AIBU to think that the Tories are utterly wicked to drop net zero?

[Upsizer]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/19/rishi-sunak-planning-drop-net-zero-policies-pre-election-challenge-labour

I think this is genuinely wicked but I guess it was inevitable with the easiness of drumming up a culture war over environmental issues to win votes. Environment is the new Brexit.

Fighting climate change is going to cost all of us thousands of pounds. So we won’t do it - to get votes.

Our children will live on an island suffering extremes of heat and fighting off refugees from uninhabitable parts of the world.

But it will save us some cash I guess.

AIBU to think this is wicked?

It's not just about cars, we could be a world leader in green energy, we are an island surrounded by sea, we could be harnessing the power of the sea using tidal power. Look at the jobs that could be created, home insulation, solar panels, green energy, green technology. We used to have brilliant industry here, brilliant engineering that could have been designing & producing everything to make this country more energy efficient. We should be encouraging young people to train for jobs in everything green but we can't because we have lost so much of our industry. You want solar panels or home insulation, you are stuck with asking your neighbour who did yours? It should be I want insulation & solar panels, I contact the company who is covering the whole of the country, has tons of information, is working street by street to install it. We could have had that but because our governments haven't thought about it or have ignored what is happening & I don't just mean the Tories. Remember when we swapped the gas over years ago it was done nationally, this should be the same.

My worry with the roll-out of electric vehicles, and the banning of the sale of new petrol and diesel cars is that I don’t think we have the infrastructure in place to charge all the new electric cars. People like me, who have a drive, will be OK - we can easily put a charger on the house - but people in built up urban/city areas who don’t have their own parking, are going to struggle to find somewhere to charge their cars.

I think we should be looking to improve public transport, especially in towns and cities - make it good enough that a significant number of people either don’t need their cars at all, or use them only occasionally. Rural public transport matters too, but I do appreciate that it is harder to provide the same level of service in rural areas - I grew up in a tiny village where there was a two mile walk to a bus stop that had an hourly service in either direction. There was a bus service from the village - once a week a bus went round the area, dropped everyone in the nearest small town, and did the return trip three hours later. That was it.

I also think we should be reversing the decline of local shops and high streets, so people can shop without needing a car to get to out of town shopping centres. The government/council planners should ensure that new developments have access on foot to shops - we have a number of new estates around us - swathes of new houses being built with absolutely no services being built with them - so the residents will need to drive to the doctor, dentist, shops, their kids’ schools - everything. We cannot carry on building housing that requires cars to be practically liveable.

We have a society that is predicated on car ownership, and that is not going to be easy to change - but I do think it can be changed.

If you have £7k plus spare and would like panels on your roof try here . Has a fair bit of info. For other stuff you mention too

https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/advice/solar-panels/

This is the first decent idea the Tories have come up with in a long while. I think that Net Zero should be put to a referendum given that it will cost us so much. It seems crazy to have had votes on Brexit, Scottish independence and the Alternative Vote scheme but not on Net Zero which will affect us much more than those other three could/would/have cost.

Like with Brexit, like with voting generally, people should be allowed to chose paths that are not deemed correct by the centre-left. I don't think there's some massive global conspiracy, I just don't give a shit about climate change - at least, not if it's going to cost me a lot of money in the short term.

The issue with electric vehicles if that we don't have the infrastructure in place to consume (or store) that much electricity. Also car batteries aren't evolved enough in terms of battery life and they are extremely expensive. I understand why the dates been pushed for those as I don't expect those issues would even be close to being resolved in the current timeframe.

*Except, the speaker and their teams had run the numbers and once they'd factored in the impacts upgrading building energy efficiency would have on health and social outcomes (poorly insulated buildings lead to more health issues and cost more to keep warm, creating unhealthier and poorer occupants) the council would actually make a saving of around £5bn over the project lifetime.

