How Net Zero Destroyed Britain

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2:47Francis Foster:The narrative is as simple as this. The planet is in imminent danger because of climate change. If we don't deal with our carbon emissions right now, then by 20, it depends who you are, 2030, 2035, 2050, but within our lifetimes, certainly within our children's lifetimes, we're all going to die, the planet's going to burn, And the only way to deal with that is to immediately transition to renewable energy, get to net zero so that we're not producing more carbon than we are getting rid of. And whatever it takes to achieve that. Oh, that's the interesting thing, because that's not true in the polls.

3:30Francis Foster:People will say, yes, we want action on climate. Yeah. But then when you ask them how much they're willing to spend on achieving that, they'll say something like 10 pounds a year. Right. It's some ludicrously small amount. They're actually not willing to spend all it takes. It depends how you ask the question. Because if you say to people, how much are you willing to spend? They'll say£10. But if you say to them, look, your energy bills have gone up and it's because of the war in Ukraine. We won't tell you about the green levies and all this other stuff. And by, oh, green levies, yeah, it's to save the planet.

4:00Francis Foster:People are actually, a lot of people are on board with that because the money, they don't feel that the money is being taken out of their pocket. That connection hasn't been made in many people's minds. Well, that's because they've been lied to by policymakers. But people are starting to see through that. In the UK, we are only responsible for 0.8 % of global emissions. So we could cut to zero ourselves, and literally it makes no difference to global climate change. Secondly, our net zero policies measure territorial production emissions. By making our energy expensive, we're incentivizing offshoring of manufacturing.

4:36Francis Foster:So we could meet our target tomorrow by just shutting down all our manufacturing. But the result of that is global emissions go up. And this is what annoys me so much about what Labour's doing, is they just don't seem to be willing to accept that they're making global emissions higher. Miliband repeats time and again, we must act because of the climate emergency. All these factories closing, all our steel plants closing, that happens. we then start buying our steel from China and things like girders. And then you have to ship girders halfway around the world in ships that burn bunker fuel, which is like the dirtiest part of the crack.

5:16Francis Foster:Shipping low value, heavy bulk items halfway around the world is a very stupid thing to do. And that creates a lot of emissions. So not only is the production more polluting because they have dirtier energy in China, then you have all these emissions that you didn't otherwise have from transportation. But because our targets are just looking at territorial production emissions, then, oh, you can just virtue signal that we're, you know. And British blokes are not getting the job because of it. Yeah. So we're losing employment. It's bad for the economy. We're having these artificially high energy prices.

5:47Francis Foster:It's putting more people in fuel poverty and it's making emissions higher.

5:53Konstantin Kisin:And how does that make sense? And the key word that you use there, because that was going to be my follow-up question to you, Catherine is it's a virtue signal. Yeah. Because we're still consuming. Exactly.

6:04Francis Foster:We're just getting somebody else to do it so that we can look good. Right. So here's the thing. Now they're going to introduce something called the carbon border adjustment mechanism, where they're going to tax imported goods that are made with dirtier energy to try and make them equivalent to our emission standards. This is going to be unbelievably inflationary. And so if the economy isn't in the toilet already, it will be when this comes in.

6:27Konstantin Kisin:So what are the products that we're talking about that are going to be taxed with this? Everything.

6:37Konstantin Kisin:Sorry, I know this is going to sound like, what do you mean by everything?

6:40Francis Foster:Clothes, steel, cars, concrete, wind turbines, solar panels, everything.

6:50Konstantin Kisin:Excuse my language, are they f***ing mental?

6:53Francis Foster:Yes. But this comes back to this, how is it that you can have this widespread ideological failure, if you like? But this has happened many times in history. Look at the Reformation and the Spanish Inquisition. You had a society then that believed that if you didn't follow the true faith, and different people disagreed about what the true faith was, you would burn in hell for eternity. Now, if that's your belief, then you can justify going to just about any length to try and convert somebody to what you think the true faith is. You can justify any type of horrible torture to convert them to save them from eternal damnation.

