The Folly of Climate Leadership: Britain’s Net Zero Masochism and the China Mirage

Does Britain’s hubris know no bounds?

It is one of the enduring marvels of political hubris that a small, deindustrialising island nation contributing less than 0.8% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions believes it can “lead the world” into abandoning fossil fuels. This belief – sincerely held by Westminster’s political elites on both the Conservative and Labour benches – has birthed an energy policy that combines moral grandstanding with economic self-harm. The outcome is a textbook case study in how virtue-signalling masquerading as “climate leadership” can hobble an economy while empowering the very geopolitical rivals it purports to outpace.

The latest manifestation of this delusion comes courtesy of Ed Miliband’s “Head of Mission Control for Clean Power by 2030”, Chris Stark. Writing in the Telegraph, Stark urged Britain to emulate China in becoming an “electrostate” – a nation powered entirely by abundant low-carbon electricity – claiming that “we ignore these changes at our peril”. Stark’s premise is as breathtaking in its naivety as it is in its selectivity. China, he tells us, is “laying vast networks of transmission lines, rolling out the world’s biggest fleet of electric vehicles and deploying solar and wind at a scale that dwarfs the rest of the world.”