They'd also create thousands of long-term, skilled, and local jobs as well as many potential investment / manufacturing / new business opportunities for the city. A literal win-win-win.*

That's the crucial thing... The housing stock in this country is not adequate, there's a disproportionate number of people dying of cold, who wouldn't want to change this asap? Knowing it will pay for itself v quickly? We don't want to remain dependent on Russia for its gas either. It makes sense in so many ways.

Just because new petrol and diesel cars are not going to be made in 2030 doesn't mean there will be a mass conversion to all electric vehicles. My car is 15 years old. There will still be a market for second hand cars for a long time after that. Having a strict target means manufacturers etc will have to get their skates on with regards to innovation, (which they have been doing, only for the goalposts to be changed at the last minute by the government, causing chaos) I don't think the car thing is a disaster environmentally as its only pushing our target to the same as the EU, therefore taking away our advantage. So they aren't doing this with the approval of the car industry, and not because delaying something by 2 years is going to make any difference whatsoever. Its just desperate and blatant short term electioneering, trying to shore up their votes because they are taking one result in Uxbridge as their cue to ditch their environmental policies. Despite it being something that would have created sustainable employment, provided us with cheap energy and clean air, andxdedpite yhe vites fir the Greens in Uxbridge being much higher than theTory majority in Uxbridge.

Read my post properly. I want them taxed!! And taxed hard. They are KNOWINGLY selling a product that causes harm. They’ve known for years and have invested heavily in discrediting climate science.

I did read your post properly. The oil and gas companies have paid corporation tax and a windfall tax on top (albeit there's an investment carve-out). They also employ tens of thousands of people in the U.K. who also pay tax on their earnings.

If you want to reduce your personal demand for oil and gas, there's plenty of ways to do that. I hope your energy tariff at home is 100% renewable energy.

I don't see BP and Shell as the villains you seem to think they are. If demand falls, their profits will fall. As they will this year with the dip in oil and gas prices.

The tax everyone and everything argument is ill-conceived, particularly if you drive multi-national companies out of the U.K. and increase unemployment at a time when the U.K. is teetering on recession,

Sensible IMO.
Building a new car, or new air source heat pump is largely pushing the global emissions factor to other countries, ditto in many cases the scrapping of the item its replacing.

If these cars and gas boilers are allowed to expire in their own time rather than being replaced and prematurely scrapped, I wonder how much LESS global warming over all?

The only technology available at the moment is an electric car that is similar to a conventional one but using a Lithium based battery.

We cannot afford those cars. Planet Earth cannot afford these vehicles at the moment.
They need much more copper than an ic vehicle.
They need lithium and many other metals and minerals
Producing pure copper safely is not difficult. But supplies are dwindling, new mines are opening with less than one percent of metal in the ore. So if you want 100kg you have to mine and process at least 100 tonnes of ore. You also have 99tonnes of waste left over that has to be dumped somehow.

Lithium: 15 years ago there was no lithium industry. It will need to expand at a huge rate to produce batteries for cars and battery storage for generating sources. No one knows how this will be done.
Cobalt: South Africa and Democratic Republic of the Congo are the main sources of this metal. Slavery, child workers, corruption, we will have to do business with some not nice people. Let us take this a little more slowly and get it right.

If you want a new opinion on availability ask the ladies. www.womeninmining.org.uk/

Labour voter here and reeling that Rishi has made a second sensible decision within a week (the first being the XL bully ban). What's come over the Tories - could they perchance be desperate to win the popular vote?

Yes he has made a sensible decision today. I also think the housing associations might have had an impact. Imagine what a huge undertaking it would have been to replace boilers with heat pumps in every flat house bungalow sheltered housing that housing associations own, all by a certain date

And as for warmer homes i wish these fucking do gooders would do some bloody research A lot of homes (including mine) are already too hot not too fucking cold

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/blog/2023-06-30/the-rising-danger-of-hot-summers?fbclid=IwAR2pQCLjCGV6gmWh6alrE4Lcl5DDHeo5TrcXjvyikU-iorOrapQ9y_8K1sI

how can we possibly contemplate a referendum on net zero with what is at stake? It has far more serious consequences than Brexit.

