Everyone likes nice-sounding policies. Not everyone wants to pay for them.
We are beginning to see that this holds good for the UK’s strategy to reach net zero as much as for any other policy. A FocalData survey shows, for example, that 40% of people say they would “not accept any increase to my cost of living” in order to take effective action on climate change — roughly the same number as those who would not pay more to reduce crime and to improve education. Those who think that politicians can carry on with net-zero policies with impunity point to figures like this as evidence that they will hit pushback.
But there is a problem with the comparison. The costs of reducing crime, improving education and even cutting NHS waiting lists are embedded in general taxation. They are noted by taxpayers as a rise in taxes rather than as a specific bill for a specific thing. No one demands, for instance, that improving education comes with legislation forcing you to buy upgraded text books or apps for your child — or else have them go without education.
It’s not so with the path to net zero. Much of the eventual cost will be financed centrally one way or another, but right now some of the most visible parts of the UK’s strategy are placing obvious — and high — upfront bills directly in front of consumers.
If you need a new boiler, you will soon have to pay for a significantly more expensive heat pump — or go without hot water. If you want to drive in a city center, you will need to upgrade to a low- or no-emission car — or pay a huge fine every time you get in the other kind. If you want to sell or rent your house, you may need to upgrade its insulation — or risk being excluded from the rental or sales markets (as the Scottish government is discussing making energy-efficiency ratings a condition of sale). You get the idea.
The costs of many net-zero policies fall directly on the individual consumer, and they can be very high. Buying and installing a heat pump can cost anything from £10,000 ($12,781) to £14,000, for example, although you can now get a grant to help with this. The key point is that unlike most other good-feeling policies, net zero is being partly paid for by what is effectively a series of firmly hypothecated and very obvious taxes.
There are other things that make net zero different and difficult: We have no idea what the final cost will be, and as Tony Blair pointed out last week in the New Statesman, our push to cut our own emissions will make less difference than, say, China’s. “One year’s rise in China’s emissions would outscore the whole of Britain’s emissions for a year,” he said.
YouGov surveys also regularly show that around 30% of people in the UK think “the threat of climate change is over exaggerated.” I suspect very few people feel the same about NHS waiting lists. But this hypothecation is as important as it is unusual — it’s why the small pushback against it we have seen in the last few weeks from politicians and commentators is likely to grow. Governments that want to change that are going to have to think again about how the cost of net zero is allocated.
Source: Bloomberg Merryn Somerset Webb
