TRIGGERnometry - How Net Zero Destroyed Britain

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00:00:12.560 When you let Aero truffle bubbles melt, everything takes on a creamy, delicious, chocolatey glow.

00:00:19.240 Like that pile of laundry.

00:00:20.720 You didn't forget to fold it.

00:00:22.160 Nah, it's a new trend.

00:00:23.640 Wrinkled chic.

00:00:25.020 Feel the Aero bubbles melt.

00:00:26.800 It's mind bubbling.

00:00:30.000 The narrative is as simple as this.

00:00:40.420 The planet is in imminent danger because of climate change.

00:00:47.160 If we don't deal with our carbon emissions right now, then by 20, it depends who you are,

00:00:53.840 2030, 2035, 2050, but within our lifetimes, certainly within our children's lifetimes,

00:00:59.400 we're all going to die, the planet's going to burn, and the only way to deal with that

00:01:03.240 is to immediately transition to renewable energy, get to net zero so that we're not producing

00:01:08.900 more carbon than we are getting rid of, and whatever it takes to achieve that.

00:01:17.440 Oh, that's the interesting thing because that's not true in the polls.

00:01:20.940 People will say, yes, we want action on climate.

00:01:23.040 But then when you ask them how much they're willing to spend on achieving that, they'll

00:01:27.500 say something like 10 pounds a year.

00:01:29.380 It's a ludicrously small amount.

00:01:32.700 They're actually not willing to spend all it takes.

00:01:34.560 It depends how you ask the question because if you say to people, how much are you willing

00:01:37.820 to spend, they'll say 10 pounds.

00:01:39.760 But if you say to them, look, your energy bills have gone up and it's because of the

00:01:44.180 war in Ukraine, we won't tell you about the green levies and all this other stuff.

00:01:47.540 And by, oh, green levies, yeah, it's to save the planet.

00:01:50.940 People are actually, a lot of people are on board with that because the money, they don't

00:01:54.880 feel that the money is being taken out of their pocket.

00:01:58.100 That connection hasn't been made in many people's minds.

00:02:00.560 Well, that's because they've been lied to by policymakers.

00:02:02.980 But people are starting to see through that.

00:02:05.960 In the UK, we are only responsible for 0.8% of global emissions.

00:02:10.500 So we could cut to zero ourselves.

00:02:12.800 And literally, it makes no difference to global climate change.

00:02:15.840 Secondly, our net zero policies measure territorial production emissions.

00:02:21.540 By making our energy expensive, we're incentivizing offshoring of manufacturing.

00:02:26.860 So we could meet our target tomorrow by just shutting down all our manufacturing.

00:02:31.180 But the result of that is global emissions go up.

00:02:33.760 And this is what annoys me so much about what Labour's doing, is they just don't seem to

00:02:38.840 be willing to accept that they're making global emissions higher.

00:02:42.500 Miliband repeats time and again, we must act because of the climate

00:02:45.660 emergency, all these factories closing, all our steel plants closing, that happens.

00:02:54.260 We then start buying our steel from China and things like girders.

00:02:58.480 And then you have to ship girders halfway around the world in ships that burn bunker fuel, which

00:03:03.400 is like the dirtiest part of the crack. 0.99

00:03:06.900 Shipping low value, heavy bulk items halfway around the world is a very stupid thing to do. 0.96

00:03:12.080 And that creates a lot of emissions. 0.75

00:03:14.020 So not only is the production more polluting because they have dirtier energy in China,

00:03:18.400 then you have all these emissions that you didn't otherwise have from transportation.

00:03:22.840 But because our targets are just looking at territorial production emissions, then, oh,

00:03:28.280 you can just virtue signal that we're, you know.

00:03:30.660 And British blokes are not getting the job because of it.

00:03:32.840 Yeah.

00:03:33.140 So we're losing employment.

00:03:34.320 It's bad for the economy.