Voting against net zero is voting directly against your kids and grandkids futures. And condemning huge parts of the world to become inhospitable due to climate change, flooding and the rest.
What the UK does or does not do makes a relatively small difference to the grand scheme of things I get that. But countries with some degree of influence (as the UK I'm told remarkably still does) need to take a lead and grab the bull by the horns so to speak, to make sure that others follow.
I get it's all very expensive. But the alternative is unpalatable.

They are still committed to net zero by 2050. This is being more sensible about it. Jumping on a bandwagon of electric cars whilst ignoring where the needed raw supplies come from is an example of how climate change activists are not scientists. Waiting for the tech for hydrogen cars or developing clean fuel that petrol cars can run on, using bio diesel etc would be better than the idea that everything can be electric and use wind power or batteries.

Our fuel bills are so high because previous governments shied away from renewable energy - a key necessity in a net zero world - because they felt the investment was feckless

We are paying the price for successive government failures to tackle climate change head on - and now they want to make that cost to us even higher ? Under the pretence of saving us money ?

Evil I think rather than stupid - they think they are rich enough to survive but they don't want their riches used for the greater good

How will you pay though

Heat pump £15k
Solar panels £7k plus
Insulation - ‘for a semi-detached house, for example, will cost around £8,200 to install’

Upgrade car if you need it

Probably other stuff I’ve missed

Can you afford all those?

I heard a bit on this this morning

It made me google copper as it seems a big issue

They mentioned a good book on it which I would like to read

They are not committed to net zero

They are way off target

And now they are making the situation even worse

But what will happen is that local authorities will end up putting more local restrictions in place - speed limits , LEZs, parking charges , anything they can to reduce their local emissions and pollution

It will cost us all a fortune and because it's not coordinated at national level the impact to our lives will be worse than will planned controlled changes.

It's a real shame that such a high proportion of this thread is just people shouting at one another with no intention of rethinking anything.

I consider myself fairly eco conscious - to the extent that other people find the eco minded actions I take quite weird and will comment that - and I also believe the climate change situation is absolutely desperate. I also think this decision has been taken for all the wrong reasons.

Nonetheless, this is such a complicated issue that I find it really difficult to be sure what is best.

Copper doesn't need to be mined new

But yeah it's quite likely that the car economy has to end, especially if we don't want to make things a little better - oh electric cars are not perfect so let's stick with something even worse

We are killing our selves with it - pollution and obesity never mind climate change

I hope in a few years car driving will be seen as smoking - really bad for you with health warnings on all new cars

If people want to they can buy electric cars and replace their boilers, crack on, see how many do it.

personally I think the delay is prudent.

They’ve had the sense to realise it is completely unobtainable in that time frame.
Whatever this country does (or doesn’t do) will have NO impact on the rest of the world.
Heat pumps aren’t suitable for a huge amount of our housing stock, so what then - let people freeze but have huge electric bills for the privilege?
Billionaires are still having their mega yachts built and love their million pound supercars and 1st class travel. Formula 1 is still travelling the world, what’s their fucking carbon footprint?

They’ll have to pry my efficient gas boiler out of my cold dead hands, if they do ever get round to banning them, there will be a couple stored in our garage along with parts.

So OP do you own a car? Have you stopped buying meat? Have you got an air source pp and solar panels? Did you think about climate change when you decide to have children? Did you use reusable nappies? Have you stopped buying food with packaging and only use shops where you take your own container..infsct are you growing your own food? Do you walk and cycle everywhere? Have you stopped flying on holidays?

What have you done?

? Are you joking? Sunak and the environment minister funded hundreds of millions of £ in new energy storage facilities. They raised the money with the gas and oil licenses that are NOT to drill more gas and oil but to replace some of what we import with lower carbon footprint domestic oil and gas.

I do think that large engined cars should be banned. A 1 litre with an electric battery ( like my Hyundai kona) is sufficient for any domestic use.

Why doesn’t the world ban all new plastic?
That could be done tomorrow and have a huge impact.