Blair is right to say that the net zero emperor is naked

I never thought of Tony Blair as playing the part of the young boy in the story of the emperor’s new clothes but that is the role he has adopted in the debate about climate change.

- JOHN RENTOUL CHIEF POLITICAL COMMENTATOR

He has cut through the assumptions that have built up over the decades - assumptions that everyone knew were not quite right, but which it had become dangerous to question.

“Political leaders by and large know that the debate has become irrational,” Blair writes, but are “terrified of saying so, for fear of being accused of being ‘climate deniers’.”

There is a “credibility gap” at the heart of climate-change policies, he argues, because while voters are worried about the sustainability of human life on the planet, they are coming to the point at which they feel “that they’re being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal”.

Everyone can see that, while some countries in the West, including Britain, have succeeded in reducing their use of fossil fuels, the world as a whole is likely to go on increasing consumption for the foreseeable future. In such a situation, vague support for action to stop climate change will turn into opposition if citizens are asked to make expensive changes to try to cut consumption to zero. The easy and affordable changes have already been made, and the next stages are hard and expensive.