In the midst of all the Tory battles over carbon targets, Tony Blair has thrown something of a curveball, questioning the efficacy of Britain’s carbon-cutting focus. As China’s emissions surge, he suggests leveraging the U.K.’s financial strengths to aid the global energy transition instead. The Telegraph has more.
Rishi Sunak might not have expected Sir Tony Blair to emerge as a Net Zero sceptic. …
“It’s the single biggest global challenge, right, and Britain should play its part in that. But its part frankly is going to be less to do with Britain’s emissions. I mean, one year’s rise in China’s emissions would outscore the whole of Britain’s emissions for a year,” the former Labour leader said in a magazine interview.
He said “it shouldn’t be” an excuse to slack off on cutting emissions, but added that cutting our own carbon should not be the main focus:
“Don’t ask us to do a huge amount when frankly whatever we do in Britain is not really going to impact climate change,” he said. …
Instead, he suggests Britain should play to its economic strengths: finance.
As an alternative to the current row over who should pay what and how much heat pumps cost, it might seem refreshing to have a suggestion that we can sell something to the rest of the world.
It also differs from suggestions the U.K. should try to outcompete the U.S. and EU in throwing massive subsidies at building green industries in an effort to catch up with China’s head start.
“The number one issue today – and this is where Britain could play a part – is how do you finance the energy transition?” he asked.
“Because, basically, the developed world’s emissions are going down, but the developing world’s are going up. These countries have got to grow, so how do you finance the transition? Secondly, how do you accelerate the technology?”
When it comes to Britain’s potential advantages in greening the world economy, climate specialists suspect the U.K.’s financial edge could be valuable, but only alongside pressure to cut emissions further.
“We have all of these comparative advantages here, and we are kind of frittering them away a bit,” says Laurie Laybourn, an environmental policy researcher.
“The U.K. reducing its emissions, whether or not they are bigger or smaller than China, is a way of focusing our agenda on maximising those amazing capabilities we have in Britain, like our financial services, and that we are amazingly good at inventing things.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Ex-Chancellor Philip Hammond says that successive British Prime Ministers haven’t levelled with the public about the £1 trillion cost of Net Zero.
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