UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has written an op-ed piece in The Sun promising “I will not sacrifice Great British industry to the drum-banging, finger-wagging Net Zero extremists”
Which means he’s willing to sacrifice all the industry to appease the fossil fuels industry.
Mainstream politicians cannot afford to tank the economy or they are soon out of a job.
How can they achieve net zero without regular folks losing their jobs? It’s hard to put into practice.
You can’t just make and sell cars as a superior mode of transportation and propose policy that effectively is net zero horses as human and cargo transport. Think of all the ferriers, oat farmers, and veterinarians that would put out of a job.
If you proposed to ban horses in 1904 you’d get laughed out of parliament.
Democratically elected politicians don’t have the ability to impose top-down policies opposed by the people who elected them.
It’s really not that hard. It might take time but wind and solar (plus battery backup) are already the cheapest forms of energy. And not doing it is going to be way more expensive. The UK already gets the remnants of Atlantic hurricanes. Have fun dealing with them not being remnants. Or if the AMOC collapses and it’s 30°C colder in parts of Europe.
We already have the technology to get there. It’ll take time/money to manufacture and deploy it but the UK could probably cover its energy needs with wind alone. Sorry if that means BP goes under but they had an oil spill near where I live so zero pity from me.
This is a lot more complicated. The jobs in the oil and gas industry are well paid and will be hard to replace for a number of communities. A refinery creates a lot of union jobs, with great pay for example. Combustion engines also provide more jobs then electric drive trains. So fewer jobs in the car industry. Also companies like Rolls Royce. It is hard to find a replacement for jet engines, which can do something similar. Airbus in general is a big employer in the UK, especially with the entire supply chain.
That is just some stuff coming to mind. It really is not that simple. Obviously there are new green jobs created, but those jobs are not necessarily in the same places, as the old fossil fuel ones.