00:03:35.680 We're having these artificially high energy prices.

00:03:38.340 It's putting more people in fuel poverty. 0.87

00:03:40.480 And it's making emissions higher.

00:03:44.080 And how does that make sense?

00:03:45.440 And the key word that you use there, because I was going to, that was going to be my follow

00:03:48.880 up question to you, Catherine, is it's a virtue signal.

00:03:52.380 Yeah.

00:03:52.820 Because we're still consuming.

00:03:54.420 Exactly.

00:03:54.900 We're just getting somebody else to do it so that we can look good.

00:03:57.320 Right.

00:03:57.500 So here's the thing.

00:03:58.360 Now they're going to introduce something called the carbon border adjustment mechanism,

00:04:01.920 where they're going to tax imported goods that are made with dirtier energy to try and

00:04:07.280 make them equivalent to our emission standards.

00:04:09.620 This is going to be unbelievably inflationary.

00:04:14.140 And so if the economy isn't in the toilet already, it will be when this comes in.

00:04:18.320 So what are the products that we're talking about that are going to be taxed with this?

00:04:22.920 Everything.

00:04:23.200 Everything.

00:04:27.360 Sorry.

00:04:27.980 I know this is going to sound like, what do you mean by everything?

00:04:30.640 Clothes, steel, cars, concrete, wind turbines, solar panels, everything.

00:04:40.900 Excuse my language. 0.99

00:04:41.880 Are they f***ing mental? 1.00

00:04:43.480 Yes. 0.99

00:04:45.420 But this comes back to this, how is it that you can have this widespread ideological failure,

00:04:52.120 if you like.

00:04:52.560 But this has happened many times in history.

00:04:55.360 Look at the Reformation and the Spanish Inquisition.

00:05:01.180 You had a society then that believed that if you didn't follow the true faith, and different

00:05:07.260 people disagreed about what the true faith was, you would burn in hell for eternity.

00:05:12.300 Now, if that's your belief, then you can justify going to just about any length to try and convert

00:05:18.780 somebody to what you think the true faith is.

00:05:20.920 You can justify any type of horrible torture to convert them, to save them from eternal

00:05:26.200 damnation.

00:05:27.560 Right. 0.96

00:05:27.740 So now we would look back at things like the Spanish Inquisition, the English martyrs and

00:05:33.220 all that stuff. 0.94

00:05:33.800 And we'd say, that was ridiculous. 0.98

00:05:35.420 That was horrific. 0.98

00:05:36.520 How could they crush people under doors that were loaded up with rocks just because they

00:05:41.260 were Protestants instead of Catholics and vice versa? 0.84

00:05:43.560 Well, that was the reason why.

00:05:46.720 But everybody believed it.

00:05:48.180 Nobody thought that was crazy.

00:05:49.880 If we had a technology that said we can stop emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow and it won't

00:05:55.400 cost you a penny, fine.

00:05:57.560 No problem.

00:05:58.160 You then have to say, well, how difficult is it to stop emitting carbon dioxide?

00:06:05.640 And we've tried for 30, 40 years now to do that.

00:06:09.880 And today, 82% of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels.

00:06:16.800 The year 2000, 83% roughly.

00:06:22.320 We've hardly changed.

00:06:23.720 It's gone up a bit and then down a bit.

00:06:25.460 You know, may have got to 84% at one point, down to 81% at one point.

00:06:29.620 But, you know, we can't find a replacement for fossil fuels that is both reliable and cheap.

00:06:37.100 And, you know, just think about heating your home or driving your car or whatever.

00:06:44.160 You know, it ain't that easy.

00:06:45.320 And if you're living in Burkina Faso and you're burning brushwood, which you've collected from the surrounding forest or scrub,

00:06:57.280 to keep yourself to cook food at night,

00:07:00.080 and the World Bank says you can't have money for a bottled gas program in that country because it's a fossil fuel,

00:07:13.080 then I think you should be pretty cross about that.

