A few years ago, I was sitting with a friend in a workplace canteen at closing time when a staff member began emptying the bins nearby. My friend noticed that the man was tipping the contents of all the different bins—both recycling and general waste—into the same bag.
“Excuse me,” my companion asked, “what happens to all the recycling?” The staff member replied bluntly: “It all just gets thrown away together.”
The sleek recycling bins scattered across the building projected the image of an environmentally responsible organisation, yet in reality, everything was being sent to landfill. The hundreds of employees in the company who diligently sorted their waste - separating paper, plastic, glass, and general rubbish - were wasting their time.
This example epitomises what ‘environmentalism’ has become. Corporations, public sector bodies, charities, and governments loudly proclaim their efforts to ‘save the planet’ or ‘build a sustainable future,’ but much of this amounts to empty virtue signalling.
Take, for example, the push for electric vehicles (EVs). The government has offered significant tax incentives for EV buyers and has legislated that from 2030, purchasing new petrol or diesel cars will be illegal.
Yet the production of EVs is highly damaging to the environment. Manufacturing an electric vehicle leaves twice the carbon footprint of producing a conventional car. EV batteries deteriorate more rapidly than internal combustion engines, and the metals required for their production are often extracted through environmentally harmful mining practices—many of which exploit workers, particularly in Africa.
Or consider the closure of British blast furnaces in the name of ‘reducing emissions’ from the steel industry. Not only has this resulted in the loss of our ability to produce primary steel—a significant security risk—but it has also made us dependent on Chinese steel, which has double the carbon footprint of British-produced steel.
Perhaps the most glaring green delusion lies in the recycling industry. Local authorities encourage households to sort their waste for recycling, creating the illusion that it is being repurposed for environmental benefit. In reality, most of the UK’s plastic waste is not recycled domestically but exported to countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia.
This practice has been linked to illegal dumping and environmental degradation, as these nations struggle to manage both their own discarded plastic and ours.
It is important to reduce waste, cut pollution, and take care of our environment. However, green policies are too often riddled with hypocrisy. A recent civil service report leaked to The Sun revealed that the government expects environmental regulations to slash UK economic growth by 10% and potentially trigger a financial crash.
Badenoch recently announced the Conservative Party has abandoned its commitment to reaching Net Zero by 2050
CONSERVATIVE PARTYThat is why I welcome Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch’s recent announcement that the Conservative Party has abandoned its commitment to reaching Net Zero by 2050.
In a pragmatic speech in London on Tuesday, Mrs Badenoch acknowledged that the costs of meeting this target are unaffordable and that the arbitrary deadline is making Britain dangerously reliant on China.
She candidly admitted that Net Zero legislation was introduced by a Conservative government and criticised her party for passing it with little debate.
None of this implies that climate change is not a concern. However, for decades, environmental activists have portrayed global warming as an imminent existential threat, using this alarmism to pressure governments and individuals into spending vast sums on green policies—often with damaging economic consequences.
Yet many of the catastrophic predictions from the green lobby have failed to materialise. Over the past 50 years, environmental doomsayers have consistently forecasted disaster, only to push back their apocalyptic timelines when their dire warnings prove unfounded.
While climate change will undoubtedly have effects, human ingenuity has consistently risen to meet such challenges throughout history.
Today, fewer people die from natural disasters than at any point since records began. In fact, more people die from cold than heat, meaning a warming climate has both advantages and disadvantages. If climate change truly posed an existential threat, then bankrupting ourselves to ‘save the planet’ would be justified.
But if it is not existential, then our response must be proportionate—just as it is with other challenges.
A far more immediate crisis is the rising cost of energy, driven by excessive subsidies for renewable energy, a failure to build nuclear power plants, and an over-reliance on offshore energy supplies. Cheap energy has always been the foundation of prosperity.
The Industrial Revolution was made possible by coal—a dense, portable energy source that powered machines and transformed economies. Without abundant, affordable energy, we risk plunging into a new dark age.
Moreover, even if the UK reduced its emissions to zero, it would make little difference globally, as we account for just 1% of worldwide emissions. Meanwhile, China continues to build a new coal-fired power station every two weeks. There are no borders in the atmosphere.
Net Zero policies have directly contributed to deindustrialisation in both the UK and Germany, whose manufacturing industries have suffered immensely since the country stopped importing cheap Russian gas after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Deindustrialisation not only makes Western nations reliant on adversaries for essential materials like steel and automobiles, but it also weakens our defence capabilities.
Despite all the rhetoric about European military support for Ukraine, no European nation currently has the industrial capacity to produce enough tanks, bullets, or missiles to sustain a meaningful battlefield presence.
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Ed Miliband’s net zero plans branded ‘fantasy’ by top British scientistGB NewsAnd an even greater crisis looms on the horizon: demographic collapse. While environmentalists have long warned about overpopulation, the reality is that birth rates have plummeted worldwide.
Global population will soon peak and then decline rapidly, with dire economic and social consequences. By the end of this century, only five countries are expected to maintain replacement birth rates. This means there will not be enough working-age people to produce goods, provide healthcare, or support aging populations through taxation.
Some dismiss this as a temporary population reduction, but in truth, we are facing a long-term spiral of decline, with each generation significantly smaller than the last. Within a few decades, carbon emissions will be the least of our concerns.
The sooner we abandon the Net Zero agenda and refocus on more pressing issues, the better. However, we must also learn from the political and media consensus that allowed Net Zero to become unquestionable dogma.
As with the transgender debate and COVID lockdown policies, recent history has shown that when a ‘hive mind’ takes hold among politicians it is often disastrously wrong.
Allowing a free and open exchange of ideas, and being honest about the trade-offs of different policies, is the only way to ensure that common sense prevails over ideology.
