Key points opposing the motion ‘This house believes we should scrap Net Zero’

On 20 May Bob Ward participated in ‘The Net Zero Debate – bin it or back it?’ organised by The Spectator magazine. Below he presents his opening statement.

At this debate I was speaking against the motion ‘This house believes we should scrap Net Zero’, along with former Green Party Deputy Leader Shahrar Ali. Journalist Liam Halligan and Conservative peer Lord Lilley were speaking for it, replacing Reform UK’s Richard Tice and energy consultant Kathryn Porter. Further to Liam publishing his opening statement, here is mine.

Well, it is good to see that the anti-net-zero team at least managed to field their reserves this evening! But I am afraid that nothing they will say this evening will justify scrapping net zero, which would be fundamentally unscientific, reckless and economically ruinous.

Abandoning net zero would make us all poorer and less safe by exposing us to unlimited impacts from climate change.

We are already seeing impacts all across the UK, as is made abundantly clear in the technical report of the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment published earlier today. And impacts across the world threaten our supplies of food, energy and other goods and services.

On our current path, the global mean temperature by the end of this century could be nearly 3 Celsius degrees warmer than during the pre-industrial era. That means a global mean temperature that has not been seen on Earth since the Pliocene Epoch three million years ago, when the polar ice caps were much smaller and global sea level was five to 25 metres higher than today.

With impacts growing around the world, this is likely to lead to more desperate people fleeing the regions that are most exposed and vulnerable to climate change impacts, displacing millions, if not tens of millions, of people. A rise in climate refugees means there will be more desperate people trying to reach places that seem safer, including the UK. So if you are concerned about the number of desperate migrants trying to reach our shores, you have to be serious about the drivers of migration, including climate change. If you are not serious about climate change and net zero, you are not serious about migration.

We will only stop these impacts of man-made climate change from increasing when atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases stop rising. That means the whole world needs to reach net zero emissions.

The UK’s net zero legislation has a stronger scientific basis than most of our other laws. Our statutory target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 was passed by Parliament in 2019 under a far-sighted Conservative Government that included Michael Gove as Environment Secretary.

It was based on a comprehensive scientific assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK Climate Change Committee. Even Mr Gove was willing to listen to those experts about net zero. I hope he is still listening to the experts as editor of The Spectator.

Because there is now no scientific case for repealing the net zero target.

As every credible scientific body around the world, including the United States National Academy of Sciences, has pointed out, the evidence for man-made climate change is beyond reasonable doubt. The scientists have concluded that climate change poses a threat to lives and livelihoods around the world. A threat we can only address by reaching net zero.

The UK was the first major economy to set a net zero target. Many other countries have followed us, and there are now 137 nations around the world that have set net zero targets.

It is true that the UK currently emits less than 1% of annual global emissions of greenhouse gases. But that means more than 99% of the current emissions damaging the UK come from other countries. We can only persuade those other countries to move quicker if we lead by example.

We have already cut our annual emissions by more than 50% since 1990 while our economy has grown by more than 80%.

There are those who claim that other countries pay no attention to us, that the UK does not matter to the rest of the world. I reject that unpatriotic view. The UK can and does command respect in the world, not least because we accept the science of climate change.

Those British politicians who want to get rid of the net zero legislation explicitly or implicitly do not accept the science of climate change. They apparently think that scientists are less of an authority on this issue than Donald Trump. Mr Trump thinks that we can deal with climate change by pretending it does not exist. How can we trust the judgment and arguments of politicians who cannot accept the reality of climate change? You cannot avoid the impacts of climate change by sticking your head in the sand of a golf bunker.

The opposition this evening will no doubt try to avoid talking about the impacts of climate change. Instead they will argue that it is too expensive to cut our emissions of greenhouse gases. They will pretend that it is in our national interest to go on burning fossil fuels, even as our reserves in the North Sea dwindle away.

But there are two truths that they will not admit.

The first is that even if the Government gives the green light to Rosebank and Jackdaw, it will not stop us from becoming ever more dependent on imports of oil and gas.

The second is that the remaining North Sea reserves are in more challenging locations. That will require higher operating costs, and therefore will need high prices for consumers to be economically viable.

And we know that the UK wholesale price of oil is set on a global market and the UK wholesale price of gas follows European market prices. These market prices are dependent on the actions of the big producers, not the UK, and in the case of oil, the market is largely controlled by the world’s biggest cartel, OPEC.

So if we want to take back control of our energy prices, we must cut our dependence on foreign fossil fuel muck, and instead invest in clean green British energy. And we know that will be cheaper.

It is a shame that Mr Tice is not here this evening to repeat his fantastic claim that abandoning net zero will save us £30 billion a year. The truth is that his £30 billion figure originates from a calculation by the Office for Budget Responsibility of the fiscal costs of net zero. This £30 billion is largely the cost to the Treasury of no longer collecting billions in fuel duty from drivers as they move to electric vehicles. And Mr Tice no doubt knows this because he drives an electric car.

What the OBR did show, like every other credible economic analysis, is that the investments we need to make in net zero are far lower than the costs of dealing with unlimited impacts from climate change.

This is further evidence that scrapping net zero does not make sense, scientifically, economically or societally.

A recording of the debate can be accessed on The Spectator’s website (subscription required).