00:07:15.480 Because your burning fire is killing your kids.

00:07:18.300 Indoor air pollution kills 4 million people a year.

00:07:23.020 It produces more carbon dioxide than burning gas.

00:07:25.820 It steals the wood from beetles and other creatures who want to eat it.

00:07:30.080 Whereas gas doesn't do any of those things.

00:07:32.920 And so that's the reality of our obsession with trying to stop using fossil fuels,

00:07:39.000 is that we are doing genuine harm today.

00:07:41.520 And you have to put that in the balance against the potential future harms of runaway warming.

00:07:47.340 What are the policy implications of what you're saying, Matt?

00:07:49.880 If you were the chief scientific advisor or chief advisor to blah, blah, blah,

00:07:54.320 would you go full Trump, drill, baby drill, no net zero, scrap all of that stuff?

00:08:01.240 Should we be trying to reduce carbon emissions at all?

00:08:04.700 I think it's relatively simple.

00:08:06.920 The advice I'd give was don't set a deadline.

00:08:09.960 I mean, 2050, net zero, UK, only country doing it.

00:08:14.240 We only produce 0.87% of the world's emissions anyway.

00:08:18.040 It won't make a damn bit of difference whether we hit that or not.

00:08:20.200 And the technology to do that, as I say, is not here.

00:08:24.180 And it might come along in 2051. 0.98

00:08:26.440 And then you'd look a fool, wouldn't you? 0.94

00:08:27.780 You'd spend a fortune trying to get rid of emissions and you could have done it for free. 0.99

00:08:31.820 So I think that's a crazy way of going about it. 0.99

00:08:34.460 I think what the UK has done is unbelievably foolish. 0.75

00:08:37.420 And we should tear up net zero, get rid of the Climate Change Committee,

00:08:39.900 and instead fund research into energy technologies that might be able to solve the problem in the future.

00:08:52.640 Because if you could get fusion going economically five years earlier than it would otherwise by a bit more funding,

00:09:02.460 or if you could get small nuclear reactors cheaper five years sooner,

00:09:07.800 that would make far more difference than heat pumps and electric vehicles and all these kind of things.

00:09:14.940 So, you know, for me, it's about researching the problem to find solutions rather than enacting deadlines today.

00:09:27.340 Liam, it seems to me you've painted a very grim yet accurate picture of our economy,

00:09:32.680 which leaves me scratching my head when I go, well, why are we pursuing net zero?

00:09:37.300 Isn't that just a fancy name for deindustrialisation?

00:09:42.380 Well, a lot of the trade unions in the UK think that.

00:09:44.540 There's a huge rift now between this Labour government and the trade union movement,

00:09:48.220 because the trade union movement can see that pursuing net zero the way we are,

00:09:54.220 as zealously as we are, is massively hollowing out our industry.

00:09:59.260 We've just closed, you know, Britain's largest refinery up in Grangemouth.

00:10:03.880 We've just shut down our last two blast furnaces in Wales at Port Talbot,

00:10:10.360 which, of course, make virgin steel, which is very important for defence applications,

00:10:14.580 other construction applications.

00:10:15.760 It's really hard to get virgin steel in the UK because, you know, the Red Sea's closed because of Hootie rebels. 1.00

00:10:22.260 It just seems madness to me.

00:10:23.920 Look, I'm all for a better environment and I'm all for moving away from fossil fuels in a way that isn't economically ruinous.

00:10:30.560 But I think the way we're doing it is economically ruinous.

00:10:34.580 And I think a lot of mainstream politicians now are waking up to that until very recently.

00:10:39.760 To even question net zero is to be, you know, you might, you're accused of, you know, slaying the firstborn.

00:10:48.960 You're accused of being herod, you know, it's crazy.

00:10:51.560 And just the use of the word denier, I think, is disgusting because, of course, 0.97

00:10:55.860 Holocaust denial is a crazy thing and a disgusting thing.

