William Atkinson has a depressing but interesting CAPX piece on Nigel Farage's call for a Net Zero referendum. Depressing because it assumes Net Zero isn't already doomed by reality, interesting because it is an inadvertent reminder of how absurdly slanted the climate change debate has been. Presenting it as a comparatively equal contest between progressive and conservative political camps is just another strategy.
Nigel Farage is wrong: calling a Net Zero referendum would create more problems than it solved
You would have thought that Tory MPs have had enough of referendums. Although Scotland voted No and Brexit did eventually get done, the years of rancour and bitterness spawned by those votes was enough to put one off single issue plebiscites for good.
Yet that hasn’t stopped a growing number of Conservatives from jumping on Nigel Farage’s bandwagon, urging Rishi Sunak to let voters have their say on the Government’s 2050 Net Zero target. Since the surprise Tory win in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Net Zero sceptics (of whom there are many) understandably feel they have the public on side. Marco Longhi, the MP for Dudley North, says the case for a referendum is clear, ‘given the complexity of [the] issue’.
Nigel Farage is wrong: calling a Net Zero referendum would create more problems than it solved
You would have thought that Tory MPs have had enough of referendums. Although Scotland voted No and Brexit did eventually get done, the years of rancour and bitterness spawned by those votes was enough to put one off single issue plebiscites for good.
Yet that hasn’t stopped a growing number of Conservatives from jumping on Nigel Farage’s bandwagon, urging Rishi Sunak to let voters have their say on the Government’s 2050 Net Zero target. Since the surprise Tory win in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Net Zero sceptics (of whom there are many) understandably feel they have the public on side. Marco Longhi, the MP for Dudley North, says the case for a referendum is clear, ‘given the complexity of [the] issue’.
Atkinson is right of course. Even if a referendum vote were to go against Net Zero, it would make little difference. Net Zero has far too many vested interests, far too much money, far too many powerful people who will be relatively unaffected by its eventual failure.
Even the most committed opponents of Net Zero must admit that this would not be the fairest of fights. They risk losing a referendum and providing a hitherto absent legitimacy to a policy they loathe. They should also be honest about the consequences of a referendum for our democracy. Not only would a referendum likely pit the generations against each other – think Just Stop Oil-supporting millennials against aging Jeremy Clarkson enthusiasts – but it would toxify the debate over climate change. Camps would become entrenched – like in Scotland after 2014 – and a rational discussion of costs and strategies would become increasingly impossible, much as rational debate about Brexit has.
Rather than fling Net Zero open to the voters, the policy’s many critics would do better to try winning the argument within the Conservative Party. For though it has superficial attractions, calling a referendum on Net Zero would end up creating more problems than it solved.
5 comments:
A referendum is an odd way of deciding whether the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics are still true.
And of deciding exactly how dishonest the Global Warmmongers are.
I put it this way partly because I recently had an argument on another blog with a hydrogen enthusiast. Then I realised that the poor chump thought he'd invented a perpetual motion machine. (Though he doubtless doesn't know the expression.)
It would probably be cheaper and less divisive if the Government (our taxes) paid an equal contribution to the main parties so that they could field two candidates per constituency at the next General Election.
A No-Net-Zero Conservative candidate and a Pro-Net-Zero Conservative candidate. Same for Labour, although the Lib Dems and Greens might not find No-Net-Zero candidates. At least whoever was elected would have some 'authority' over the issue.
dearieme - some hydrogen enthusiasts do seem to think that hydrogen is a fuel rather than a way to store and transport some of the energy used to make it. Quite a few journalists seem to think it is a fuel.
DJ - I think they would find a way to corrupt the idea, it's the one thing they are good at.
Of course there shouldn't be a referendum.
You just know, don't you, that the question would be framed along the lines of "Do you want to save the polar bears", and when everybody does the PTB will say "See, everyone is in favour of what we're doing, so shut up you lot".
Peter - yes, the propaganda would be intense. It would be no great surprise if children were encouraged to tell their parents which way to vote.
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