Tony Blair is right about Net Zero

Tough on carbon, tough on the sources of carbon

Pod! Don’t forget to check out this week’s Abundance Agenda podcast, in which Martin and I dig into what Tony Blair actually said about Net Zero (which, er, is also the topic of the article below) – and we actually speak to the author of the controversial report. And then to celebrate VE Day, Martin blows my mind with some insane WWII logistics facts. I think this is the best episode we’ve done so far. Listen on Apple, Spotify or Substack.

Meet-Up! On June 3rd I’m hosting my second annual Summer Subscribers Meet-Up. It was super fun to meet so many of you last year, so please do come along and hang out with me and the sort of nerds who read my stuff! It’s free to attend, but you’ll need a ticket so I can manage numbers! Hope to see you all there!

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Last week, I felt like I was going crazy.

Last Tuesday, the Tony Blair Institute published a new paper titled “The Climate Paradox”, which argued that the existing global approach to climate change isn’t working. And it made for very interesting reading – though frankly, it landed with not much fanfare.

At least, that was until the next day, when lobby journalists noticed it and drew the stupidest possible conclusions from it.

The starting gun was fired by that morning’s Politico Playbook email, which framed the story as follows:

“It’s the final day of campaigning before the local elections, and the government’s carefully curated grid of announcements has been blown off course by … Tony Blair. The Labour grandee’s call for a major rethink of net zero policies has burst onto the front pages, not least because it somewhat echoes the Conservatives’ and Reform’s stance (or at least sounds like it does). Quite the gift, then, for Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage as they prepare to take a pop at Keir Starmer during Prime Minister’s Questions at noon.”¹

What followed was a day of denunciations from climate activists like Green Party MP and co-leader Carla Denyer and former Just Stop Oil funder Dale Vince, as well as follow-up stories from the likes of the New Statesman and Guardian.

Most critics of the paper jumped on one specific line by Blair in the paper’s foreword, which argued that “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.”

What exactly is wrong with this? According to the political journalists, this made for a devastating slam on the Starmer government’s Net Zero policies.

Perhaps I’m just really bad at reading between the lines, but this was the point at which I thought I was having an aneurysm, because I actually read the report. I can’t really see anything in it that undermines Keir Starmer or Ed Miliband at all. Nor is there anything in there that “echoes” the Tories or Reform.

So, the only conclusion I can draw is that a whole bunch of people experienced a massive failure of reading comprehension.

Which is why this week I wanted to dig into what the controversial report actually says.

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The climate paradox

First of all, the bulk of the paper is written not by Blair himself, but by Lindy Fursman, a former climate advisor to the New Zealand government who now works at TBI.

And secondly, the paper isn’t really about UK government policy at all!

The strategy Blair refers to in his supposedly damning quote is the global strategy, the high-level one agreed at COP climate summits, and the argument that Blair and Fursman actually make is, I think, hard to disagree with.

They make the point that in the short term, phasing out fossil fuels entirely is not a realistic strategy. This is because despite our noble intentions, the reality is that developing countries – especially China and India – are inevitably going to continue burning coal, oil and gas if it supports their continued economic growth.

“[C]limate action itself must evolve – shifting from a strategy of stifling demand for energy to focus on systemic, global solutions that directly tackle the sources of emissions driving the crisis,” Fursman says.

And given this reality, this means that if we want to reduce carbon emissions and achieve global Net Zero by the internationally agreed deadline of 2050, the most effective thing we can do is invest in new technologies that can replace or mitigate fossil fuels – as developing nations with an appetite for energy will inevitably choose the most affordable solution.

Then Fursman also makes a point similar to one I made a couple of years ago that there also needs to be a shift of focus to reducing carbon emissions where there is the biggest bang for the buck. In other words, we need to focus on interventions that directly address China and India’s development needs. Because ultimately that is going to be significantly more impactful than, say, decarbonising “last mile” deliveries in rich European countries that have already significantly switched to renewables.

So how can we do this? The answer, in Fursman’s view is that we need to pursue a technology-driven approach to decarbonising: We need to develop new nuclear technologies, and we need to dramatically scale up direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide, as it will be necessary to decarbonise sectors like aviation and agriculture, as well as mop up any continuing emissions.²

What it doesn’t say

This brings me to the incredibly frustrating commentary that followed the paper’s publication.

For example, the New Statesman piece mentioned above claims that this intervention by Blair “places him in a similar camp” to Reform MPs Richard Tice and Nigel Farage.

But that’s just… not true, in any meaningful sense.³

For example – consider the claims that this is Blair calling for a retreat from Britain’s domestic Net Zero policies. Here’s what Fursman literally wrote in the paper (my emphasis):

This does not imply the abandonment of ongoing domestic decarbonisation efforts – indeed, these remain vital for reducing emissions and ensuring a sustainable future. Harnessing economic growth and employment from the green transition remains a key opportunity for those countries who target the right sectors and think critically about the role of green industrial strategy.

That doesn’t sound like Blair and Fursman are “echoing” the Net Zero sceptics to me – the paper is clearly an endorsement of the importance of doing even more on climate change!

To suggest otherwise is exactly as dumb as when the lobby spent several days hyperventilating about whether Keir Starmer was going to sack Rachel Reeves, before completely forgetting about it a few days later.

That’s why the only explanation that makes sense to me is that most of the people raging didn’t actually read the paper.

Space-based solar was one of the power plant options in Sim City 2000.

And what makes me confident of this? The fact that in one section, the paper suggests that space-based solar – where solar cells in orbit beam electricity back down to Earth – could be a solution in the future. There’s also a paragraph that argues that the blockchain could be used to trade the forestry used to sequester carbon. Now, don’t get me wrong – I think these technologies are worth exploring, because I’m a wide-eyed, naive, techno-optimist, but if you’re a jaded Westminster hack – surely those should be the more obvious things to snark at the former Prime Minister about?

