Chris Stark may be the departing chief executive of the UK Climate Change Committee, but he isn’t going quietly. Naturally, both the Guardian and the BBC are happy to publicise his claims.

Yesterday, a Guardian article, in its title alone, assured us that “net zero” has become an unhelpful slogan (per Mr Stark), and that “environmental progress” is being inhibited by a populist response and a culture war around the term. Read on, and we are told that not only has a culture war developed, but also that it is “dangerous”.

Linking to another Guardian article written by Fiona Harvey three months ago, the suggestion is that “sensible” improvements to the economy and to people’s lives are being blocked by a populist response to the net zero label. Sigh. Where to begin?

First of all, the cheap reference to populism (never defined) strikes me as yet another example of the establishment’s contempt for the wishes of the people (aka democracy), as recently evidenced by the European Court of Human Rights decision in the case of Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and others v Switzerland.

According to the Fiona Harvey article (the link to which is the purported justification for the reference to “sensible improvements to the economy and to people’s lives”), the UK should invest £26Bn per annum in a low-carbon economy:

Investing in energy infrastructure, transport, innovation in new technologies such as AI, and the natural environment would boost the UK’s economy rapidly, the research found.

Strip that out, and what does it mean? “Energy infrastructure” is a reference, I assume, to the hugely expensive panoply of super-pylons, undersea cables, battery storage, hydrogen plants, solar panels, on-and offshore wind farms and all the rest of it, blighting our environment and rendering UK energy supply both more expensive and less reliable. Other than a reference to yet another overly-optimistic paper by Lord Stern and his colleagues, those benefits aren’t explained. Nor is there a rationalisation for the environmental damage caused by such proposals sitting in the same sentence as “the natural environment”. Innovation in new technologies, such as AI, seems to be bizarre to say the least, given that such technologies are likely to require huge amounts of energy, and that is the very thing they are discouraging us from using. The article contains delusional words with little basis in reality.

Next we are told that Mr Stark didn’t expect the net zero slogan to become so associated with the campaign against it. My guess is that this is because he failed to comprehend that, far from offering sensible improvements to the economy and people’s lives, it threatens to destroy the economy, while rendering people’s lives smaller, colder, more miserable, and more expensive. A stark reality that has so far eluded Mr Stark and his ilk, as evidenced by the next quote:

A small group of politicians or political voices has moved in to say that net zero is something that you can’t afford, net zero is something that you should be afraid of … But we’ve still got to reduce emissions. In the end, that’s all that matters.

And there you have it – reducing emissions is all that matters, regardless of the cost. And he wonders why the “net zero” logo is starting to be problematic.

Bizarrely, he seems to be completely adrift regarding the expense and problems associated with heat pumps, claiming that they offer “a low-carbon and potentially low-cost alternative to gas boilers.” Don’t you just love that word “potentially”? The reality is that even with the £7,500 Government grant now on offer, people aren’t interested in heat pumps because they are still far more expensive than gas boilers, often involve massive disruption, and still sometimes leave them feeling cold. Another stark reality.

Reading the Guardian article is like viewing a parallel universe, completely adrift from reality. Take this, for example:

Policymakers should focus instead on what lies behind net zero – investment in the UK’s economy, in ways that would not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions but cut energy use, improve national security, clean up the air and protect nature and the countryside, he added.

Has he seen just how comprehensively Scotland’s nature and countryside has been trashed by wind farms? How does replacing reliable energy with unreliable, expensive and unpredictable energy, with increasing dependency on interconnectors “improve national security”? We aren’t told – presumably because the stark reality is that it doesn’t; on the contrary it damages it.

And so to the final paragraph:

Stark pointed to China, the US and the EU, which are all investing heavily in low-carbon technologies that are cheaper or becoming cheaper than fossil fuels.

Clearly he hasn’t read Jo Nova recently (if at all).

The BBC, naturally, is in on the act, and treats us to Mr Stark’s view that “Rishi Sunak has “set us back” on climate change and left the UK at risk of falling behind other countries…”. It’s a lengthy article, but I read on in vain to discover how exactly this has put the UK “at risk”. We are told that Mr Sunak has sent the world a message that the UK is “less ambitious” than it was, but why that message is risky, or even problematic, isn’t explained. Apparently, it’s “extremely hard to recover”, but those words are left hanging too. Then we are treated to the Government seeking to explain why net zero is important and why its approach to it is the right one. It’s all rather bizarre.

