© Bubblegirlphoto, istockphoto

On Friday, I heard Andrew Bowie MP, a shadow Minister for Energy and Net Zero commenting on reports that leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch was barring anyone who supported Net Zero from standing as a Conservative MP. Bowie, who had previously supported the Net Zero target – unsurprisingly as it was a Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May who introduced it – said “of course we believe in climate change, but we cannot take action to combat it in a way that makes this country poorer.”

On face value you could agree with this, but, as I’ve pointed out many times, Net Zero is not a policy. It is the target required to meet our obligations under the Paris Agreement. Of course you can argue over which policies will get you there, but you can’t tackle climate change without Net Zero. By disowning Net Zero itself, Bowie, Badenoch and other senior Tories are effectively saying “we are going to tackle climate change by doing absolutely nothing to tackle climate change.”

The word ‘cakeism’, derived from ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it’, was coined during the fallout of the Brexit negotiations to describe those claims that we could have all the benefits of being inside the EU while being outside the EU. It didn’t go well.

We hear climate cakeism all the time. The Tony Blair Institute has called for cheap energy in the UK while promoting expensive nuclear, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS) over increasingly cheap wind, solar and batteries. So we’re going to cut costs by using expensive technology? Genius.

Another one is “gas is going to be part of the transition for decades to come”, which is true on the face of it, but is usually spoken by those wanting to sustain or even increase our use of gas in the short term, which is contradictory to the idea of a transition which requires gas consumption to diminish. “We are minded to approve Heathrow Airport expansion but it must be delivered in line with the UK’s legal, environmental and climate obligations” is another classic of the genre.

While I’m being withering about the those in the public realm, unfortunately similar cognitive dissonance is pervasive in many organisations. Set a ridiculously ambitious target without thinking it through, delegate it to a relatively junior member of staff, and then get a bit flustered when the deadline hoves into view with little or no progress made. Much of the ‘Net Zero backlash’ is due to senior managers not have thought through what the transition really means and then realising far too late that they should have actually lifted a finger some time ago to make change happen.

My whole Sustainability Strategy approach is based on the principle that getting that deep understanding and ownership of Sustainability at the top echelons of the organisation before a single word of the strategy has been written is the only way to avoid cakeism. Otherwise the disconnect between what needs to be done and what will be done is a gaping chasm.