There is a curious idea doing the rounds on the right: that climate change is real, that it is caused by human activity but that European countries cannot meaningfully shape whether the world reaches net zero and is thus able to limit warming. Adding a new fear to flying, Kemi Badenoch opted to use this heatwave week to travel to Stansted airport and criticise the Labour government’s “ideological” focus on net zero. 

What is unexpected about this line is that there is a good point in there somewhere. It may well be that despite major advances in solar and renewable energy, the world is not going to reach net zero by the 21st century’s halfway mark. It may well be that smaller countries need to accept that the battle against climate change is being lost at the moment.

It’s also true, as the OBR reiterated last week, that the costs of not reaching net zero are considerably higher than the costs of reaching it. If you think that we are going to have to spend those far larger sums anyway, then it is not unreasonable to think that we need to prioritise measures that both decarbonise and adapt for a warmer world at the same time. (For instance, the fact that the British government currently provides grants to heat pumps, so long as those pumps cannot also provide air conditioning, is perverse.)