The article then moves on to the recent Scottish debacle with Mr Stark being quoted as saying that “it was “desperately disappointing” that the SNP government” had ditched its climate targets. [Note to BBC – in Scotland they have an SNP/Green coalition government, not one consisting of the SNP alone]. Mr Stark said the targets had been over-ambitious from the start. Well indeed – there’s another stark reality. And a Scottish government spokesperson was quoted as saying that the 2045 net zero target remains in place, despite back-tracking on 2030 and 2040 targets. My rather sceptical view of that is that the Scottish government knows that nobody in office now will still be in post to be held accountable when another stark reality bites, namely that the 2045 target is also over-ambitious, and frankly unattainable.

Perhaps predictably, the BBC article ends with a snide dig at sceptics, with a claim that a vacuum could be created whereby “climate change denial could creep in.” Instead we are left with a load of vacuous statements such as “the wettest 18 months ever in this country” (ever! Seriously?) and “the hottest year on record”. And there it rests. These people really do seem to believe that it’s vital for the UK to achieve net zero in order to prevent climate change, despite the stark reality being that nothing the UK does can make any measurable difference to anything climatic (though their plans will leave us poorer, colder and more miserable, and our countryside an industrialised hell-scape). Perhaps the penny hasn’t yet dropped after all. .

26 Comments

  2. Wasn’t so long ago that the climate crisis fan club was celebrating the fact that they had finally put an end to the last vestiges of climate science denial on account of the fact that the Settled Science had become even more settled than it was originally, so much so that climate deniers had just given up trying to attack it. All that was needed then was to see off the climate mitigation sceptics trying to find fault with the collectivist Net Zero project. Alas, such has been the ‘populist’ rejection of Net Zero that they are now having to think of ditching the term completely for something less ‘triggering’ to the masses. And horror upon horror, they now discover that their former optimism about having smited climate science denial was premature, because along comes ‘Climate – the Movie’ spinning all the old climate change denialist ‘talking points’ but which millions of people have watched and recommended.

    Liked by 4 people

  4. There is yet another BBC article this week featuring Chris Stark:

    “Scotland in ‘dangerous’ moment for climate goals”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-68879606

    Back on the theme of the unrealistic nature of the Scottish Government’s net zero targets:

    “Speaking at Holyrood’s Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, Mr Stark said a nine-fold increase in decarbonisation would have been needed to reach that legal target and it was “beyond credible” that the Scottish government could have achieved that...

    ...Mr Stark, the outgoing CCC chief executive, said the organisation had been “damning of the Scottish government’s performance” in their last progress report.

    It pointed out that Scottish targets had been missed eight times and the 2030 target to reduce emissions by 75% from 1990 levels was “beyond credible”.

    He said there was no policy package that could deliver anything close to the nine-fold increase in decarbonisation levels needed to hit that goal….”

    In what I regard as a bizarre set of non-sequiturs, he continued:

    “These are very dangerous moments,” he said. “This is the first part of the United Kingdom that has felt it has to withdraw targets under any of the climate change that we have.”

    He said there was now an “empty vessel act” with a 2045 net zero target in law but no policies set to meet it, and that vacuum could be filled with “nefarious voices”.

    Mr Stark said the next 12 months would be a test of how serious the Scottish government is on its climate credentials.

    So on the one hand the targets were unrealistic and unfeasible, but on the other hand it’s a dangerous moment because the unrealistic and unfeasible targets have been abandoned. In a final piece of irony, we get this:

    “He said he was pleased the government would no longer be giving annual targets, which are “at the mercy of events” such as cold winters…”

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  5. Chris Stark also gets a mention from Ben Pile, once of this parish, at the Daily Sceptic:

    “Profits of Doom”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2024/04/23/profits-of-doom/

