Not Zero: How an Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (and Won't Even Save the Planet)

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He argued that efforts to decarbonise the economy had contributed to such events, stating: “We invest in more and more intermittent forms of energy such as wind and solar while the provision of energy storage lags well behind, resulting in several close shaves recently as the wind dropped and the sun went down.”

This devastating and detailed demolition of the case for committing Britain to Net Zero should be compulsory reading for everybody in government and the media. Ross Clark is relentless in his pursuit of facts‘– Matt Ridley author of How Innovation Works and Co-Author of Viral: The search for the origin of Covid-19 A Broom Cupboard of One’s Own: The housing crisis and how to solve it by boosting home-ownership, Harriman House,2012 I fear that under net zero, cars will become a luxury; we will return to the world as it was before the 1960s, with the wealthy driving around on pleasantly empty roads, but with everyone else expected to take the bus […] That is simply cruel.” In an articleabout hurricanes, Clark wrote: 28 Ross Clark. “ The lazy assertion that Hurricane Dorian is caused by climate change,” Spectator, September 2, 2019. Archived April 3, 2020. Archived .pdf on file atDeSmog.In an articletitled “The trouble with Greta Thunberg”, Clark wrote that he was tired of the “fawning attitude” the media was taking towards the climate activist. He argued that Thunberg is a “well-crafted piece of PR” and that she is being used as a speaker for the climate movement because no-one “will dare criticise a 16-year-old with Asperger’s”. 72 Ross Clark. “ The trouble with Greta Thunberg,” Spectator, April 23, 2019. Archived April 3, 2020. Archived .pdf on file atDeSmog. The Daily Mail published an article by Clark titled: “We all want to save the planet but the Government’s barely debated and uncosted fantasy of achieving net zero by 2050 will leave us all poorer, colder and hungrier”. 20 Ross Clark. “ We all want to save the planet but the Government’s barely debated and uncosted fantasy of achieving net zero by 2050 will leave us all poorer, colder and hungrier,” Daily Mail, January 21, 2023. Archived January 23, 2023. Archive URL: https://archive.is/d7zG3 The British government has embarked on an ambitious and legally-binding climate change target: reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions to Net Zero by 2050. The Net Zero policy was subject to almost no parliamentary or public scrutiny, and is universally approved by our political class. But what will its consequences be? Clark wrote: “Those, like Carney, who saw a grim future for oil were swung by their Panglossian belief in a green future, failing to see the bigger picture”. Clark wrote an article for The Telegraph which criticised a report by climate science journal Nature Geoscience, which had claimed that changes in the Atlantic current system could lead to parts of Europe experiencing much colder winters by the end of the 21st Century. 49 Ross Clark. “ Why is there always a round of climate change scaremongering after the weather changes?” The Telegraph, February 26, 2021. Archived March 1, 2021. Archive URL: https://archive.vn/EoddL

In an article for The Daily Mail, Clark commented on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2030, disputing the efficacy of electric cars in reducing carbon emissions. Clark wrote: “Manufacturing electric cars also creates far more carbon emissions than making petrol or diesel ones. So even if they are powered by ‘green’ electricity, you will have to drive thousands of miles before you actually save any carbon.” 52 Ross Clark. “ Electric cars may promise us a greener future but they are a non-starter until they make one I can drive to Scotland in,” Daily Mail, November 16, 2020. Archived November 23, 2020. Archive URL: https://archive.vn/xtiwpThe thing that made the biggest impression on me is that in the rush to achieve Net Zero, it’s almost inevitable that enormous costs are going to be placed on those least able to bear it. If you give over a lot more land to tree planting and rewilding rather than agricultural production, food prices are going to go up. Relying exclusively on renewables, given the cost of storage and the intermittency problem, will push up energy costs even further. Running an electric car is going to be a lot more expensive than a petrol car. Heat pumps will be more expensive than gas boilers. The list goes on. It dawned on me that there is a real a risk that the push to achieve Net Zero creates a two-tier society where the wealthy can still afford to fly, drive and not shiver, but the poor increasingly cannot. Reason Foundation (6 November 2013). "Newsday's Lane Filler and The Times' Ross Clark Win Reason Foundation's Bastiat Prize". Reason Foundation. In an article titled “Britain should embrace new coal mining” written after Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove greenlit Britain’s first deep coal mine in 30 years, Clark wrote: 33 Ross Clark. “ Britain should embrace new coal mining,” Spectator, December 8, 2022. Archived December 22, 2022. Archive URL: https://archive.is/o57dR How to Label a Goat: The Silly Rules and Regulations That Are Strangling Britain, Harriman House, 2007

He has also cast doubt on the link between climate change and extreme weather events and saidthe public should hear more about the “beneficial side of climate change”. 7 Ross Clark. “ Why don’t we hear about the beneficial side of climate change?” Spectator, November 28, 2014. Archived April 3, 2020. Archived .pdf on file atDeSmog. After arguing that Britain’s energy crisis “has been made much worse by energy policies which for a decade and a half have doggedly pursued the objective of cutting carbon emissions without any regard to the costs”, Clark also claimed that the Government had “deprived Britain of what could have been by now a very productive native shale gas industry”. If the Government wants to encourage investment in native oil and gas production – and it should – it needs to […] give the industry reassurances that it is not going to be regulated out of existence by net zero commitments”.

This is a must-read for those in involved in the climate debate and devising climate policy. Not Zero lays out the litany of internal contradictions implicit in the policy of Net Zero' - Michael Kelly, former Prince Philip Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge

The British government has embarked on an ambitious and legally-binding climate change target: reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions to Net Zero by 2050. The Net Zero policy was subject to almost no parliamentary or public scrutiny, and is universally approved by our political class. But what will its consequences be? Given the failure of the world to come to an end, it is tempting to say, just as we do when religious cults and other fantasists make doom-laden predictions which fail to come to pass: well, the whole thing must be a hoax.” KeyQuotes In a Telegraph comment piece titled, “Myopic politicians are wilfully blind to the truth about green energy”, Clark wrote: 42 Ross Clark. “ Myopic politicians are wilfully blind to the truth about green energy”, Telegraph, January 1, 2022. Archived August 2, 2022. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/cWAN9

Clark, Ross (24 July 2004). "Globophobia, A weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade". The Spectator. In a columnabout weather events and global warming, Clark said: 16 Ross Clark. “ Don’t blame all ‘weird’ weather on climate change,” Spectator, December 3, 2019. Archived April 3, 2020. Archived .pdf on file atDeSmog. Commenting on the government’s decision to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030, Clark wrote: “The switch to electric vehicles promises to make life easier for elite motorists, who will enjoy emptier roads, while pricing ordinary drivers off the road.” He also described plans to install 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028 as “just the latest indication of the massive costs that are going to be dumped on ordinary people.” The world is getting warmer, that much is clear. But the evidence for that needs to be dissociated from the tendency of some campaigners to try to pin every piece of adverse weather on man-made climate change.”