00:10:59.040 But that's the phrase that it kind of tries to echo. 0.98

00:11:03.380 You are that unreasonable.

00:11:05.120 No, there are many, many, many scientists who they just don't get airtime.

00:11:10.140 But, you know, Nobel winning scientists who really do question net zero, the whole thing.

00:11:16.320 OK, I'm not here to do that.

00:11:17.980 I'm here to say I do want a much cleaner environment.

00:11:20.260 I do think it makes sense over a period of time to move away from fossil fuels.

00:11:25.800 I do believe in renewable forms of energy being better for the world.

00:11:31.720 I think wind is the least efficient.

00:11:34.320 I believe in hydrogen.

00:11:35.860 I think that's a wonder fuel that we are deliberately suppressing.

00:11:40.760 Vested interests who are making a huge amount of money out of renewables subsidies

00:11:44.660 are deliberately dissing hydrogen as a viable option.

00:11:49.120 JCB have just built an incredible internal combustion engine that runs on hydrogen,

00:11:57.140 the only emission of which is water, right?

00:12:00.240 And if you use renewable winds to do the electrolysis that generates the hydrogen in industrial quantities

00:12:07.360 and then you use that hydrogen and it emits water, you have perpetual clean energy, right?

00:12:13.620 And that will really undermine the businesses of lots of people.

00:12:17.120 That's why it's so little talked about.

00:12:19.600 I believe in that.

00:12:20.560 So I'm by no means not interested in this agenda.

00:12:23.580 But what I would say is that unless this net zero agenda, which was introduced in the UK

00:12:30.140 and so many other countries with no debate, it was put into law, it was waved through Parliament,

00:12:35.400 just a handful of MPs protested against it.

00:12:39.680 Unless it starts delivering pretty soon for people in terms of cheaper energy bills and doing less damage

00:12:46.660 to people who are least able to shoulder that economic damage, then the political consensus behind it is going to be crushed.

00:12:54.960 So take, for instance, electric vehicles.

00:12:58.580 You know, we have in the UK the most stringent electric vehicle introduction laws in Europe,

00:13:03.600 even more stringent than in the EU, even though we've left the EU.

00:13:07.500 And at the moment now, I talk to lots of people in the car industry, or they talk to me because they can't get a hearing with many other journalists.

00:13:16.280 You know, very senior people in the car industry.

00:13:18.660 And they are now saying this is going to completely wreck Britain's entire car industry, which employs a million people.

00:13:26.340 Right. And then five hundred thousand more in related industries, often in parts of the country that don't have many decent jobs.

00:13:34.580 Right. You know, the fact that we now have a situation where car make car makers in the UK, 22 percent last year,

00:13:42.420 this year, 28 percent of the cars they sell must be pure electric vehicles, not hybrids, pure electric vehicles.

00:13:48.400 But guess what? The punters don't want them.

00:13:50.880 The punters don't want them because the charging network is really ropey and really expensive.

00:13:55.580 They don't want them because the secondhand market for electric vehicles is awful.

00:14:00.020 They don't want them because in many cases they're unreliable.

00:14:02.660 So car makers can't actually sell enough vehicles to get to 28 percent.

00:14:07.740 And under our rules in the UK, insane.

00:14:10.680 They're charged a fine of 15,000 pounds, you know, getting on for 20,000 US dollars per vehicle that is below that 28 percent.

00:14:20.160 So what are they doing? They're rationing.

00:14:21.580 Rationing. They're not making petrol and diesel vehicles ahead of the 2035 ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles,

00:14:28.320 which means the new petrol and diesel vehicles are going up in price.

00:14:32.320 People can't get them and they're laying off workers.

00:14:36.020 So UK car production, it went down 14 percent last year in the first two months of this year.

00:14:40.840 It's gone down another 14 percent from that much lower base and the car companies are laying people off.

