Net Zero means zero growth

Britain, the nation that birthed the Industrial Revolution, is now a world leader in deindustrialisation. The power stations, oil refineries and steelworks that helped make the UK wealthy are now closing down and moving abroad. High energy prices are crippling industry and hurting households. Yet politicians are doubling down on precisely the policies that have brought us here. Reducing carbon emissions, they say, must be the nation’s priority. Apparently, we need to embrace a Net Zero future, no matter what it costs our economy.

Businessman and venture capitalist Jon Moynihan vehemently disagrees with today’s green, anti-growth consensus. He joined The Brendan O’Neill Show last week to discuss his new book, Return to Growth: How to Fix the Economy. What follows is an edited extract from that conversation. Listen to the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: Why did you think it was important to write this book?

Jon Moynihan: Looking back over the past couple of hundred years, it is clear that growth has brought the most extraordinary change to people’s lives. We are now, at least in large parts of the world, leading lives of enormous prosperity, health and longevity by historical standards.

This has been brought about by a sequence of events that started with the Renaissance, evolved into the Enlightenment and developed into the Scientific Revolution. This led to the Industrial Revolution, when Britain began to weave cloth, which made us rich. We became the economic centre of the world.

Then we moved from steam power in the mid-1800s to hydrocarbons, which was coal and then oil. That led to another huge acceleration in growth. From there, the world transferred to electricity, which was another leap forward, although still generated by hydrocarbons.

All of these developments led to the most extraordinary improvement in circumstances for common people in this country. Instead of a small number of very rich people, we had a majority of people with access to the most wonderful things.

Too many people now don’t understand what growth is. It doesn’t mean billionaires getting richer or any of the other stupid tropes. It means a general improvement in the happiness and achievements of human beings around the world.

O’Neill: How does the Net Zero agenda threaten this progress?

Moynihan: You can go at the Net Zero situation from many angles. You can start with the question: does emitting carbon into the air create global warming? Many people say that it does. Then you can ask: is it going to be as bad as people are claiming? The science says no – it’s not going to be anywhere near that bad. If people still want to stop it, that’s fine. But is anything that we do in the UK going to meaningfully reduce the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere? No, it’s not.

Activists then argue that, by pursuing Net Zero, we can be a model to the world and other countries will follow our leadership. It’s similar to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marches of the 1950s. Some very well-meaning people said they wanted to unilaterally get rid of our nuclear bombs, thinking that the world would follow us. Nobody was ever going to follow us. If we go to Net Zero, guess what? Nobody is going to follow us. The UK produces less than one per cent of carbon emissions. Meanwhile, China builds two coal-fired power stations every week. That’s 100 or more a year, every year.

If you want to lower the amount of carbon in the world, then you should drill for and use as much hydrocarbons in the UK as you possibly can. We use clean technologies to use those hydrocarbons – whether it’s in making steel, manufacturing cars or drilling for oil. If we don’t manufacture something, the factory closes down and the manufacturing transfers to China, where factories use dirty technologies that produce much more carbon. If you really believe that we must reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, then abandon Net Zero as fast as you can.

For a long time, France has produced far fewer emissions than almost anywhere in the developed world. It’s because it built 60 nuclear power stations. We were on track to do that, too. Then suddenly we found ourselves completely tied up by regulations. At the end of the day, it’s over four times more expensive to build a nuclear power station in the UK than in South Korea.

As I explain in my book, the whole of economic growth depends upon leapfrogging power-generation costs. If we want to move beyond hydrocarbons, nuclear energy is the answer. Wind and solar are incredibly expensive and incredibly inefficient. They won’t work. What we need is nuclear. There are about 30 different nuclear technologies waiting to be explored, but at the moment, they’re out of bounds because of regulation.

Instead, we’re pissing away our money on subsidies for solar and wind, which aren’t going to work. The cost, even in terms of transmission is just going to be a disaster. There will be blackouts and brownouts. We will have a flood of companies leaving the country. And our economy will continue to fail to grow.

Jon Moynihan was talking to Brendan O’Neill on The Brendan O’Neill Show. Listen to the full conversation here: