Net Zero contradictions: SNP/Green fallout is symptomatic

As argued here several times, governments are deeply ill-advised to set “legally binding targets” for Net Zero policies.  Well, LBTs for almost anything actually; because somebody litigious will be displeased when a target is missed.  How much time and energy can any government afford to spend defending such legal actions?  Yet that’s what is happening increasingly across those parts of the world  – UK, EU, USA etc – where governments can be challenged in these ways by anyone with the wonga / sympathetic lawyers etc to muster a challenge (& make the challenge without getting a ‘Visit’ to dissuade them from their actions).  Since some of these targets are essentially out of reach, it’s child’s play to demonstrate the government is “not doing enough” (although there’s a trap down that road for the litigant, we’ll come on to later).    

One or both of two reactions are inevitable.  (i) Governments will take away the means for challenges to be mounted: (ii) they will row back from legally binding targets.  Whatever the attractions of the former to ministers not much concerned for good governance, without doubt the latter is the correct approach, in logic and in law. 

And in Scotland, on specifically the Net Zero issue we’ve just seen the SNP / Green coalition’s first minister Humza Yousaf do exactly that.  It rather seems he did it without consulting the Greens – not much point, really – and now they are parting company, Yousaf unilaterally jumping the SNP out of the Coalition before they were pushed.  Similar things have happened in Germany on a somewhat less dramatic scale – no outright coalition ruptures yet – and doubtless in other places I haven’t noticed.  

‘Net Zero 2050′ as a legally binding target has an odd history.  Many governments had vague ‘ambitions’ in that direction but as regards outright LBT it took a flailing, failing Theresa May to be the first in, with her hastily-conceived, un-deliberated bid for legacy-glory back in 2019.  It took everyone by surprise, not least Parliament, which shamefully spent next to no time on the legislation; but also a bewildered Climate Change Committee which had to gulp several times before endorsing it as even feasible**.  It then took on the nature of a global vogue.

I suppose it’s obvious to even legacy-hungry PMs that legislating for a legally-binding ‘end to climate change by 2050′ would be preposterous.  But they really ought to take that thought seriously, and take the lesson on board.  For the same reason plus additional issues of pure logic, picking a second-order proxy like ‘locally-produced CO2 emissions’ for your LBT is almost as ridiculous (by its own lights, that is) without switching it to ‘CO2 emitted as a consequence of local consumption’.  

But at least 2050 is a (fairly) long time into the future, to the point where a government defending a legal action can at least argue “how can you be sure we’re not going to meet the LBT?“  Thus far, HMG has failed at this game by not convincing the courts it’s doing very much at all.  But here’s the danger for the litigious greens: the more a government appears to be doing (and right now, that’s quite a lot, what with lengthy strategies – on paper – for new nukes, hydrogen, CCS, HPs, EVs etc etc, plus quite a bit of dosh) the more the greens need to ‘prove’ the run-rate isn’t enough.  And in doing that, there’s a risk they’ll prove that the required run-rate is in fact substantially more than 36 per over, and can’t be achieved by anybody.

But that’s to get caught up in the fiction, because as suggested above, governments are not going to prolong their own agonies for much longer.  Really crass targets like the SNP/Green’s annual increments adding up to an eventual 2050 end-game are just too easy to identify as impossible – so they have to be pulled.  

That case is just the most dramatic we’ve seen so far, and with the most immediate political consequences.  But will the SNP thereby lose votes, eh?  That isn’t quite so obvious.  The Tories have softened a fair few lower-visibility targets already themselves, taking the ‘ULEZ’ gamble it’ll help them a bit at the polls.  The soundness of that judgement may take a bit of calibrating if the GE is as much of a meltdown as many believe.  But Starmer never rushes in with a promise to ‘reverse the reversal’ in these matters, does he?

As with several things, let’s check back at year-end to see how the land lies after all those 2024 GEs.  My guess is that across Europe and the USA, a slew of targets will have been softened.  That’s partly for the avoidance of litigation, as above; partly for electoral calculations; and partly something I spotted the big oil companies concluding a while back.  “We’ve now had several years’ experience to analyse; we’ve done the numbers, and checked them twice; they just don’t add up.”  

ND 

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** which they only did making a bunch of caveats so sweeping, they might as well have said: sorry, it can’t be done.