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?

Even Tony Blair has admitted that without industrialised nations (China) making commitments to climate change UK Net Zero is a total waste of time. Stop buying stuff made in China. That’s it, all you have to do is stop financing the worlds largest polluter.

Nope, climate change has existed for as long as the planet has. Whilst it is undeniable that humans have contributed to the current changes in climate these have been happening forever.

The Tories don’t give a fuck about the environment. Never have, never will. They only care about one thing. Winning. That’s why they have been in government for 31 years since 1979, while Labour have been in government for just 13.
Currently, the Tories are way behind in the polls, with only a year or so to go until the next election, so they need to find some way of winning it. The Uxbridge by-election, which they successfully turned into a referendum on ULEZ, showed how they might give themselves a chance. By binning pro-environment policies advocated by wealthy elites & putting themselves on the side of ordinary people who resent being lectured about ‘net zero’ by hypocritical celebrities and financially clobbered for heating their homes, driving their cars & flying to their holidays.

It’s not ‘utterly wicked’. It’s politics. And it’s naive to think otherwise.

Whilst slowly dying from the heat 🤣🤣🤣

The top 10 emitters account for almost 70% of global emissions. Clue: the UK is not in the top 10. China accounts for 30% of global emissions.

No one seems to be able to answer what difference UK net 0 makes. How do people tell others to ‘follow the science’, yet struggle with simple math.

@Lindy2 Most of the UK housing stock isn't suitable for air souce heat pumps or electric heating.

This isn’t actually true. You can swap your gas boiler for an air source heat pump and (as long as it’s been set up correctly and you know how to adjust its settings eg the timer) it will work identically to your gas boiler. There have now been numerous independent academic and real-world in situ studies proving exactly this.

Historic England have done a lot of research into how ASHPs work in historic buildings. Their findings? They work just as well as gas central heating, even in draughty old poorly insulated buildings.

There has also been a Europe wide study by a collaboration of universities , of ashp use in residential buildings: again, the conclusion is they work just fine everywhere from Italy to Norway and all places in between.

I am not going to pretend I know much about this but I thought the policies were originally intended to encourage inward investment - with a helpful side dish of reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

Switching policies will raise questions for those investors when our Government hasn't looked all that stable.

It also undermines British businesses that were trying to fall in with/benefit from Government policies.

The other risk is other countries move ahead without us and we are left trailing. US and China are throwing money at green technologies at the moment. I was also under the impression that might have been an area of growth for the UK - heaven knows we need it.

So for me it's less about ethics but more about what we might lose out on for the future economy.

It's short term thinking.

Yes it is true.

Our consumption (imports minus exports) accounts for an extra 138 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. This brings our total to 465m tonnes of CO2.

This is 1.32% of global emissions. Production based CO2 emissions are 327 million tonnes of CO2 which is 0.93% of global emissions.

https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom

I despise Rishi Sunak and predicted he’d be worse than Boris. Not for one second did I buy his ‘grown up in the room’ shtick.

He was always a hard right corporate shill. He joked about having zero working class friends. Probably doesn’t have any middle class ones either. He doesn’t give a shit about this country. He’s probably still got a green card. His wife is dodgy with her taxes. Her family still do business with Russia. His father in law is dodgy.

He’s happy for us to swim in sewage in the sea whilst childrens schools fall on their heads. He’s disgusting and is trading our children’s future to score some culture war points. He’s ignored on the world stage, it’s a humiliation for our country.

I’m a middle aged, home owner with a good family income. I am prime Tory vote fodder but I will never vote for this charlatan. He’s tied with Boris as being the most treacherous PM we’ve had.

It has presumably dawned on them that the plans are not realistically achievable within that timeframe. So instead of abject failure in their objective, they are moving the goalposts.

I mean I am not particularly sure what made you have any positive impression of them at all.

Anyone with half a brain cell should have forseen this coming because quite plainly we are nowhere near to being ready in terms of the infrastructure required to phase out petrol vehicles, and electric vehicles are not green.

They haven't been dropped, they've been pushed back, which is sensible. Taking a step back and looking at it on a global scale, what we do makes no difference as we contribute about 1% of greenhouse gases.

Everything they do is short sighted, backwards and only for their own gain. They don't care about the country or the public.
They've lost my vote (not that they ever had it, but this just confirms it!)

It’s disgusting and shameful.
We NEED to vote this diabolical party OUT of power come the next election.

Thing is, measuring emissions alone is a lie. Especially when we buy so much cheap stuff from India and China. Emissions should be measured on imports manufacturing and transport too.

This is a weak argument and a childish excuse I'm sick of hearing

We need to be world leaders on this

Our measures were already too little too late.

This will lead to criticism on a global scale and will affect our international standing and business opportunities.

Yes, and WHY aren’t we ready? WHO is it that has been in power for the last 13 years and been sabotaging any possibility of meaningful progress towards net zero? Let me think.

They are measured on imports. And UK accounts for 1.4% of global emissions.

Facts are facts, whether you like them or not.

If you have one country responsible for 30% of emissions, and 120 countries responsible for 0.58% each, and those 120 countries bleat “well, we won’t do anything as it’s only 0.58% and the 30% guy is worse” then you fail to reduce 70% of the world’s emissions.

Of course we have to deal with our 1% like everyone else has to.

Electric vehicles are not currently the answer to all our problems.

Don’t know why I even clicked on this. Unsurprisingly full of RW conspiracy fuckwits. Yep we’re all fucked. But you can’t reason with stupid.

In response to the 'we're only 1% and what about China' gang, this is a good summary of the key arguments against that rhetoric.

eciu.net/insights/2021/why-the-uks-1-of-global-emissions-is-a-big-deal

"That 1% only covers the UK’s territorial emissions – those within our borders. But in 2016, the UK’s true carbon footprintt_ was nearly twice that. That is, when you include emissions generated elsewhere in the world either to supply stuff we import, or by things we do outside the UK. That includes our international flights, and imported fossil fuels, as well as things like furniture and consumer goods. After the EU, China is the second biggest source of those goods and emissions, with Russia and the Middle East also in the top six.
Even just at 1% for territorial emissions, we’re still amongst the top emitting countries – number 15 in 2017 and 2018. Actually, nearly a third of global emissions comes from countries whose territorial emissions are each 1% or less of the global total; around half from nations that account for less than 3% each of annual world emissions.
And we creep up the list when you count emissions per capita – i.e. how much we emit per person. Then we’re 13th amongst individual G20 nations (excluding the EU as a bloc) for greenhouse gas emissions; 11th for just CO2 emissions. For contrast, China is middle to bottom half for CO2 and GHGs respectively, and Australia, whose population is 2.5 times smaller than the UK’s, is near the top on both."

Net zero is unrealistic, impractical, unachievable and pointless. There needs to be a bit more common sense applied to the whole subject.

Your can't do imports minus exports!!!

Both affect the climate!

This is creative accounting of the highest order

Consumption based emissions are measured including imports, manufacturing and transport and that results in the U.K. doing 1.3% of global annual CO2 emissions.

Our progress is a success story. We have cut CO2 emissions from a high of 660 million tonnes in 1960 to 465 millions tonnes despite the population growing massively. The last time we were at 465 million tonnes was in 1888.

We are still cutting emissions, it’s just that zero is unobtainable and not as high a priority as raw sewage in our water systems.