Net-zero Emissions Target: Affordability

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I signed up to this debate out of a sense of duty, because as a Green—I point out to the noble Lord, Lord Stern, that Greens have been saying this for 50 years—I felt I had to put forward the interests of the planet and people, but now I have to follow four excellent speeches that I wish I had made myself. Nevertheless, I feel much less weary about this debate. A lot of us here, I think, know that the question is not about whether net zero will cost the UK money, because we all know that cheaper renewable energy and better insulation will pay us back over time. It is about who pays for the transformation to a green economy, who benefits from the switch away from fossil fuels and how much it will cost everyone if we do not do all we can to stop climate change getting worse.

The previous Government held back progress in a shameful way, and I am very concerned that this Government too are not as focused as they could be on the solutions that are more practical than the ones they propose. Climate chaos will hit our economy hard, whether we reach net zero or not. Global warming is already with us; the increase in the scale of wildfires and flash floods are just the first—quite mild—symptoms. We might focus on the increased energy of an individual hurricane season sucking up energy from the warming air, but it is the growing shift in temperature ranges and droughts that should really concern us. The changes to agricultural productivity around the globe will mean scarcity, inflation, famines and movements of people that could impact very seriously on other areas.

Some Governments will collapse. A country that rebuilds and bounces back from one major catastrophe will eventually collapse if that one-in-a-thousand climate event is repeated year after year. California is one of the most affluent places on earth, yet whole areas have been abandoned by private insurance, and people cannot afford either to rebuild after the wildfires or to move away because no one will buy their house. That is the new normal all over the world. Our economy is part of a global economy, and when parts of that international trade start to collapse, there will be far bigger impacts than Donald Trump’s tariffs.

If we want to know where all the objections to net zero have come from, we have to follow the money. The Conservative Party leader has abandoned net zero by 2050 because she is in the pay of the climate deniers in Tufton Street. She made the announcement immediately after receiving donations from the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the linked pressure group Net Zero Watch. At least four members of Kemi Badenoch’s shadow Cabinet—including her shadow Net Zero Secretary, Claire Coutinho—have also received donations from funders of the group. It was the same under the previous Government, with the fossil fuel lobby writing this country’s laws. The right-wing think tank Policy Exchange got money from American oil giant ExxonMobil. Policy Exchange then advised Prime Minister Sunak on drawing up new laws to clamp down on protesters such as Just Stop Oil. That is two-tier democracy: the people with the big money get access to the Prime Minister to create draconian laws aimed at silencing the people with not very much money.

That is how modern Parliament works. It is systematically corrupt and biased in favour of those with fat wallets. It starts with the fossil fuel industry making money out of killing the planet and ends with Ministers colluding with that destruction by dishing out new licences and tax breaks for North Sea oil and gas. Those who object, even if they do so peacefully and non-violently, are arrested and convicted for just planning a protest—as we saw at the Quaker meeting house just last week.

I am sure that Labour Peers still see themselves as good people—despite all the cuts and the thousands of children thrown into poverty—but the Government are happy for the police to use the draconian law that the previous Government introduced. Labour spoke against it but sat on its hands and let it pass, and now it is not rescinding or repealing it. This Government obviously have some responsibility for the arrests and police behaviour last week. If they think the police did something they should not have done, and if they do not think the police were right, they really ought to start thinking about repealing those draconian powers.

The Green Party wants an end to government by cheque book. We would get rid of all the vested interests that promote the expansion of Heathrow and Luton and the growing number of private jets. We would stop money being wasted on expensive climate cons such as the Drax power station, new nuclear, and carbon capture and storage. The noble Lord, Lord Offord, mentioned something about this; it was so irritating that I had to write it down. He said that “renewable storage is impractical”. Well, so is carbon capture and storage. He should get some more information about that; it is absolutely failing.

We should put solar panels on schools and new homes—all of them, not just token changes for the sake of a photo opportunity. The Green Party would make sure that all new homes become energy producers and that communities, rather than corporations, benefit from the renewable power in their part of the country. This is the way to get people on side with a green new deal—not changing the planning rules, threatening newts and sending in the bulldozers.