ADVERTISEMENT

Tories Aren’t Buying Boris as Born-Again Environmentalist

Tories Aren’t Buying Boris as Born-Again Environmentalist

Move over Greta Thunberg, step aside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Here comes Boris Johnson, reborn as eco-warrior and genial host of the United Nations COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland. 

At the UN General Assembly a few weeks ago, the U.K.’s shape-shifting prime minister announced his conversion to the cause of saving the planet: “My friends, the adolescence of humanity is coming to an end … we must show we are finally taking responsibility for the destruction, not just of our planet but ourselves. It is time for humanity to grow up.”

Johnson’s speech, a remarkable political volte-face — years ago he wrote a newspaper column headlined, “I can’t stand this December heat, but it has nothing to do with global warming” — shows how far the right-of-center in Britain has come in adopting both the language and world views of environmental activists.

But there are dangers in the prime minister’s born-again hyperbole. 

Not all Conservative politicians are following their leader, and the strength of green skeptics in government is greater than their few dozen numbers in the House of Commons suggest. They tap into the prejudices of the those outside of London and have the support of powerful right-wing newspapers mindful of readers’ concerns about higher living costs. The populist Tory tail often gets to wag the dog.

Johnson has promised that “We can build back greener, without so much as a hair shirt in sight.” But much of his party, whether climate change skeptic or otherwise, doesn’t believe the transition will be pain free.

Led by Tory lawmaker Craig Mackinlay, the so-called Net Zero Scrutiny Group is convened by Steve Baker, an influential euro-skeptic MP who has become a trustee of the climate-skeptic Global Warming Foundation, Baker has put his leader on notice: He warned, “If the government forces the public into buying expensive, ineffective heating, if he makes us give up our cars,” then the costs of net-zero “could deliver a political crisis greater than the poll tax” — a reference to the event that brought down Tory titan Margaret Thatcher. 

The Tory net-zero rebels don’t explicitly reject climate science. Britain’s Conservatives are not in the same camp as the Republican right in the US. But they argue about the pace, cost and fairness of environmental measures placed on ordinary families. Expensive home heating and insulation recommendations are easy targets. Homeowners are bedrock Conservative voters.

The right has grudgingly accepted the leadership line that bailing out the National Health Service after the pandemic will get the party votes. However, after hikes in social payments, they will fiercely oppose new green taxes. 

Johnson, always hyper-sensitive to undercurrents of public opinion, is right to be nervous of opposition to his ambitious targets. He wants 600,000 heat pumps installed in homes by 2028, and all cars to go electric by 2030. The U.K. has a binding legal commitment to cut carbon emissions by 78% by 2035 and then to achieve net zero by 2050. The prime minister’s critics think he is howling for the moon.

Johnson’s green agenda will get him through COP26. But history suggests trouble to come after. One of his Tory predecessors, David Cameron, urged voters “to vote blue, go green” at the 2010 election. By 2013, as his government’s austerity agenda began to bite following the financial crisis, Cameron was forced to abandon his environmental policies as “green crap.” 

The Conservative rebel group has a de facto ally in a mighty Treasury that is suspicious of big spending projects with uncertain returns. Often it is right to be, but its caution can go too far. On the same day the prime minister’s Net Zero Strategy promised that everyone in the U.K. will soon fly “guilt-free” in zero-emission planes, the Treasury’s own Net Zero Review suggested 60 billion pounds ($82.6 billion) a year will have to be spent over the next decade to meet government targets. It warned that tax rises would have to underwrite this.

The Treasury’s core belief is that it is responsible for all taxation. Raising fuel duty would be the best incentive to get motorists to go electric, but the Treasury won’t hear of it. (Rachel Wolf, co-author of Johnson’s 2019 election manifesto, argues that carbon pricing would give private investment the confidence to spend and provide the automatic revenue raising required to fill the Treasury’s coffers.)

A far less mighty Transport department has been forced instead to subsidize electric vehicles and put a time limit on sales of petrol- and diesel-powered cars. This is certainly a route toward a future crisis or, more likely, jettisoning the target as the deadline approaches.

In any case, a mature debate about the inevitable trade-offs in the transition from carbon is long overdue. The original target of net zero emissions by 2050 was passed into law without much public notice after truncated Parliamentary discussion. Many voters don’t even understand what “net zero” means.   

What Britain needs is not Johnson’s born-again green boosterism, but a realistic roadmap to the future. More than half of voters believe the cost of an energy transition will be larger than any savings from lower heating bills and cheaper petrol.  

Johnson needs to dial down the rhetoric and explain how his targets will be reached in an honest fashion. Or else the climate skeptics in his party will do the arithmetic for him.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Martin Ivens was editor of the Sunday Times from 2013 to 2020 and was formerly its chief political commentator. He is a director of the Times Newspapers board.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.