    “If only we were funded by Big Oil, perhaps I would be as wealthy as Britain’s top green officials, such as the outgoing Chief Executive of the U.K. Climate Change Committee (CCC), Chris Stark. The civil servant’s total salary and benefits for the financial year 2020-21 amounted to a whopping £400,000. That’s more than the annual total income for the organisation at number one in the green demonology – the Global Warming Policy Foundation – for four out of the last five years. The CCC’s former Chairman, John Gummer, restyled as Lord Deben, was revealed to have made £600,000 from his business dealings with green companies, which he failed to declare in the register of interests – profits that helped him employ a butler, no less, at his Suffolk mansion. Gummer’s predecessor at the CCC, Lord Adair Turner, saves the planet by heating the swimming pool at his country retreat using solar power.“

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  6. Mark, it appears that Chris Stark is going to exit the CCC nursing a particularly grievous case of cognitive dissonance. Whatever lucrative Green appointment he breezes into next, he will no doubt take this huge cognitive dissonance with him to excel in some new fantasy role involving the juggling of unicorns in order to promote the behaviour change required of Net Zero, which will no longer be called Net Zero, but something much more fluffy and comforting.

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  7. Jaime, there’s a fantasy football league. How about a fantasy fuel league, with make believe targets and managers etc? The one with the greatest display of cognitive dissonance could receive a trophy at the end of each season.

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  8. Speaking of fantasy, I understand that Stark had several imaginary friends, but they have stopped returning his calls.

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  9. Mark, the quote “But we’ve still got to reduce emissions. In the end, that’s all that matters” is central to the renewables argument and, surely, it is utter nonsense because of the EROEI values of current renewables technologies; they are much worse than conventional (e.g. fossil fuel) energy sources.

    And because of their very low power density, current renewables eat up huge surface areas of land and sea. Furthermore, to rub salt into the gaping wound, much of this renewables technology is manufactured abroad! 

    So not only do current renewables increase global CO2 emissions, they are voracious consumers of land and sea area on and around our tiny island, and they export manufacturing jobs in to the bargain. What’s not to like?

    Regards, John C.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. “But we’ve still got to reduce emissions. In the end, that’s all that matters” . . . . . cos, The Science.

    You see now how it works? ALL arguments regarding practicality, feasibility, achievability, cost, effectiveness, harms etc. are ultimately rendered moot because all that matters is the INEVITABILITY of the PHYSICS induced climate catastrophe, and, as I suspect, Biden will soon declare a climate emergency in the US on the basis that the inevitability just became a whole lot more IMMINENT because the world is not cooling down as quickly ‘as it should do now that El Nino is rapidly fading’. Watch very carefully the announcement in the media of the April 2024 global temperature anomaly.

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  11. It’s amazing how obvious cognitive dissonance can be out in the open but goes unchallenged. There’s the epic example of New York’s net zero plans, as reported by Francis Menton and others, which rely heavily on “Dispatchable Emission-free Resources” while acknowledging that the required technology is not yet available.

    I like the analogy that these policies are like jumping out of a perfectly serviceable aircraft and hoping that, on the way down, someone will invent and supply a parachute!

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  12. Thank you Mark for an excellent article on this extraordinary and, in my view, encouraging development. David Turver has also published an article on the subject today (https://davidturver.substack.com/p/chris-stark-says-no-to-net-zero-name) which to some extent complements yours – although I think yours is rather better. You both refer (as do John C and Jaime – see their posts above) to Stark’s comment that, whatever the merit of ‘culture warriors’ views, ‘we’ve still got to reduce emissions. In the end, that’s all that matters’.

    And that epitomises the falsity at the heart of the ‘green’ position: whatever the science may say, however dire the consequences of continued emissions may be, there’s nothing we in the UK can do about it. In other words, the reality is that the UK’s emissions don’t matter at all.

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  13. Kind words, Robin , and I thank you for them, but David Turver’s piece is excellent, as always.

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  14. Carbon Brief setting the scene:

    However, 2023 was highly unusual. It showed global temperatures more akin to what we would expect after El Niño peaks, rather than while it is still developing. 

    Annual temperatures ended up well outside of the range that all of the different scientific groups projected at the start of the year. There is still no agreed explanation for the extreme warmth, particularly in the latter half of the year.

    The past three months have seen new records set by only around 0.1C. The prior records for January, February, and March were set in 2016, and given the rate of warming since then we would expect new records to be set by about 0.1C in the year after El Niño peaks. If this year follows the trajectory of 2016, we would expect global temperatures to start falling over the coming months.