7:37Francis Foster:So now we would look back at things like the Spanish Inquisition, the English martyrs and all that stuff, and we'd say, that was ridiculous, that was horrific. How could they crush people under doors that were loaded up with rocks just because they were Protestants instead of Catholics and vice versa? Well, that was the reason why. But everybody believed it. Nobody thought that was crazy.

7:59Konstantin Kisin:If we had a technology that said we can stop emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow and it won't cost you a penny, fine. No problem. You then have to say, well, how difficult is it to stop emitting carbon dioxide? and we've tried for 30, 40 years now to do that and today 82 % of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels. The year 2000, 83 % roughly. We've hardly changed. It's gone up a bit and then down a bit. You know, may have got to 84 % at one point, down to 81 % at one point but, you know, we can't find a replacement for fossil fuels that is both reliable and cheap. And, you know, just think about eating your home or driving your car or whatever.

8:53Konstantin Kisin:You know, it ain't that easy. And if you're living in Burkina Faso and you're burning brushwood, which you've collected from the surrounding forest or scrub to keep yourself to cook food at night, and the World Bank says you can't have money for a bottled gas program in that country because it's a fossil fuel, then I think you should be pretty cross about that because your burning fire is killing your kids. Indoor air pollution kills 4 million people a year. It produces more carbon dioxide than burning gas. It steals the wood from beetles and other creatures who want to eat it. Whereas gas doesn't do any of those things.

9:42Konstantin Kisin:So that's the reality of our obsession with trying to stop using fossil fuels, is that we are doing genuine harm today. And you have to put that in the balance against the potential future harms of runaway warming.

9:56Francis Foster:What are the policy implications of what you're saying, Matt? If you were the chief scientific advisor or chief advisor to blah, blah, blah, Would you go full Trump, drill, baby drill, no net zero, scrap all of that stuff? Should we be trying to reduce carbon emissions at all? I think it's relatively simple.

10:16Konstantin Kisin:The advice I'd give was don't set a deadline. I mean, 2050 net zero, UK, only country doing it. We only produce 0.87 % of the world's emissions anyway. It won't make a damn bit of difference whether we hit that or not. And the technology to do that, as I say, is not here. And it might come along in 2051. And then you'd look a fool, wouldn't you? You'd spend a fortune trying to get rid of emissions and you could have done it for free. So I think that's a crazy way of going about it. I think what the UK has done is unbelievably foolish. And we should tear up net zero, get rid of the Climate Change Committee

10:52Konstantin Kisin:and instead fund research into energy technologies that might be able to solve the problem in the future. because if you could get fusion going economically five years earlier than it would otherwise by a bit more funding, or if you could get small nuclear reactors cheaper five years sooner, that would make far more difference than heat pumps and electric vehicles and all these kind of things. So, you know, for me, it's about researching the problem to find solutions. rather than enacting deadlines today. Liam, it seems to me you've painted a very grim yet accurate picture of our economy, which leaves me scratching my head when I go, well, why are we pursuing net zero?

11:47Konstantin Kisin:Isn't that just a fancy name for de-industrialisation? Well, a lot of the trade unions in the UK think that. There's a huge rift now between this Labour government and the trade union movement because the trade union movement can see that pursuing net zero the way we are, as zealously as we are, is massively hollowing out our industry. We've just closed Britain's largest refinery up in Grangemouth. We've just shut down our last two blast furnaces in Wales at Port Talbot, which of course make virgin steel, which is very important for defence applications, other construction applications. It's really hard to get virgin steel in the UK because the Red Sea's closed because of Houthi rebels.

