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

[Echobelly]

Politicians like Kemi Badenoch and right wing newspaper front pages love to talk as though everyone hates Net Zero and sustainability as concepts and wants us to get on with burning coal and drilling for oil. They seem to stake an awful lot on people not like sustainability mostly because they see it as 'woke' as far as I can tell.

I think most people don't think about it enough to hate it really and most people broadly want the outcomes of improved sustainability but would like it to happen without it needing any investment. I reckon some people don't like feeling 'nagged' about saving the environment and in many ways I don't blame them as, while we should all do our bit, really it's up to governments and big businesses to actually do the damn work to truly make a difference.

Maybe Net Zero has a bit of a PR problem as it sounds unachievable, and also maybe it sounds like you get nothing, or something will be taken away from you/society. It might do better to have a name that sounds more 'positive'. But it's a shame because ultimately, even if for some reason you don't believe in climate change it seems to me that the benefits of renewable energy (such as ending energy dependence on some not always friendly countries and less pollution) are pretty clear and I'm not sure people realise it's not just powering a few kettles, it's often around 50% of UK energy production

I hate it. Mostly because the UK produces less than 1% of global emissions and it's costing billions which would be better spent on getting the country back on it's feet.
While America and China are denying climate change anything we do will not make a difference in the long run.

I think people hate the fact that they are struggling to pay ever-increasing bills while knowing that our changes will make minimal impact as we produce very low emissions anyway
If the economy was booming and we all felt prosperous it would be a good virtue project but not while so many are struggling
I think you are more out of touch than the "RW politicians" are!

My SA friend who's lived here for 20 years. Said wait till the rolling power cuts start.

No, people are generally keen on sustainability. What they don’t like is the pantomime of virtuously not mining our coal or oil, while paying through the nose to import oil from other countries. Senseless.

The pantomime of saving water in our homes, while vast amounts is wasted in leakage from pipes.

People can do self denial and they can do hardship. They won’t do it in the face of other countries or individuals getting rich ignoring the issue.

Get on with it, I say. I remember the code for sustainable homes, I think it was about 2006? It set out a road map for all new build homes to be carbon neutral and adapted to future climates by 2016, I think! Got scrapped by conservatives in about 2015, if I'm remembering correctly. Idiots. Cheaper bills and we'd have been cooler in this heat wave! I don't think businesses eg house builders always want less regulation, what they want is certainty so they can cost things in appropriately.

How can you speak for everyone?How can you possibly know what most people think ?

As @lazyarse123 said the amount we contribute to emissions is absolutely tiny compared to the amount of money it costs us

I have environmental qualifications and DH works in sustainability and I hate it. I think it’s unbelievably stupid to buy LPG with 10% of the energy being used to convert the gas to liquid for transportation while enriching regimes with dubious human rights just so we can pat ourselves on the back. To cut our emissions partly through the “dash for gas” and partly through deindustrialisatipn and then buy loads of stuff from countries who make things cheaper using much dirtier power.

it’s such a colonialism view to think that other countries are admiring us for this.

Oil is a base ingredient in plastics, drugs,
fertiiliser. We don’t just use it for energy.

it’s much more sensible to admit we
need it at the moment as part of our mix and use our own sources to help us to increase the share of renewables in the mix.

We need to have a proper organised process where homes are upgraded in the most appropriate ways possible for their
building type not the adhoc nonsense at the moment, otherwise it’s hard to take any of it seriously.

Its more the hypocrisy that gets people. Sustainability doesn't seem to be relevant when it comes to food production.

So if it's all about money...

Any of you deniers to explain which parts of the economy are growing the fastest in the UK?

Or the annual or lifetime costs of electric motor vehicles compared to fossil fuelled ones?

Or the efficiency of a heat pump compared to a gas boiler?

Or the cost to economy or the NHS of deaths from air pollution? Or excess heat?

The cost of land, infrastructure and buildings damaged by extreme heat including wildfires?

Etc etc

Looking forward to an evidence base for your wild claims of net zero being "too expensive".

China isn’t denying climate change. It is embracing the industrial and economic opportunities it presents but using fossil fuels to do so quickly. That’s what we should be doing instead of crippling ourselves with high energy prices along the way. We are virtue signalling, China isn’t. We’ll both get to the same destination in the end.

Was talking to some architects recently. It's looking like the present planning and design of buildings will be consigned to the bin in parts of Europe including the UK because of climate change. Underfloor heating will be off the table, large areas of glass. We'll be looking at ways to avoid getting too hot.

I think as a theoretical concept people are largely supportive. They're not daft, they can see what's happening to the world. However, every resolve has a price, and a lot of people are genuinely not in the position to pay it. All they can see is the personal cost to them of paying this charge or that, these adaptations, those penalties, while knowing they're a drop in the ocean compared to the damage caused by the rich and powerful.

I can't no, but social media exists and of all the things people get exercised about, sustainability doesn't seem to be one of the top ones is all.

I agree it costs a lot of money, but the sooner you do something about it, the cheaper it is and that's always a hard ask because it's a long game. But for my work 10+ years ago I did a lot of interfacing with some big real estate firms and investment businesses and they were big on sustainability because they knew it would cost more not to invest. They weren't 'woke', or tree-hugging hippies, they were businesses that got it was worth the investment long term not to have assets that would become worth less and less if they didn't adapt to climate change.

@Echobelly Again, just taking a view based on social media isnt proof of what everybody thinks. Its a vast and complicated subject.

What's that got to do with net zero though?

South Africa has huge problems with corruption and as a result powerplants which don't do what they are meant to. It's nothing to do with renewable energy targets. The only link is that the unreliability of the power grid has increased the use of generators (very polluting, noisy, expensive) and increasingly stand alone renewable energy like solar powered lights and solar panels.

@justasking111 yes I agree. The code for sustainable homes in 2006 included things like considering solar orientation to avoid heat gain and designing in passive ventilation. I'd love some passive ventilation right about now!

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..

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.

Oh, absolutely - I mean, this is why this is AIBU and not IABR! 😉

I find it interesting a few people have brought up that we're not big polluters on the world stage and honestly I wasn't aware that was a line of thinking on it. That sounds like people can frame sustainability as a 'punishment' for something they feel we are not doing and I could see that framing would make people feel hard done by. Though personally I think that is not the point of Net Zero etc at all - as I said, for me it's about energy independence and not having to rely on people like Putin for energy needs, and also just plain old having energy that doesn't run out, as well as creating new and ongoing jobs to do it. With our large amount of coast, the UK is well set up for wind power and maybe tidal (although that is new and currently v expensive, but will presumably get cheaper). Obviously, renewables have a way to go to becoming more efficient in production and there are environmental costs to the production of the hardware, I'm not pretending it's all plain sailing or that it's flawless right now, but it's technology that is already producing more of the energy mix than people probably think and it will improve over time.

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.

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

Absolutely this.

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...

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".