    However, the fact that the exceptional warmth of 2023 remains largely unexplained raises questions about whether the past will be a good guide for what 2024 has in store. If the latter half of 2024 ends up similar to 2023, there is a worry that we might be entering what has been described as “uncharted territory” for the climate. 

    As NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt noted in a recent Nature commentary:

    “If the anomaly does not stabilise by August – a reasonable expectation based on previous El Niño events – then the world will be in uncharted territory. It could imply that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated. It could also mean that statistical inferences based on past events are less reliable than we thought, adding more uncertainty to seasonal predictions of droughts and rainfall patterns.”  

    https://www.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate-2024-off-to-a-record-warm-start/

    If what was unusual about 2023 continues to be unusual in 2024, they are going to hit the ‘climate emergency’ button.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. None of these people have any real ideas of what to do, although of course as the problem is in reality non existant I supose it doesnt matter, other than the colossal waste of public money.

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  17. From that Guardian article we learn Stark – “Stark, who will move to the Carbon Trust, a consultancy set up by the government to help businesses cut emissions”

    Nice, wonder what the pay will be – 1 job advert from the website “Salary Commensurate with experience” so expect he will be on a nice little earner.

    They have a “Net Zero Intelligence Unit” page –

    “The Net Zero Intelligence Unit provides experience-led insights to accelerate global progress towards Net Zero. The Unit is a dedicated team focussed on raising ambition, awareness and action on Net Zero by drawing on the Carbon Trust’s 20 years’ experience of working with businesses, governments and financial institutions globally.”

    Wonder if his task will be to sack/disband that “Unit”.

    Liked by 2 people

  18. Mark, you quote Francis Menton:

    Here’s the problem. There is no sense in which the climate is an “emergency” within the ordinary meaning of that word in the English language. Predictions by climate models of a few degrees of temperature rise over the next century are the opposite of an “emergency.” Indeed, the statutes granting various “emergency” powers to the Executive all deal with the question of time periods too short to give the Congress time to enact legislation appropriate to the situation at hand. That circumstance is the opposite of what we have with the climate.

    That’s why we should be very concerned now. If global temperature does not significantly decline beginning about now, in concert with the fading of El Nino and the likely development of La Nina, then they will have the perfect opportunity to declare a ‘happening here and now’ climate emergency and suspend civil liberties indefinitely.

    Liked by 3 people

  19. Dougie, I feel the urge to slightly rephrase your quote.

    The Net Zero Intelligence Unit provides experience-led insights to accelerate global progress towards Net Zero Intelligence. The Unit is a dedicated team focussed on raising ambition, awareness and action on Net Zero Intelligence by drawing on the Carbon Trust’s 20 years’ experience of working with businesses, governments and financial institutions globally.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. “the wettest 18 months ever in this country”

    Does that period cover 2 winters and one summer, or 2 summers and one winter?

    Or do we already know the answer to that?

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  22. Mark: thanks for the link to Ben’s outstanding article. It’s a ‘must-read’. Here’s an extract that I think gets to the heart of it:

    [Starks] waving away critics as mere ‘culture warriors’ reveals that he – and the fawning journalists that surround him – lack even the vocabulary to understand criticism. Establishment hacks simply have no other term with which to explain the phenomenon of people disagreeing with them. It’s called democracy, Chris.

    So if not a ‘culture war’, what is the right term for the divisions within society that are growing up around the climate agenda? I believe the correct term is ‘civil war’. Net Zero requires intensely political transformations of society – as radical as the changes sought by the early 20th century’s ideological movements. Net Zero requires the transformation of the relationship between the individual and the state. It requires the complete reorganisation of the economy. And it requires new powers to be created and put beyond democratic control.

    It may not be a ‘hot’ civil war – or not yet. But our intransigent and chaotic political class seem not to have registered the possibility of their failure and have taken for granted our willingness to accept our immiseration ‘to save the planet’ without question or challenge. Much like many a military blunder, armies of wonks like Stark have no real idea about how to achieve Net Zero, nor what the costs and consequences of failure are, but will not be swayed from the agenda. Critics can just be written off as ‘deniers’ and ‘culture warriors’.

