the Tory party is no longer a party for those that aren’t far right, who care about the burning planet or human and women’s rights.

For me the problem with renewables (great idea when we are surrounded by water and some areas are very windy) is that our aging infrastructure is not set up to cope with it. That should have been addressed first. Get the grid up to spec then hook up the wind farms, solar farms and any tidal production. Currently anything produced by renewables has to be used pretty much as soon as its generated because the current grid can't store it.

Yes new homes should be built with the latest carbon reducing heat pumps etc but I think people object to being told that they can only buy expensive tumble driers (when money is tight and often it will be bought in a hurry when the previous one dies), that they will have to own an EV even though the infrastructure isn't in place for that to be sensible for their life and that the wealthy person telling us this uses private jets and doesn't drive around in an electric car.....

As does streaming tik tok videos or watching YouTube.

We need cheap energy

Let me check whether you are also a head-in-sand person:

If you became convinced that we could 50x the amount of carbon reduction we do, for the same money, by redirecting that money to the best overseas projects, would you support making that switch? It would mean cancelling most of the UK’s net zero activities.

In fact let’s be very conservative: let’s say it’s a 10x efficient improvement.

They just hate the affects achieving it has on the cost of living.

I would also ban cryptocurrencies which require a huge amount of energy