12:32Konstantin Kisin:It just seems madness to me. Look, I'm all for a better environment and I'm all for moving away from fossil fuels in a way that isn't economically ruinous. But I think the way we're doing it is economically ruinous. And I think a lot of mainstream politicians now are waking up to that until very recently to even question net zero is to be, you know, you might. you're a climate denier. You're accused of slaying the firstborn. You're accused of being herod. It's crazy. And just the use of the word denier I think is disgusting because of course Holocaust denial is a crazy thing and a disgusting thing but that's the phrase that it kind of tries to echo.

13:13Konstantin Kisin:You are that unreasonable. No, there are many scientists who they just don't get airtime but Nobel winning scientists who really do question net zero the whole thing okay i'm not here to do that i'm here to say i do want a much cleaner environment i do think it makes sense over a period of time to move away from fossil fuels i do believe in renewable forms of energy um being better for the world i think wind is the least efficient um i believe in hydrogen i think that's a wonder fuel that we are deliberately suppressing vested interests who are making a huge amount of money out of renewables subsidies are deliberately dissing hydrogen as a viable option you know jcb have just built an incredible internal combustion engine that runs on hydrogen the only emission of which is water right so and if you use renewable winds to do the electrolysis that generates the hydrogen in industrial quantities and then use that hydrogen and it emits water you have perpetual clean energy right and that will really undermine the businesses of lots of people that's why it's so little talked about but i believe in that so i'm by no means not interested in this agenda but what i would say is that unless this net zero agenda which was introduced in the uk so many other countries with no debate it was put into law it was waved through parliament just a handful of MPs protested against it, unless it starts delivering pretty soon for people in terms of cheaper energy bills and doing less damage to people who are least able to shoulder that economic damage, then the political consensus behind it is going to be crushed.

15:04Konstantin Kisin:So take, for instance, electric vehicles. We have in the UK the most stringent electric vehicle introduction laws in Europe, even more stringent than in the EU, even though we've left the EU. And at the moment now, I talk to lots of people in the car industry, or they talk to me because they can't get a hearing with many other journalists, you know, very senior people in the car industry. And they are now saying this is going to completely wreck Britain's entire car industry, which employs a million people, right? And then 500 ,000 more in related industries, often in parts of the country, that don't have many decent jobs, right?

15:45Konstantin Kisin:The fact that we now have a situation where car makers in the UK, 22 % last year, this year 28 % of the cars they sell must be pure electric vehicles, not hybrids, pure electric vehicles. But guess what? The punters don't want them. The punters don't want them because the charging network is really ropey and really expensive. If they don't want them because the second-hand market for electric vehicles is awful, they don't want them because in many cases they're unreliable. So carmakers can't actually sell enough vehicles to get to 28%. And under our rules in the UK, insane. They're charged a fine of£15 ,000, you know, getting on for US$20 ,000 per vehicle that is below that 28%.

16:29Konstantin Kisin:So what are they doing? They're rationing. They're not making petrol and diesel vehicles ahead of the 2035 ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles, which means the new petrol and diesel vehicles are going up in price. People can't get them and they're laying off workers. So UK car production, it went down 14 percent last year. In the first two months of this year, it's gone down another 14 percent from that much lower base. And the car companies are laying people off. BMW, because of our electric vehicle rules imposed by Ed Miliband, who is completely out of control and needs to be, I think, reined in.

17:06Konstantin Kisin:I think he's actually dangerous with some of his policies at the moment. BMW are now not building the electric mini at Cowley in Oxford, right? Cowley has been a centre of car manufacturing for over 100 years. this is one of the most sophisticated car plants in Europe and BMW are probably not going to come back they're not saying that now but they're probably not going to come back and look at the ban on drilling for new oil and gas in the North Sea again insane because what we're doing instead France is yeah even the climate change committee which is our kind of in government think tank that has the legal rights to tell ministers what to do effectively even the climate change committee says that by 2030, we're going to still use oil and gas for 50 % of our energy, it will actually be much higher.