    Good stuff. But, as I keep saying, politicians’ Net Zero ambitions – especially those of a Labour Party with even more radical plans than the current mad incumbents – cannot avoid an early encounter with harsh reality. And reality will defeat ideology. Let’s hope I’m right.

    Liked by 3 people

  23. I would have posted this under one of Jit’s articles about EVs, but for the reference to the culture wars, which seems to be the new way of demonising criticism of “the project” (they appear to have moved on from smearing anyone who disagrees with them by use of the “denier” label):

    “Tesla among electric carmakers forced to cut prices as market stalls

    EV sales have plateaued across the world but the newfound glut of vehicles may just be temporary” [they hope, desperately]

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/26/why-elon-musk-is-right-once-booming-electric-car-sales-are-starting-to-stall

    “…The sales slowdown is real, however. Tesla and its nearest rival in electric car volumes, China’s BYD, have both reported lower electric car sales. Across Europe, battery electric cars slipped to a 13% share of all sales, down from last year’s 13.9%, while sales of hybrids – which combine a battery with an internal combustion engine – rose to 29% from 24.4%. In the UK, electric cars accounted for 15.5% of total car sales in the first three months of 2024, only marginally up from the same time last year.

    In recent years electric car manufacturers have been able easily to sell every electric car they have made. Yet now, businesses across much of the world are struggling with the end of the era of rock-bottom interest rates, which has left less money in household pockets.

    “The economic headwinds are quite ugly in general, so it doesn’t surprise me that we’re having a slowdown,” said Ian Henry, whose AutoAnalysis consultancy works with several carmakers.

    Buyers must still pay more upfront for battery cars (although most would save money by owning an electric vehicle because of cheaper energy). And electric car repair costs and insurance costs can be higher in some places because of a shortage of mechanics. Another important factor is the very patchy introduction of public electric chargers, which is giving some potential buyers cause to pause. All of that has been leapt upon by sceptics of the EV industry – and made them a battleground in the culture wars.…”.

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  24. Another stark reality:

    Fewer in NI willing to pay more for greener energy

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kl4g2r04lo

    ...The NI Utility Regulator conducts an annual survey of consumer attitudes.

    In 2021, almost a third of respondents said they would be “willing to pay a little extra” towards projects to help the environment.

    As energy costs rose in 2022 that fell to 24% and fell further to just 9% in 2023.

    A representative sample of 1,502 people were surveyed by telephone during October 2023 and November 2023.

    They were told that energy suppliers may need to invest in a range of areas in the future, with some of these costs potentially being passed on to customers.

    These areas were environmental projects, network reliability and help for vulnerable customers.

    Respondents were asked which areas of investment, if any, they would be willing to pay a little extra for on their bills.

    More than four in five of those asked (83%) said they would not be willing to pay anything extra – this is up from 63% in 2022 and 54% in 2021.…

    …Energy companies, particularly electricity grid owners and operators, are going to have to invest significantly to facilitate more renewable energy.

    For example, NIE Networks, which owns the grid in Northern Ireland, is planning to invest over £3bn over the next 10 years.

    It has said that will mean an additional cost to customers of about £10 to £20 a year.

    And as I pointed out at the time, those numbers don’t add up – that capital cost represents a lot more than £10 or £20 per household per annum.

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  25. “Labour will need ‘Herculean effort’ to hit green goals, says UK climate watchdog

    Labour could hit their target of clean power by 2030 but it will be “bloody hard,” Chris Stark said.”

    https://www.politico.eu/article/labour-will-need-herculean-effort-to-hit-green-goals-says-uk-climate-watchdog/

    Actually, Chris, I suspect this is the stark reality:

    …Green policy experts and industry bosses have cast doubt on the feasibility of the pledge, given the need to rapidly expand Britain’s creaking electricity grid, reform planning laws, and get more renewable energy sources online.

    “I personally don’t think it’s achievable,” Chris Skidmore, a former energy minister in Theresa May’s Conservative government, told POLITICO in October. Even the CCC’s former chair John Gummer said he was “yet to see the evidence” Labour’s target is reachable...

    Liked by 1 person

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