Back when I was writing our Net Zero for Business course, I listed the pros and cons of Net Zero as a concept. The third and last ‘con’ was “a hook for culture warriors” – and, sadly, I’ve been proven all too correct on that one.

Compared to the less catchy ‘climate action’ or even ‘carbon neutral’, Net Zero is now weaponised on an hourly basis. The standard rhetorical trick is to turn Net Zero into an ill-defined strawman to chuck bricks at, but when you analyse what is said, the arguments are often riddled with contradictions. For example:

• Reform UK’s Luke Campbell, Mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire, in the same Channel 4 News interview said both “Net Zero is killing business” and “I’ve always said clean energy is great.” without seeing any contradiction between the two statements.
• In his now infamous essay/paid content, Tony Blair said we should “prioritise cheap energy and electrification over net zero”. But electrification is a huge part of Net Zero and, indeed, the cost of transition that anti-Net Zero voices moan about – the wind/solar bit is ‘cheap’.
• And on Times Radio some months ago Sebastian Payne contrasted Net Zero and nuclear energy as if they were mutually exclusive strategies. This also appears to be the Conservative Party’s approach.

And yet for most of the economy (ie excl food):

Net Zero = clean energy + storage + nuclear + electrification + some tree planting/carbon removals

I mean, which part of this don’t they like? If all the component parts have merit, why not the whole lot? Which element is the industry-destroying part of the equation? It makes no coherent sense whatsoever.

Of course, none of these people really care. They’ve framed ‘Net Zero’ as a bogeyman either through gut instinct or deliberate rage-baiting and they’re going to attack it no matter what. Some say we should ditch the term, but to me the positives are still too positive to let the idiots win.