17:59Konstantin Kisin:Even by 2050, it'll be 25 % of our energy, it will actually be much higher. So even the most woke green civil servants say we're still going to need lots of oil and gas, even if we hit net zero by 2050. So why not use our own oil and gas? Because if instead of using North Sea oil and gas, by the way, the North Sea oil complex employs about 300 ,000 people, many of them unionized, which is why the unions are upset. We are importing liquefied natural gas from Qatar and America on ships. That uses five times the carbon emissions because you've got to pump the gas, right? You've got to liquefy it, which is a very energy-intensive process, stick it on a diesel ship, go 3 ,000 miles across the Atlantic, re-gasify it here, which is a very energy-intensive process.

18:46Konstantin Kisin:when we've got oil and gas in the North Sea. To close that down just for ideological reasons, because Labour wants to appeal to their trendy urban electorates who are very wealthy, is madness. Because they are not only really, now I think, threatening the energy security of this country, they are also hammering their traditional blue-collar base that works in these industries. And that is why that blue-collar base is increasingly looking for alternative political representation.

19:20Francis Foster:The one thing you will need to do if you want to re-industrialise Britain is go from having the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world to producing lots and lots of cheap, reliable energy, which means you just have to say net zero in the bin day one. We're going to make energy in Britain. We're going to produce our gas, etc. Is that the plan? Yes. Yes.

19:43Konstantin Kisin:So the reforms policy, which I've advocated for some time as well, is the aim of British energy policy is energy abundance. Let's go for cheap and reliable energy. And we'll do that however we can. If there's treasure in the ground or in our seas, we should make use of it. So as much as we can get from North Sea oil and gas, let's use it. if there is fracking that can be done in a way where there's commercial interest and it's safe, we should do so. We should be honest enough to say that gas is here to stay for the foreseeable future. And yeah, there'll also be a role for renewables like offshore wind and so on, but it won't be massively subsidized to the detriment of other things.

20:31Konstantin Kisin:And we should be going for broke on small nuclear reactors. and that means completely changing the planning system. And so we try to do what other countries have done elsewhere in the world, like South Korea here, so that we can build them as fast as possible. And that will be the bedrock of our economic policy because there aren't that many levers that government can pull to get economic growth going again. It can change the planning system so you can get the country building again. It can change our education and skills policy. And so we send less young people to university and more put through the route of genuine skills for apprenticeships.

21:10Konstantin Kisin:But the most important of all, we'll be having a different energy policy. We've basically just got to do everything that is necessary to lower energy prices for consumers and for energy-intensive industries. And although there's been a lot of de-industrialization, there's still almost 2 million jobs in the country in energy-intensive industries. And those jobs will be lost. I mean, they will go in the next 10 or 15 years. and they're good jobs, mostly outside of the Southeast, which are incredibly important to communities as well as to our national interest. And we have to save those jobs.

21:47Francis Foster:But isn't that the problem, Alan, that essentially you're trying to reduce the demand for something that will never be reduced because of the population for energy, not for fossil fuel energy, but for energy. And you haven't got a ready-made replacement that is cheaper. That's Bjorn's point, is you have to invest in technology to make alternative forms of energy cheap enough that you don't then need the levers of government to introduce it because people are just going to buy this cheaper energy wherever it comes from. But we don't have it yet. Do you see what I'm saying?

22:18Konstantin Kisin:Yes, although I don't think that that is entirely true in that certainly some of the alternative forms of energy have become cheaper. Like what? Well, renewable forms of energy have become cheaper. So wind, solar? Wind and solar. They're cheaper than burning? Yes. Really? However, the flip side of that is that they are intermittent forms. Yes. So you need to either be able to store the energy that they create, or you need to find a way to fill in when they're not produced. So that's what I mean.

22:51Francis Foster:Overall, as a package, it's not cheaper at this point. Or we don't have the way to make it work without fossil. Whatever way you want to put it, it's not a viable alternative that is cheaper as well.