Latest news with #InstituteforGlobalChange
Daily Mail
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Tony Blair says Net Zero push has become 'irrational' and 'hysterical' and warns critics of green energy costs must not be dismissed as 'climate deniers'
The climate change debate has become riven with 'irrationality' and 'hysteria' and needs a pragmatic reset to win over voters, Tony Blair warns today. The former Labour prime minister said that while most people in developed countries like the UK believe it is real they are turning away from the politics because of the sacrifices they are being asked to make. In a forward to a new report by his Institute for Global Change he said there needs to be a switch from 'protest to pragmatic policy' because 'the current approach isn't working'. He questioned the Net Zero move to phase out fossil fuels, pointing out that their use is increasing, not falling, and due to predicted energy demand, especially in the developing world, that would continue. 'These are the inconvenient facts, which mean that any strategy based on either ''phasing out'' fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail,' he wrote. 'Political leaders by and large know that the debate has become irrational. But they're terrified of saying so, for fear of being accused of being ''climate deniers''. 'As ever, when sensible people don't speak up about the way a campaign is being conducted, the campaign stays in the hands of those who end up alienating the very opinion on which consent for action depends'. Despite having been an adviser to COP host Azerbaijan last year, he also criticised the annual UN climate summits as 'a forum that frankly doesn't have the heft to drive action and impact.' The report, The Climate Paradox: Why We Need to Reset Action on Climate Change, argues that climate action has reached an 'impasse' just as the crisis escalates. In March the UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) confirmed 2024 as the hottest year on record as it released its flagship State of the Global Climate report. The agency said global average temperatures hit around 1.55C above pre-industrial levels, outstripping even the record heat of 2023. Scientists said this was mainly driven by the ongoing rise in planet-heating emissions but was also coupled with the warming El Nino weather phenomenon in the Pacific. Earlier this month a major annual report showed Europe is the fastest-warming continent in the world. Storms were often severe and flooding was the most widespread since 2013, claiming at least 335 lives and affecting around 413,000 people. Author Lindy Fursman wrote that Net Zero polities 'are increasingly viewed as unaffordable, ineffective, or politically toxic'. 'The current climate debate is broken. Public confidence in policies to reduce emissions and spark green growth is waning, exacerbated by the fact that many of the promised benefits of past climate policies have failed to materialise,' she said. 'Proposed green policies that suggest limiting meat consumption or reducing air travel have alienated many people rather than bringing them along. 'This failure to deliver has created an opening for populists who exploit public scepticism and frame climate action as an elite-driven agenda. 'The result? Political will is receding just as the crisis accelerates. 'Governments are backtracking, businesses are dropping climate targets and voters are electing leaders who deprioritise the planet's future. The crisis is here, but action is stalling.'
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
It shouldn't take Tony Blair to expose the myth about green jobs
As Ed Miliband pursues his relentless and expensive quest for net zero he would do well to pause and heed the warnings emanating from another, rather more successful, former leader of the Labour Party. Tony Blair's think tank, the grandly titled Institute for Global Change, has warned in a report this week that the Government is overestimating the potential for jobs to be created in 'green' industries, and that they may not replace the jobs lost in British manufacturing. The report calls for Labour to adopt a 'hard-headed' approach to industrial strategy which is less reliant on the green agenda. The report will surely be welcomed in the Treasury, and indeed by anyone in the Government who is remotely serious about trying to achieve economic growth. Far from being an engine of such growth, the net zero agenda is stifling it, closing down British industry, draining public funds and increasing costs for consumers. It's increasingly hard to understand why Ed Miliband continues to believe in his own agenda, let alone persuade his colleagues to go along with it. The UK's rush to achieve net zero ahead of all its competitors is self-defeating, because instead of reducing global carbon emissions it has simply moved them elsewhere. How can any industry survive the highest energy prices in the world, roughly four times higher than the US and China? The most obvious victim has been the steel industry; having once been the world's largest producer of steel, the UK is now closing the last of its blast furnaces, and in future will only have the capacity to produce recycled steel, aided by a £2.5 billion government subsidy and providing a far smaller number of jobs. The