Tony Blair’s climate pragmatism is a welcome intervention
By Paul Homewood
London, 28 July – Net Zero Watch has welcomed Tony Blair’s hard-headed intervention in the climate policy debate.
With mounting public concern and political divisions about the rising cost of the Net Zero agenda, the former prime minister has warned that it was not worth imposing even higher costs on consumers.
Sir Tony Blair warned against asking the public to do a “huge amount” to tackle climate change, saying Britain’s unilateral policies have no real impact in light of China’s rising CO2 emissions.
In a recent interview he said:
"Don’t ask us to do a huge amount when frankly whatever we do in Britain is not really going to impact climate change."
Tony Blair also acknowledged what Net Zero Watch has been arguing for years: Britain’s unilateral decarbonisation targets make no sense in the absence of the world’s major economies adopting equally binding caps.
While he insisted that climate change was “the single biggest global challenge” and that “Britain should play its part”, he cautioned: “One year’s rise in China’s emissions would outscore the whole of Britain’s emissions for a year.”
The former prime minister rightly argues that the UK is now a minor greenhouse gas emitter which has no significant impact on global emissions because the world’s major emitters have no intention of adopting binding caps.
Sir Tony’s warning is a timely reminder that Britain’s Net Zero plans are dangerously expensive and will result in painful reductions in living standards for all but the richest. They now threaten Britain with economic decline, societal instability and the eventual failure of the decarbonisation effort.
Instead of extremely costly policies that are both unaffordable and unattractive to the poorer countries, Tony Blair advocates that Britain should focus on helping the developing world shift to alternative energy technologies.
Net Zero Watch welcomes Blair’s intervention and hopes his pragmatic approach will open the door for a fresh debate that, for too long, has been seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist and depressingly intolerant.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Welcome though it may be, this is clearly a ploy to ensure that Labour remain electable and not be outflanked by the Conservatives on a populist issue at the forthcoming election. Knowing how politicians will say anything in order to get elected, whether they repudiate this stance on gaining power remains an open question.
Beat me to it.
Forgive me for not putting the bunting out; this egregious example of an opportunist politician, completely comfortable with monetising his political career’s experiences – paid for by the taxpayer FFS – and accepting “petrodollars” from some of the worst dictators on the planet, now jumps on the bandwagon that has been going in the correct direction for a long time during which he has not exactly been an ardent supporter of that, has he? Let’s all juxtapose his public comments in support of Nut Zero/AWG/CC: I will start this ball rolling down the cliff face with this:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/oct/30/greenpolitics.economicpolicy
Please feel free to add to this pantechnicon of hypocrisy.
Well said, a man not to be trusted, just out for himself. But as he has influence, lets see how it goes. I will take anything to stop Net Zero!
I feel that you and others on here have hit the nail on the head. Saved me a load of writing.
Nothing Blair touches passes the smell test. Its like being damned by false praise.
You would be a fool to trust anything Bliar says.
Bliar reminds me of my father, a Met Police motorcycle cop, a.k.a. “The Black Rats” by their colleagues. He was such a pathological liar that when he came home soaking wet complaining about the atrocious weather I would look outside the door to see if he was telling the truth. I was 10 at the time.
I know someone once married to a motorcycle cop. Her theory was that constant exposure to black leather and bikes had a bad effect on mental health (apologies to all bikers!).
@Nigel
It’s not motorcycles that causes it. I left the job after 11 years because it’s difficult to not get dragged into compromising your personal ethics.
The stress, and the toll it takes on your personal life, is dreadful. And because you are on shifts you tend to socialise with the people you work with. Eventually you become detached from the society you live in.
I’m sure that’s more like it. Certainly the effects she described included the growth of pretty dark groupthink.
“On manoeuvres” (William Hague), even Blair can see that people aren’t buying the NZ BS.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1011407/Parliament-news-European-Union-Council-UK-MP-members-Tony-Blair
And yet the fanatics still ignore the fact that the climate changes all on its own, i.e. Mother Nature. Why do they ignore history? Why do they ignore the climate changes on the uninhabited planets?
For once, the first time, Dumbo Blair is right!
One thing you cant fault Bliar on is the acuity of his political antennae.
And the flexibility of his morals, of course.
Flexible morals, as in from zero to none?
well said sir.
17 October 2006 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/blair-energy-as-important-as-defence-6230717.html
Blair: “Energy as important as defence ”
“Tony Blair has warned that security of energy supply will become almost as
crucial an issue for this country as defence. The Prime Minister was speaking as he marked the official opening of Langeled gas pipeline from Norway, which will provide about 20 per cent of the UK’s gas needs for the next 30 years.
By 2020, the British Government has forecast, some 80 per cent of the country’s gas will be imported.”
30th October 2006 – Blair on the Stern Report
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-at-tipping-point-blair-20061031-gdopuh.html
The report, due out today, is expected to say that climate change threatens to cost more than either of the 20th century’s world wars, or the Great Depression. Blair, writing in The Sun newspaper, said the report’s conclusions were unequivocal: “We are heading towards catastrophic tipping points in our climate unless we act.”
Labour Now:
Never fear, All Is Not Lost…Yet:
Ed Miliband
https://labour.org.uk/missions/making-britain-a-clean-energy-superpower/
“Labour’s fourth mission in government will be to make Britain a clean energy superpower.
With shovels in the ground and cranes in the sky– powered by the Green Prosperity Plan – a Labour government will help Britain lead the world in cheaper, cleaner power and industry.”
The problem is that there is such a huge “industry” that has now been built up around climate change, there are so many snouts in the trough; that it is beginning to look as though it will be impossible to change course. The only thing that will eventually change hearts and minds is when all the dire warnings fail to come to fruition and each calamitous deadline comes and goes – and we’re all still here. The problem is that the UK will probably have bankrupted itself before the (molten?) penny drops!
Well, of course, if ‘the weather’/’climate’ gets better, it will be claimed that the measures taken had worked. If not, then we didn’t do it in time and we have to wait even longer for things to get better while we live a peasants life.
Sadly I think you’re right, too many snouts in the trough by now.
Agreed, but all the warmists’ dire predictions have been wrong yet not nearly enough have recognised that:why?
The relentless battering of the population by MSM, thats why.
Not everyone thinks about things like us lot.
His intervention is certainly pragmatic, but not in the way presented. It is a sign the globalists are worried. He knows as they all do that like Covid there is no threat, and he recognises that the constant hyperbolic hysteria is revealing their sham/scam and turning people off. He is worried that once the rot sets in on it, it will creep into their over-arching globalist agenda, so is backing off; a skirmish lost to preserve their strategic goals, especially as they are silently winning, and once they have their World Government it will be irrelevant.
I think you are spot on. If one by-election can cause so much panic…..
Instead of Blair reinforcing the Climate Change argument, other than saying the is nothing humans can do will ever change natures control over the environment, and the best that can be done is to adapt to the very slow process of Climate Change. Net Zero, the impossible dream, commitments will bankrupt Western economies long before making a small dent in advancing decarbonization. Of course, Net Zero’s real goal is destruction of capitalism and in the ensuing catastrophe the implementation of the UN and WEF wet dreams of a new type of prosperous Marxism controlled by a UN autocracy managed by WEF “elites”. Of course Blair being Blair see’s new career opportunities and money leading the Third World in managing a none existent problem.
Thats about the strength of it!
Never trust the psycopath Tony Blair. There are alterior motives behind this and is likely as noted by others, the general election next year. If people think that wef Sunak or trilateral commission puppets are interested in the public’s interests, then there’s a bridge in London for sale at a good price.
correct.
Well, one-and-a-half cheers for Blair.
If he had said “scrap net zero”, that would have been newsworthy.
‘plans are dangerously expensive and will result in painful reductions in living standards for all but the richest’
E.g. The United States of America has banned the sale of incandescent light bulbs, effective 1 August, to
‘New Energy Department rules will save consumers $3 billion and cut annual carbon emissions by 222 million metric tons over 30 years.’
So Gamecock went to Lowes to stock up. Too late. All inventory is now LED. So he went to Walmart. Same deal. All incandescents already removed.
So he bought two of the fine LED bulbs. $13 US. Understand that a Walmart employee will have to work an hour to buy two light bulbs. ‘All but the richest.’
‘Instead of extremely costly policies that are both unaffordable and unattractive to the poorer countries, Tony Blair advocates that Britain should focus on helping the developing world shift to alternative energy technologies.’
Colonialism is always the answer. Blair’s suggestion is despicable.
But But But – this is first mention in the MSM of the one percent UK to 31% Chinese CO2 thst I have seen in years. The BBC has wilfully hidden it from us. I imagine the troughers in the Climate Change Committee are having a wobble. Because their raison d’être is blown
All the parties will start saying the right things but nothing will change …..except maybe dropping things and replacing them with something worse.
Hopelessly over-indulgent by Net Zero Watch. As suggested above little more than an attempt to reduce grounds for the Labour Party becoming unelectable.
As ever, Blair isn’t dreadful at seeing the problems, but his solutions are based onbeconomic ignorance. Decarbonising the world will be hugely expensive with very little, if any, benefit economically. It doesn’t matter how you arrange that transition. There’s a vast cost, there’s no benefit. We become much poorer. Blair simply invokes his usual “but government doing makes it feee” stupidity.
Blair helped to ratchet up the hysteria in the first place.
“Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change” 2005
Click to access 9780521864718_frontmatter.pdf
Foreword by Tony Blair
“Climate change is the world’s greatest environmental challenge. It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialisation and economic growth from a world population that has increased six-fold in 200 years, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable. That is why I set climate change as one of the top priorities for the UK’s Presidency of the G8 and the European Union in 2005.
Early in the year, to enhance understanding and appreciation of the science of climate change, we hosted an international meeting at the Hadley Centre in Exeter to address the big questions on which we need to pool the best available answers: ‘What level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is self-evidently too much?’ and ‘What options do we have to avoid such levels?’
It is clear from the work presented that the risks of climate change may well be greater than we thought. At the same time it showed there is much that can be done to avoid the worse effects of climate change. Action now can help avert the worst effects of climate change. With foresight such action can be taken without
disturbing our way of life.”
I beg to differ. I think the only problem he sees is the faltering of the narrative. I also believe it is not ignorance; he knows exactly what he is doing and why, but that ultimately, like Gates, and despite what he thinks of himself, he is merely a gopher for the truly evil secure in their sovereign, city states inviolable to national and international laws: the City of London, The Vatican, the BIS in Basel and Washington DC.
A grifter.