IT is clear from reading the daily UK newspapers and listening to news bulletins on radio and television that there is a major sense of growing unease about Britain’s plans to be carbon-neutral by 2050.

As many people know, nothing inspires politicians more than the desire to avoid a backlash among their voters to one of their flagship proposals just as the country approaches an election. And many in the UK government are now coming to the realisation that achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 will be eyewateringly expensive. The UK public is also beginning to realise that it is going to have to foot most of the bill for it.

When making the recent announcement that Britain would be approving more than 100 further drilling licences in the search for more gas and oil fields in the North Sea off Scotland, the Prime Minister was asked how he would defend that decision to his two teenage daughters, whom he has publicly admitted have expressed to him their concerns about climate change. He said: ‘I have assured them that the UK will be net zero by 2050 but in a proportionate and practical way.

They are not eco-zealots. They are open to sensible, practical arguments.’ That has been interpreted by many political observers as a signal that the UK Prime Minister and his advisers are aware that there is a growing backlash against the proposals, which is intensifying. Even top Labour Party figures, such as former Prime Minister Tony Blair, are questioning the wisdom of the timetable and he is urging that party to row back on some of the dates that have been set for ending some activity, especially 2030 as the date when the sale of new vehicles powered by petrol or diesel will be illegal.

Last week, one of the Daily Telegraph editorial writers penned the following: ‘Uxbridge now looks like one of the most significant by-elections in history.

By voting against ULEZ (Ultra Low Emissions Zone), voters didn’t outwardly reject net zero, as ULEZ is ostensibly about air quality not global warming, but the by-election hung on an environmental question and the eco side lost, forcing government and opposition to rethink their agendas. It’s not inconceivable that Britain, having long boasted about being a world leader in going green, will be the first nation to look nervously at the bill and give serious consideration to running away before the waiter returns.

‘For years, politicians treated environmentalism as a no-brainer, peddling the myth that it pays for itself. In reality, the cost is hidden in taxes, utility charges and energy-supply problems. ULEZ imposes a charge on older cars and this forces owners to buy a new one. This is simply the first concrete example of the state directly ordering voters to impoverish themselves to hit a target – and it’s the difference between being discreetly defrauded and brazenly robbed.’

The writer pointed out that if he decided to do everything he was advised to do to ‘be a good person’, he would face the following costs:

‘If I buy an electric car, the cheapest family-sized model that can go a reasonable distance and climb a hill begins at around £27,000; solar panels are about £7,000; an air-source heat pump £2000-£9,000; insulation of the house to make the pump worthwhile over £2,000; and all this during a cost-of-living squeeze. As laws and targets gradually push net zero from lifestyle choice to mandate, it shifts from “nice idea” to “you must be joking”.

’ He continued: ‘Meanwhile, the backlash against zero is intensifying not because the UK is a nation of climate-change deniers but because the government thinks the magic solution is to impose expensive and flawed technology such as electric cars and heat pumps on to everyone.

‘And yet, even as we sit in the rain on the beach, pretending that we’re glad we went to Clacton this year, we’re still told that Useless Britain Must Fix Everything. Labour calls our country poor and irrelevant but also says that we are rich and powerful enough to save the planet by going greener faster and harder than anyone else. As Tony Blair has pointed out, however, the difference our island would make via net zero is almost comically outweighed by the impact of China and the developing world continuing to develop.’

To put that in its context, China and India send 31% of the world’s greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the UK, which is 19th on the list of countries which produce these gases, less than 1%.

Jersey, which produces 0.0008%, doesn’t even get on the list of the 40 countries, so tiny is our contribution.

The writer in the Daily Telegraph commented that ‘the British people are being asked to become poorer to make barely any difference at all, except to play the role of a moral beacon, that others might learn from our example of recycling bottles and eating insects.

It’s akin to being told that Russia is launching nuclear missiles at Britain and running out and buying an umbrella’.

The Government of Jersey has remained silent on how much the proposed plan to be carbon free by 2050 is going to cost Islanders. The nearest we have got to a figure was provided in the report of the Fiscal Policy Panel’s annual report of 2022 which stated ‘expert analysis produced for the States Assembly in 2019 suggests achieving net zero by 2030 (the original proposal) would cost between £60m and £360m. The Climate Emergency Fund will not be sufficient to finance the transition to net zero. The Funding Strategy will need to consider careful use of both taxes and expenditure to create the right incentives to deliver net zero’.

No other detail has been given to the States about what funding is going to be necessary to achieve net zero by 2050.

What we have been given are fine words as outlined by the Council of Ministers in 2019 when it publicly stated ‘it is important that people in Jersey can see, and come to value, the significant social, environmental and economic benefits from becoming carbon neutral and can acknowledge the legitimacy of their providing financial support to the cost of the transition’.

The time has come for the Minister for the Environment to outline in clear terms to the people of Jersey the precise ‘social, environmental and economic benefits’ that Jersey will experience as a result of being carbon-free by 2050 and provide updated costs of this contribution and set this against reducing the amount of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere by 0.0008%.

An equal analogy to going out to buy an umbrella to protect ourselves against nuclear warfare is the analogy of tipping a kettle of hot water into St Aubin’s Bay to heat it up before going for a swim in winter. It is beyond my comprehension that our politicians can really believe that the cost of it all will be worth it. But, then again, I am never surprised by some of their decisions lately.