demand for steel has in the meantime been met by production elsewhere, most notably China – the country responsible for nearly a third of global carbon emissions, and where those emissions have more than doubled over the past 20 years. The British car industry is beginning to follow a similar pattern. Aided by inward investment, UK vehicle production has been a success story, our biggest single manufacturing export and a major employer, particularly in less wealthy areas. But the quotas and fines imposed by the Government to fulfil the electric vehicle mandate, combined with competition from Chinese factories producing cheap electric cars, is hitting balance sheets and pushing down demand, so that British car production has dropped to its lowest level since the 1950s. The Tony Blair Institute is therefore only stating the obvious when it points out that jobs created by green initiatives will not compensate for those lost in manufacturing and related industries. But it's not only a question of jobs lost, painful though that process has been, but the cost to the taxpayer of creating 'green' employment. These costs are not just direct, in the form of state subsidies to industry to become environmentally friendly, or public sector jobs in 'sustainability', but also the indirect cost of British electricity, for both producers and consumers, leaving us all worse off. Blair's report will surely increase tensions between Rachel Reeves and Miliband, illustrating the folly of some of the Energy Secretary's claims about green growth. Sooner or later the Prime Minister will have to decide whose side he is on, because Britain cannot afford to go on indulging Miliband's 'luxury beliefs' any longer; the price is simply too high. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
21-02-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
It shouldn't take Tony Blair to expose the myth about green jobs
As Ed Miliband pursues his relentless and expensive quest for net zero he would do well to pause and heed the warnings emanating from another, rather more successful, former leader of the Labour Party. Tony Blair's think tank, the grandly titled Institute for Global Change, has warned in a report this week that the Government is overestimating the potential for jobs to be created in 'green' industries, and that they may not replace the jobs lost in British manufacturing. The report calls for Labour to adopt a 'hard-headed' approach to industrial strategy which is less reliant on the green agenda. The report will surely be welcomed in the Treasury, and indeed by anyone in the Government who is remotely serious about trying to achieve economic growth. Far from being an engine of such growth, the net zero agenda is stifling it, closing down British industry, draining public funds and increasing costs for consumers. It's increasingly hard to understand why Ed Miliband continues to believe in his own agenda, let alone persuade his colleagues to go along with it. The UK's rush to achieve net zero ahead of all its competitors is self-defeating, because instead of reducing global carbon emissions it has simply moved them elsewhere. How can any industry survive the highest energy prices in the world, roughly four times higher than the US and China? The most obvious victim has been the steel industry; having once been the world's largest producer of steel, the UK is now closing the last of its blast furnaces, and in future will only have the capacity to produce recycled steel, aided by a £2.5 billion government subsidy and providing a far smaller number of jobs. The demand for steel has in the meantime been met by production elsewhere, most notably China – the country responsible for nearly a third of global carbon emissions, and where those emissions have more than doubled over the past 20 years. The British car industry is beginning to follow a similar pattern. Aided by inward investment, UK vehicle production has been a success story, our biggest single manufacturing export and a major employer, particularly in less wealthy areas. But the quotas and fines imposed by the Government to fulfil the electric vehicle mandate, combined with competition from Chinese factories producing cheap electric cars, is hitting balance sheets and pushing down demand, so that British car production has dropped to its lowest level since the 1950s. The Tony Blair Institute is therefore only stating the obvious when it points out that jobs created by green initiatives will not compensate for those lost in manufacturing and related industries. But it's not only a question of jobs lost, painful though that process has been, but the cost to the taxpayer of creating 'green' employment. These costs are not just direct, in the form of state subsidies to industry to become environmentally friendly, or public sector jobs in 'sustainability', but also the indirect cost of British electricity, for both producers and consumers, leaving us all worse off. Blair's report will surely increase tensions between Rachel Reeves and Miliband, illustrating the folly of some of the Energy Secretary's claims about green growth. Sooner or later the Prime Minister will have to decide whose side he is on, because Britain cannot afford to go on indulging Miliband's 'luxury beliefs' any longer; the price is simply too high.