What Tony Blair actually said about fossil fuels

The sensible critiques

To be absolutely clear, I’m not just being rude about lobby journalists, and refusing to concede that there are not substantive critiques that could be made of the paper.⁴

For example, Adam Bell, an incredibly smart former head of energy strategy at one of the previous incarnations of the Business Department,⁵ said he was “mystified” by Fursman’s approach to Direct Air Capture.

And I’m sure in due course, other people who actually know what they are talking about, will pick holes in different parts of Blair and Fursman’s arguments. For example, there’s a long-running tension between the nuclear bros and critics who argue that the price of solar and batteries is crashing so fast that we won’t need nuclear. I’m sure a critique will emerge along those lines.⁶

But frankly, I just find most of the other responses bizarre – because they’re not really about the policy content, but are more akin to theatre criticism: A critique of the performance of politics, and getting mad not at the message, but how the message was conveyed.

For example, the New Statesman piece seemed to suggest the “intervention” was specifically timed with the local elections in mind. I suppose I’ve got no evidence that it wasn’t? But aside from my scepticism that the local elections were even on the radar of Globetrotting International Statesman Tony Blair, when exactly would be the appropriate time to drop a pretty wonky policy paper given that political stuff is happening all the time?

Then there was the slightly more high-brow and less conspiratorial version of this criticism, in the response of Nicholas Stern, who wrote his own influential report on the economics of climate change for Blair’s own government. Though he doesn’t appear to disagree with the substance of the Climate Paradox paper, he basically critiques the tone of the report:

“If the UK wobbles on its route to net zero, other countries may become less committed,” and that “[T]he report downplays the science in its absence of a sense of urgency and the lack of appreciation of the need for the world to achieve net zero as soon as possible”

But really this does not make for a very strong rebuke. Stern is essentially playing pundit here, trying to second-guess how people will receive the arguments made by the paper. He’s basically arguing that Blair and Fursman should shut up and be good team players because climate change is too important. But this is silly, because we can have an “appreciation” of the need to achieve Net Zero as much as we like – what matters more is pursuing a strategy that might actually make it happen.⁷

Blair is right

I think the weirdly hostile reaction to the TBI paper has, in some part, been driven consciously or not by signalling. Much like how some people find it difficult to admit Elon Musk’s rockets are good, because he’s a terrible person, for many people conceding Blair is right about something is similarly tricky.⁸

This is because Tony Blair is not just “Tony Blair, a bloke with opinions” – to them he’s “Tony Blair, the centrist, neoliberal, Iraq War cheerleader” – plus whatever other baggage they may want to hang on him. And this makes it stressful to concede he has a point here.

And I think this is a shame, because in this case, Tony Blair and Lindy Fursman seem pretty obviously right about this.

It’s true that India and China are not going to decarbonise unless renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels. It’s true that we’ll need carbon capture at scale to offset remaining emissions. And it’s true that we need to invest in new technology to make these things possible.

If they do this, we cut off electricity to Lincolnshire to give them the society they want.

And frankly, I think is irresponsible of journalists, commentators and politicians to mischaracterise these pretty important policy questions as Net Zero scepticism, or as somehow analogous to bullshit like the above from Richard Tice.

Because if we’re actually going to tackle climate change, then we need an approach that can actually get us to Net Zero – and if we reduce the policy debate to something stupid, then we risk not listening to ambitious ideas that actually might work.

Phew! If you’ve made it this far you must like my stuff. So don’t forget to subscribe (for free!) to get more like this direct to your inbox.

And don’t forget to check out this week’s Abundance Agenda podcast, where Martin and I actually speak to Lindy Fursman, the author of the Climate Paradox report for the Tony Blair Institute. So you can actually hear the author explain her argument for herself – in what I believe is her first interview since everyone lost their minds. Listen on Apple, Spotify or Substack.

1. In the event, Badenoch didn’t even mention this at PMQs.

2. Here’s an absolutely nuclear take I’m going to bury in the footnotes just for fun. Who is the one individual who has made the single largest contribution to the fight against climate change? In my view it is not Al Gore, or Greta Thunberg – but until last Autumn it was very clearly the technologist Elon Musk, who scaled electric cars to viability and gave us a fighting chance that we might actually replace fossil fuels. (Obviously his Trumpist turn spectacularly undermines any climate cred he might have built up though.)

3. The piece itself even concedes this, a few paragraphs later conceding that “Both Reform and the Conservatives were critical of the government’s decision to invest 22bn in CCS last year.”.

4. One other criticism that doesn’t fit into the main body of this piece is the critique that public support for Net Zero is popular. Leaving aside, as mentioned, this is more about the global scope of things than Britain’s specific policies, I do think this sort of polling data needs to be handled carefully. Because, obviously, people are going to say they think we should tackle climate change – the environmentalists have won the argument – but I am very, very sceptical that these good intentions would be reflected in people’s revealed preference. Which is why I think rather than, for example, trying to shame people out of their cars, they’ll be more likely to do it if we can change the material conditions on the ground, by say, building more railways or making buses more frequent.

5. BEIS? BIS? DBT? Who even knows anymore?

6. I am not convinced of this because I ideally want massively abundance energy, not just enough to replace what we’ve got. Plus baseload blah blah blah.

7. Maybe this is Stern’s sincere opinion that he feels strongly about, but something about this sort-of screams to me “The LSE press office rang him up and forced him to have an opinion so they could put out a press release to piggy-back on the story”.

8. Not me though. Now I’m an old boring social democrat who experienced the Corbyn years in real time, I’ve got a much renewed appreciation for the Blair years, apart from That One Thing.