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

YANBU it’s now a matter of self interest for nations. Green energy is cheaper and more secure than fossils. We can’t keep enduring price shocks from Trump and Putin.

Since when has China denied climate change?

I saw a great example of the lack of logic in net zero in Australia.
So Australia mines large amounts of coal, but because of environmental restrictions then don't burn it to produce electricity.
Instead they export it by polluting trains and ships all the way to China.
Once in China it gets burnt in very basic and highly polluting coal fired power stations but producing very cheap electricity.
This cheap electricity is then used to produce cheap solar panels (using Muslim minority Uyghur slave labour also keeps the costs down).
These cheap solar panels are then exported to Australia on another highly polluting ship.
But once in Australia the solar panels can then be used in the "drive towards Net Zero" and "stopping climate change ".

When logically if you kept the coal in Australia, burnt it in a cleaner coal fired power plant then on a global basis you would emit less CO2 as well as providing cheap non intermittent electricity.

I don't need to.

My belief from what I see is people want a better balance between achieving net zero and the cost of living now (the cost in the future is relatively unimportant to them, rightly or wrongly). Everyone else is free to believe differently if they wish.
Technical arguments on the economics of achieving net zero are extremely complex and are gamed by both sides to support their views. That isn't unusual in economics.

The main parties are responding to what they believe the public wants, and you can see the debate changing in the media regarding the issue.Certainly a lot of the media I read which before was very pro net zero maybe 5 years ago is now shifting to a debate as to whether the cost is realistic.

I think people can disagree with a lot of what I have written above. What they can't really disagree with is that the debate on net zero has shifted, and the main political parties are starting to shift policy in response to what they believe the public wants.

Agree about the communication
Pretty much everyone in the UK cares about the countryside. Even right wing parties will have trees as their logo, or lots of promotional material showing the English countryside. You lose a lot if English oaks are dying due to heat stress, or our green fields are parched and brown far too early in the year or the little villages flood.

I think a lot of people do hate Net 0.

Sustainability is another issue and generally people are supportive of environmental initiatives they see as meaningful.

We're talking about a specific policy here. Do the UK public support net zero. At least 50% do in theory. Only 25-30% do when it involves them paying for it. Those are the facts we have from the polls. Which makes this a challenge for the government.
It helps no one to project the views you think people should have over the ones they actually do, pretending something won't meet resistance when all evidence suggests otherwise.
The lack of public support needs to be faced and addressed with measures to mitigate the consequences to allay fears.

I think it’s been poorly reported - some of the things my council are talking about re climate change are improving drainage (as climate change is increasing the likelihood of flooding) & planting more trees, yet I haven’t heard the anti-climate change councils being asked if they are cutting flood defenses or are against trees.

There’s also some interesting stuff about energy generation but again that’s not being communicated unless you follow local politics very closely.

Often there’s other good reasons to do stuff needed for net zero eg cutting transport emissions is good for reducing air pollution too but again that’s not always communicated well.

@justasking111& @Monvelo(great name) I agree about sustainable homes. One of the sad things about tackling climate change is that the stuff that makes people’s homes cheaper / more comfortable hasn’t been realised very well. There’s a number of fairly new glass-fronted buildings near me that really don’t look ideal with the changes in the climate.

Yes, China appears to be doing this the right way, using their own coal supplies to assist their sustainability transition while producing about 80% of the world’s solar panels.

And how is it you are differentiating the 'cost of living crisis ' from the costs of climate change @GasPanic? Can you list the items for example?

Now compare that to any other public policy area @5128gapand you'll see the general enthusiasm for climate action more starkly.

People are happy with most things until there is a significant cost associated with them or it affects their quality of life.

I think most people see the sense of reducing emissions and the energy security that transition to renewables bring.

But that comes at a cost that many think is too great when the cost of living is high, or their ability to take foreign holidays is curtailed.

It doesn't help either that a lot of the very expensive projects associated with net zero such as carbon capture are mostly nonsense. Fortunately I believe the money slated to be spent on this sort of stuff never will be. It's just a headline grabber to sate the more militant voters on these issues.

I think the two major parties adopted fairly hard core green policies to head the green party off at the pass when it started making inroads into politics and stealing vote share around the beginnings of the 2010s.

You can see them both starting to roll back from that now that peoples concern over the cost of living crisis becomes in general bigger than their concern over emissions.

I don't 'hate' it, but I do think it's a relatively low priority for the country at present. Our emissions are a tiny percentage of the world's total, and until the larger countries sort out their massive contribution to these problems, it seems a bit of a pointless waste of money that desperately needs to be spent on other things. In an ideal world yes, fine, but I would think the majority of people here resent having to pay more for bills etc while other much larger countries don't seem to give a fuck. Nobody is going to say 'oh well, the UK's done this and that so now we're shamed into action'... they won't care.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/10/avoid-using-gas-transition-fuel-move-clean-energy-study-urges?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Getting anyone ON to gas at the moment would be absolute madness. Wars, mad despots, blocked supply routes. Energy security comes from local generators with storage IE renewables plus batteries.

The OP is talking about the UK. That study is global. The study itself says support is higher in countries where the impact is higher. UK polls vary, with some giving support as low as 50%., dropping to just 25% to 30% when there's a personal cost to involved.
(I support it personally BTW. But this thread is about whether the level of support generally is high, and it appears not to be.)

Do I wish net zero wasn’t necessary? Absolutely.

But it’s essential unfortunately.

oers I’m really saddened by the renewed interest in drilling for oil and gas.
the world is on fire, for me net zero has to be a priority.

The coal based economies are bypassing gas to an extent and shifting straight to renewables. Since China has it's own coal, and it's own renewable energy but NOT much gas good luck telling them they should be buying it in from overseas and creating unnecessary dependency. We aren't in charge of other "economies".

Also "deindustrialisation" didn't happen because of net zero. It's partly a result of the decline of the British empire and the fact we no longer had a chokehold on trade, and partly as a result of very deliberate economic policies started by Margaret Thatcher and continued by successive governments. It precedes any discussion of net zero. It's true that high energy bills make making things in the UK harder and I would like to see more government attention given to this issue. But relying on fossil fuels long term and not spending on infrastructure will kill industry faster in the long term.

Also we do still make stuff, we are (just) in the top 10 of manufacturing economies by value rather than volume. Net zero or otherwise, the breakdown of supply chains (COVID, Ukraine, Ever Grande, Hormuz blockage) has exposed the downsides of fully global trade. But it's also demonstrated the downsides of relying on fossil fuels so...

Absolutely this.

On the contrary @5128gap and others people are happy to pay www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-01925-3

I’m not sure what you You’ve pulled me up on, sorry, I can’t find you glasses. I’d much rather we made sensible use of resources not virtual signalling bollacks. The main work should be getting coal based economies on to gas asap.

And all the “we can afford this, we are a rich country” chat. Only if you are looking at the UK on a macro level - yes, we’re around the 5th largest by overall GDP but per capita GDP we’re now somewhere between 21st and 29th. This is where the wealth of the individual comes into play. I mean, India has a similar size of overall GDP to the UK but we seem to be able to understand that the number of people that is
spread over will make a difference in that context.

Luckily UK policy isn't based on "admitting" things or developed by people who don't know what LPG is. Perhaps you'll both recall from your extensive educations that the evidence can be found in the IPCC reports and translated into UK policy and programmes by the Committee on Climate Change..