00:14:47.180 BMW, because of our electric vehicle rules, you know, imposed by Ed Miliband, who is completely out of control and needs to be, I think, reined in.

00:14:56.420 And I think he's actually dangerous with some of his policies at the moment.

00:15:02.280 BMW are now not building the electric vehicle, electric mini at Cowley in Oxford, right?

00:15:10.040 Cowley has been a center of car manufacturing for over 100 years.

00:15:15.400 This is one of the most sophisticated car plants in Europe.

00:15:18.140 And BMW are probably not going to come back.

00:15:21.160 They're not saying that now, but they're probably not going to come back.

00:15:24.060 And look at the ban on drilling for new oil and gas in the North Sea.

00:15:29.640 Again, insane, because what we're doing instead, France, is, you know, even the Climate Change Committee,

00:15:34.540 which is our kind of in-government think tank that has the legal rights to tell ministers what to do effectively,

00:15:43.100 even the Climate Change Committee says that by 2030, we're going to still use oil and gas for 50% of our energy,

00:15:48.900 it will actually be much higher.

00:15:49.880 Even by 2050, it will be 25% of our energy, it will actually be much higher.

00:15:53.440 So even, you know, the most woke, green civil servants say we're still going to need lots of oil and gas,

00:16:00.060 even if we hit net zero by 2050.

00:16:02.300 So why not use our own oil and gas?

00:16:04.260 Because if instead of using North Sea oil and gas, by the way, the North Sea oil complex employs about 300,000 people,

00:16:11.160 many of them unionised, which is why the unions are upset,

00:16:13.860 we are importing liquefied natural gas from Qatar and America on ships.

00:16:19.820 That uses five times the carbon emissions because you've got to pump the gas, right?

00:16:25.680 You've got to liquefy it, which is a very energy-intensive process,

00:16:29.520 stick it on a diesel ship, go 3,000 miles across the Atlantic,

00:16:33.260 re-gasify it here, which is a very energy-intensive process.

00:16:36.620 When we've got oil and gas in the North Sea, to close that down just for ideological reasons,

00:16:43.660 because Labour wants to appeal to their trendy urban electorates, who are very wealthy,

00:16:49.980 is madness.

00:16:51.140 Because they are not only really, now I think, threatening the energy security of this country,

00:16:57.200 they are also hammering their traditional blue-collar base that works in these industries.

00:17:03.100 And that is why that blue-collar base is increasingly looking for alternative political representation.

00:17:10.520 The one thing you will need to do if you want to re-industrialise Britain

00:17:13.520 is go from having the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world

00:17:20.060 to producing lots and lots of cheap, reliable energy,

00:17:23.940 which means you just have to say net zero in the bin, day one,

00:17:28.080 we're going to make energy in Britain, we're going to produce our gas, etc.

00:17:31.420 Is that the plan?

00:17:32.280 Yes.

00:17:33.480 Yes.

00:17:34.040 So the reforms policy, which I've advocated for some time as well,

00:17:38.740 is the aim of British energy policy is energy abundance.

00:17:44.360 Let's go for cheap and reliable energy.

00:17:47.320 And we'll do that however we can.

00:17:48.800 If there's treasure in the ground or in our seas, we should make use of it.

00:17:54.020 So as much as we can get from North Sea oil and gas, let's use it.

00:17:59.300 You know, if there is fracking that can be done in a way where there's commercial interest and it's safe,

00:18:06.960 we should do so.

00:18:08.880 We should be honest enough to say that gas is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

00:18:13.280 And yeah, there will also be a role for renewables, like offshore wind and so on,

00:18:17.520 but it won't be massively subsidized to the detriment of other things.

00:18:22.380 And we should be going for broke on small nuclear reactors.

00:18:26.560 That means completely changing the planning system.

00:18:29.440 And so we tried to do what other countries have done elsewhere in the world,

00:18:32.920 like South Korea here, so that we can build them as fast as possible.

