https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2026/07/29/britain-cant-stop-climate-change-scrap-net-zero/
By Allister Heath – The Editor of The Sunday Telegraph
The lanyard class should have known better than to believe it could re-engineer the world from Whitehall
UK Telegraph excerpt:
Climate change is real, but Britain can do almost nothing about it. The war against global warming has been lost, with only grievous collateral damage to show for it. We have crippled British industry, hammered consumers and pushed the grid to the brink of blackouts, all with no discernible impact on global emissions and the climate.
It’s time to accept this sobering reality, cut our losses, cease tilting at (and building) windmills, ditch the despicable con that is net zero, and learn to cope with, and whenever possible, even enjoy, a warmer, drier, more volatile Mediterranean climate, if that is indeed to be our fate.
Hubris has ruined us, a tiny nation accounting for 0.8 per cent of global CO2 emissions from combustible fuels. We were fooled into believing that we could single-handedly lead the way in saving the world, a futile gambit if there ever were one. …
Britain’s re-embrace of collectivism, of energy rationing, our advanced case of suicidal empathy, have achieved little other than putting us at the mercy of China. The Communist state accounts for 32.1 per cent of emissions, pumps out 262 per cent more CO2 than it did in 2000 and is making the most of net zero in Britain and Europe to bolster its own industry and its grip over crucial commodities.
All of our efforts at carbon reduction (and those of the European Union) have been offset many times over by the increase in Chinese emissions; Britain could return to the stone age and cut our GDP to zero, and it would still make only a trivial difference.
…
Net zero represents the pinnacle of arrogance, a case study in the illusion of control, a landmark in human vanity and, in Britain’s case, exposes a ludicrously exaggerated view of our own importance given the UK’s negligible economic and environmental footprint in 2026.
Above all, we need to rid ourselves of the green energy subsidies and grid integration costs that will exceed £40bn a year by 2030-31, according to the Prosperity Institute, as well as the entire apparatus of net zero, from the Climate Change Committee to binding carbon budgets, restrictions on the North Sea and other compulsory targets to cut CO2 or change behaviour…
Yet fuelled by a neo-Victorian moral revivalism, the UK’s cross-party elites, having lost an empire and searching for a role as international central planners, convinced themselves that we should lead by example and through self-sacrifice, and bet the house on net zero. Ordinary people are paying the price for this delusion.
