In Short : Despite ongoing efforts to address climate change and achieve net-zero emissions targets, skepticism about these initiatives faces challenges in gaining widespread traction as a prominent political cause. While there are individuals and groups expressing doubts about the effectiveness or feasibility of net-zero goals, the global consensus among scientists, policymakers, and businesses emphasizes the urgency of climate action. The momentum toward sustainability and decarbonization remains strong, with governments, industries, and communities working together to combat climate change. Despite skepticism, the collective push for net-zero emissions continues to drive climate policies and initiatives worldwide.
In Detail : Uxbridge apart, Tory attempts to win votes out of a climate change backlash isn’t paying off
It must have come as another bitter blow to Downing Street. Net zero scepticism, it would seem, is not the cut-through, electorally galvanising political cause that some would like to believe.
When the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, pushed ahead with plans to extend the capital’s ultra-low emissions zone to outer boroughs, many voters saw red, and it cost Labour the Uxbridge by-election.
By campaigning aggressively against the move, the Tories managed to hold onto a seat they were widely expected to lose.
This encouraged the Prime Minister to believe there might also be votes in the entire environmental agenda, where he had long harboured doubts, including some of the measures deemed necessary to meet the legally binding ambition of net zero by 2050.
Confronted by the costs, these seemed to be the subject of a growing public backlash, not just in Uxbridge, but around the world.
Sadly for Rishi Sunak, this has turned out not to be the case, thus far and in Britain at least.
Last week’s two devastating by-election defeats suggest strongly that push-back against climate change orthodoxy is falling flat among voters. Unless directly affected, people are simply not interested. Other cost of living issues, together with the post-pandemic breakdown in public services, are deemed far more important.
This makes Britain quite different from the US, where climate change scepticism, and even denial, are very much part of anti-woke culture wars.
It divides the nation and is fertile ground for some Republicans, including Donald Trump. Similarly, in parts of the Continent, where the issue is reshaping the political landscape. Not so in the UK, beyond very localised concerns.
This doesn’t mean that the Government has made a mistake in rowing back on some of the stricter intermediate targets, or erred by giving the go-ahead to another round of North Sea oil and gas licensing. Most people can see that these things make sense.
As Mr Justice Holgate intimated last week in dismissing a High Court challenge from Greenpeace, there are perfectly reasonable economic and energy security grounds that don’t necessarily conflict with climate change targets for further North Sea oil and gas development.
The same goes for pushing back the date for banning petrol and diesel-fuelled vehicle production, which in any case merely brings the UK into line with what the EU has already done.
Do we really want to give away our entire auto industry to the Chinese, which is essentially what would have happened if the earlier ban had been adhered to? Making us feel virtuous would be scant consolidation for the jobs and economic wellbeing thereby lost.