00:18:36.820 And that will be the bedrock of our economic policy.

00:18:40.480 Because, you know, there aren't that many levers that government can pull to get economic growth going again.

00:18:45.380 It can change the planning system so you can get the country building again.

00:18:50.440 It can change our education and skills policy.

00:18:54.040 And so we send less young people to university and more put through the route of genuine skills for apprenticeships.

00:19:00.580 But the most important of all will be having a different energy policy.

00:19:03.800 We've basically just got to do everything that is necessary to lower energy prices for consumers and for energy-intensive industries.

00:19:12.320 And although there's been a lot of de-industrialization, there's still almost 2 million jobs in the country in energy-intensive industries.

00:19:20.440 And those jobs will be lost.

00:19:22.460 I mean, they will go in the next 10 or 15 years.

00:19:25.800 And they're good jobs, mostly outside of the Southeast, which are incredibly important to communities as well as to our national interest.

00:19:36.200 And we have to save those jobs.

00:19:37.800 But isn't that the problem, Alan, that essentially you're trying to reduce the demand for something that will never be reduced because of the population,

00:19:43.700 for energy, not for fossil fuel energy, but for energy.

00:19:46.720 And you haven't got a ready-made replacement as cheaper.

00:19:52.940 That's Bjorn's point, is you have to invest in technology to make alternative forms of energy cheap enough

00:19:58.700 that you don't then need the levers of government to introduce it because people are just going to buy this cheaper energy wherever it comes from.

00:20:06.420 But we don't have it yet.

00:20:08.020 Do you see what I'm saying?

00:20:08.520 Yes, although I don't think that that is entirely true in that, you know, certainly some of the alternative forms of energy have become cheaper.

00:20:17.680 Like what?

00:20:18.440 Well, the renewable forms of energy have become cheaper.

00:20:21.380 So wind, solar.

00:20:22.500 Wind and solar.

00:20:24.420 They're cheaper than burning?

00:20:26.560 Yes.

00:20:27.240 Really?

00:20:27.840 However, the flip side of that is that you need to, they are intermittent forms.

00:20:33.040 Yes.

00:20:33.240 So you need to either be able to store the energy that they create.

00:20:36.000 Yes.

00:20:36.280 Or you need to find a way to fill in when they're not producing.

00:20:41.340 So that's what I mean.

00:20:42.180 Overall, as a package, it's not cheaper at this point.

00:20:45.640 Or we don't have the way to make it work without fossil fuel.

00:20:48.340 Whatever way you want to put it, it's not a viable alternative that is cheaper as well.

00:20:52.900 If you are taking all of the pros of all of the different energy sources and all of the cons of different energy sources,

00:20:59.660 and you factor in the impact of the use of fossil fuels into that equation,

00:21:04.720 then it drives you necessarily to forcing the pace on some of the alternatives.

00:21:10.620 Now, some of the alternatives are perfectly workable and will become better, we know, if we drive them.

00:21:16.340 So nuclear technology, for instance, stood still for 20, 30 years because we got scared about it after Chernobyl and we froze the development of that technology where it was.

00:21:27.300 You know, the existing nuclear power stations are using 30-year-old technology, basically.

00:21:31.720 That's reassuring.

00:21:32.500 Fourth generation, absolutely.

00:21:34.240 Fourth generation nuclear solves a lot of the problems that we were worried about.

00:21:39.080 You know, if something goes wrong, plants will shut down safely rather than melt down.

00:21:44.420 You know, they don't create very much nuclear waste.

00:21:47.040 In fact, they can use nuclear waste, old nuclear waste, as fuel.

00:21:51.860 As with anything, if you work a technology to scale, then you gradually make it better and you solve the problems.

00:21:59.140 So if we work nuclear technology to scale, as the Chinese are doing, because they can see that this is the technology of the future, 1.00

00:22:06.040 if you push yourself as pioneers into that space, you become the providers of that technology to the world.

