I was at the station this morning and met with a friend who asked me about Kemi’s red line on Net Zero.
He’d seen the headlines and wanted to know why so many people seem so angry about her plan to scrap the 2050 Net Zero target.
It’s an important question — and one we should debate without the caricatures.
First, let’s be clear: this isn’t about abandoning the environment or denying climate change. It’s about questioning an arbitrary deadline and focusing on what really matters: cleaner, cheaper and more reliable energy for British families and businesses.
The UK should continue to cut emissions. We all want cleaner air, a healthier environment and a better inheritance for our children.
But climate policy also has to work in the real world. There is little environmental virtue in imposing costs on British businesses that drive industry overseas, only for us to import the same goods — and the carbon emissions associated with producing them — from elsewhere.
Put simply, we risk exporting jobs while importing emissions.
That helps neither British workers nor the global environment.
Instead of organising our entire energy system around achieving a particular carbon number on a particular date, we should concentrate on abundant, reliable and affordable energy.
That means backing nuclear power, making pragmatic use of our own energy resources and supporting renewables where they make economic sense.
It also means embracing innovation.
Cheap electricity can itself be one of the most powerful ways of encouraging decarbonisation. If electricity becomes genuinely affordable, electric cars, heat pumps and new cleaner technologies become economically attractive without government having to force people to adopt them.
Some argue that abandoning the 2050 deadline would undermine Britain's environmental leadership. I understand that concern.
But leadership should ultimately be judged by results rather than targets.
Britain can have a serious long-term plan to reduce emissions without accepting that every other consideration — household bills, British industry, jobs and energy security — must be subordinated to a legally binding date set decades in advance.
There is also a fundamentally Conservative argument here.
Caring for our natural environment is entirely consistent with Conservative values. But that doesn't mean government must centrally plan exactly how our economy will decarbonise over the next quarter of a century.
Innovation, investment and technological progress can achieve extraordinary things.
The test should therefore be straightforward: are we actually cutting emissions while keeping energy affordable, reliable and secure?
If we can achieve that while protecting British jobs and encouraging British innovation, that is something worth supporting.
Net Zero should mean cutting carbon — not cutting British prosperity.