00:22:12.560 So then what you've done by putting money into it when it was less cost-effective is you've invested in the new technology,

00:22:19.620 which you then recoup the cost of that investment from by selling it to the world.

00:22:23.880 Because the world will go net zero in a blink of an eye when you've got the cost-effective technology that works.

00:22:31.100 But how do you get that?

00:22:32.480 You get it by investing in developing that technology.

00:22:36.040 We already know that nuclear works.

00:22:38.180 It's just that we've got ideological stuff going on that has said that, you know,

00:22:42.860 even though we say that there's a climate crisis, we're also going to be anti-nuclear.

00:22:47.500 And you sit there and say, how could you ever come to that conclusion if you're simply thinking this is a pragmatic problem to be solved?

00:22:54.360 It's not.

00:22:55.020 It's an ideology that is driving these.

00:22:57.440 Why is Germany shutting down nuclear power stations right now and ramping up coal when it says that it's going to be a climate leader?

00:23:04.680 And by the way, making it extremely vulnerable to Russia, which is why the current situation with Ukraine, 0.87

00:23:09.780 Germany can't do shit because they've closed all their power stations down. 0.62

00:23:12.900 And this is the challenge. 0.98

00:23:14.220 So net zero, if it's taken as a pragmatic engineering problem to be addressed,

00:23:19.500 then there's a certain amount of investment in technology that makes sense.

00:23:22.540 And you can plan in a way that will avoid the problems of massive energy price spikes and so on and so forth.

00:23:30.400 But that's not how we're doing it.

00:23:32.460 We're doing it in this weird, ideological, knee-jerk, technocratic way where we are making decisions based on how difficult they are politically

00:23:44.920 more than we are about what's going to get the job done.

00:23:48.420 And that is going to lead to exactly what you described, what you ascribed to Bjorn, whether he would have owned it himself.

00:23:55.180 No, he did say you're going to get more Bolsonaro's.

00:23:57.360 Yeah.

00:23:57.620 Yes, exactly.

00:23:58.200 If you carry on down this path.

00:23:58.640 Exactly so.

00:23:59.200 That was his exact words.

00:24:00.140 Absolutely right.

00:24:00.940 Because the technocrats who are pushing the solutions at the moment are doing a really bad job of pushing their case.

00:24:09.040 You know, they are tending towards the authoritarian, which we don't like, and telling you whether you can or can't eat meat and all those sorts of things.

00:24:19.460 And again, if you were being pragmatic about this, you'd start by saying, what do people most value?

00:24:25.440 How do we reduce the impact of those things?

00:24:28.040 So people value travel, they value what they eat, and as soon as a country comes out of poverty, what do they do?

00:24:35.960 They start eating more meat.

00:24:37.300 It's highly prized, highly nutritious.

00:24:40.260 So you would start with a pragmatic question of, how do we reduce the impact of the things that people value,

00:24:45.400 which makes them more likely to come with us on the journey that we need to go on?

00:24:50.180 But that's not what we're doing at all.

00:24:51.720 No.

00:24:51.800 What we're doing is, you know, we start this with an ideological preference, which is that people consume less, they travel less, they drive less, they eat vegan,

00:25:02.340 they do whatever it is that we think is a good lifestyle.

00:25:05.560 And what we're going to do is we're going to cram that down on them.

00:25:09.440 That is not a winning proposition, I would suggest.

00:25:12.200 And yet, the BBC, you know, as soon as the BBC is talking about climate change, it takes seconds before they've gone on to meat eating or they've gone on to flying.

00:25:23.080 They can't keep away from it.

00:25:24.600 And yet, there are massive impacts in all sorts of areas that are much more important to talk about because there are bigger impacts that have systemic engineering challenges that can be done at scale.

00:25:40.060 Why wouldn't you do those things first?

00:25:42.280 Why wouldn't you focus on those things first and persuade people that actually you're working on their behalf?

00:25:48.700 You're working so that they can have more of the things that they value long into the future and that their kids can have those things as well.

00:25:56.820 And then, at some point in the future, if you have to turn around and say, we really wanted you to be able to have this, but actually, we can't get this to work.

00:26:05.700 We can't get flight that works anymore.

00:26:09.000 You know, we tried it for 20 years and we failed and you're not going to be able to fly as much.

00:26:13.660 And people say, well, we trust that you did try.

00:26:17.260 No one's going to say that now.

00:26:18.700 Because what they see is a bunch of people whose first preference is to cram down lifestyle restrictions on people.

00:26:26.240 First preference.

00:26:27.500 Do you support the government's efforts to reach net zero by 2050, broadly?

00:26:31.740 I mean, it's such a difficult thing to say yes or no for something like that.

00:26:34.640 Probably yes, but it's not as simple as just saying net zero bad or good.

00:26:40.200 It needs to be reasonable and it needs to be controlled.

00:26:42.620 It can't just be something that we cut off all fossil fuels and just expect it to carry on and not affect anyone badly.

00:26:49.460 Can I just first of all ask Douglas and James, what percentage of global carbon emissions is Britain responsible for?

00:26:56.560 Historically or in present terms?

00:26:58.180 Currently.

00:26:58.220 About 1%?

00:26:59.180 About 1%.

00:26:59.760 1%.

00:27:00.320 So if we reduce our carbon emissions to zero and destroy our economy even more than we already have, we will reduce global carbon emissions by 1%.

00:27:10.180 That's what we're talking about.

00:27:11.760 Now, that's what we're talking about, right?

00:27:14.760 And the promise of net zero was, well, it doesn't matter that it's 1% because Britain is a global leader.

00:27:20.320 We will inspire the world if we destroy our industry and hand it over to China, who's going to make the same things that we still need but dirtier, 1.00

00:27:28.640 and then we ship them back here on ships that use the dirtiest fuel imaginable. 0.65

00:27:32.860 If we do that, the Chinese will be inspired to commit industrial suicide as well. 1.00

00:27:37.120 The Chinese clearly are not as stupid as our leader, so they haven't committed industrial suicide. 1.00

00:27:41.860 That is what net zero has done. 1.00

00:27:43.640 We have the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world.

00:27:49.020 That means we basically cannot make anything in this country anymore, and we will not be able to make anything in this country anymore

00:27:55.320 until we let go of this ridiculous idea that we will inspire other people to jump off a cliff like lemmings because we did.

00:28:02.220 It doesn't work.

00:28:03.740 It's not going to deliver prosperity.

00:28:05.100 James talks about we need a strong economy and we need net zero.

00:28:08.280 Those two things are incompatible.

00:28:10.780 You can't have both.

00:28:12.500 So either you choose to make your people prosperous or you choose to pursue.

00:28:16.460 If that's not what you said, then forgive me.

00:28:18.920 I thought what you said is we need both of those things, and I'm saying we can't have both of those things.

00:28:23.360 We are going to have to abandon completely the idea of net zero.

00:28:27.040 We can definitely continue to invest in new technology, and we should be, and we should be pursuing newer, cleaner, cheaper forms of energy.

00:28:34.180 But the number one priority of government policy going forward should be to deliver the cheapest possible, reliable, abundant energy that we can so that, A, our industry can thrive,

00:28:46.640 and, B, so that you are not paying ridiculous electricity and gas prices because we have some of the highest energy prices for consumers in the world as well.

00:28:54.560 Net zero is industrial suicide, and we've been committing it for far too long, and it has to end.

00:29:00.500 Thank you.

00:29:30.500 Now through June 7, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

00:29:34.640 Get tickets at mirvish.com.

TRIGGERnometry - February 10, 2026

How Net Zero Destroyed Britain

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