Chapter 1: What is the main argument against Net Zero policies in Britain?
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Arguments are sharpened. Nothing is spoon-fed. This is education as it used to be and as it should be again. Full scholarships are available. Applications close on the 27th of February, 2026. Apply at ralston.ac slash apply. That's r-a-l-s-t-o-n dot a-c forward slash apply. The narrative is as simple as this. The planet is in imminent danger. because of climate change.
If we don't deal with our carbon emissions right now, then by 20, it depends who you are, 2030, 2035, 2050, but within our lifetimes, certainly within our children's lifetimes, we're all gonna die, the planet's gonna burn, and the only way to deal with that is to immediately transition to renewable energy, get to net zero so that we're not producing more carbon than we are getting rid of,
And whatever it takes to achieve that.
Oh, that's the interesting thing, because that's not true in the polls. People will say, yes, we want action on climate. But then when you ask them how much they're willing to spend on achieving that, they'll say something like Ā£10 a year. It's some ludicrously small amount. They're actually not willing to spend all it takes.
It depends how you ask the question. Because if you say to people, how much are you willing to spend? They'll say 10 pounds. But if you say to them, look, your energy bills have gone up and it's because of the war in Ukraine. We won't tell you about the green levies and all this other stuff. And by, oh, green levies, yeah, it's to save the planet.
People are actually, a lot of people are on board with that because the money, they don't feel that the money is being taken out of their pocket. That connection hasn't been made in many people's minds.
Well, that's because they've been lied to by policymakers. But people are starting to see through that. In the UK, we are only responsible for 0.8% of global emissions. So we could cut to zero ourselves and literally it makes no difference to global climate change. Secondly, our net zero policies measure territorial production emissions.
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Chapter 2: How do Net Zero policies impact the UK economy?
Right. So here's the thing. Now they're going to introduce something called the carbon border adjustment mechanism, where they're going to tax imported goods that are made with dirtier energy to try and make them equivalent to our emission standards. This is going to be unbelievably inflationary. And so if the economy isn't in the toilet already, it will be when this comes in.
So what are the products that we're talking about that are going to be taxed with this?
Everything.
Sorry, I know this is going to sound like... What do you mean by everything?
Clothes, steel, cars, concrete... Wind turbines, solar panels, everything. Excuse my language. Are they mental? Yes. But this comes back to this. How is it that you can have this widespread ideological failure, if you like? But this has happened many times in history. Look at the Reformation and the Spanish Inquisition, Rick.
You had a society then that believed that if you didn't follow the true faith and different people disagreed about what the true faith was, you would burn in hell for eternity. Now, if that's your belief, then you can justify going to just about any length to try and convert somebody to what you think the true faith is.
You can justify any type of horrible torture to convert them, to save them from eternal damnation. So now we would look back at things like the Spanish Inquisition, the English martyrs and all that stuff, and we'd say, that was ridiculous, that was horrific.
How could they crush people under doors that were loaded up with rocks just because they were Protestants instead of Catholics and vice versa? Well, that was the reason why. But everybody believed it. Nobody thought that was crazy.
If we had a technology that said, we can stop emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow and it won't cost you a penny, fine, no problem. You then have to say, well, How difficult is it to stop emitting carbon dioxide? And we've tried for 30, 40 years now to do that. And today, 82% of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels. The year 2000, 83%, roughly. We've hardly changed.
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Chapter 3: What are the environmental implications of offshoring manufacturing?
to find solutions rather than enacting deadlines today.
Liam, it seems to me you've painted a very grim yet accurate picture of our economy, which leaves me scratching my head when I go, well, why are we pursuing net zero? Isn't that just a fancy name for deindustrialization?
Well, a lot of the trade unions in the UK think that. There's a huge rift now between this Labour government and the trade union movement because the trade union movement can see that pursuing net zero the way we are, as zealously as we are, is massively hollowing out our... We've just closed Britain's largest refinery up in Grangemouth.
We've just shut down our last two blast furnaces in Wales at Port Talbot, which of course make virgin steel, which is very important for defence applications, other construction applications. It's really hard to get virgin steel in the UK today. Because, you know, the Red Sea's closed because of Houthi rebels. It just seems madness to me.
Look, I'm all for a better environment and I'm all for moving away from fossil fuels in a way that isn't economically ruinous. But I think the way we're doing it is economically ruinous. And I think a lot of... mainstream politicians now are waking up to that until very recently to even question net zero is to be... You're a climate denier. You're accused of slaying the firstborn.
You're accused of being Herod. It's crazy. And just the use of the word denier I think is disgusting because, of course... Holocaust denial is a crazy thing and a disgusting thing, but that's the phrase that it kind of tries to echo. You are that unreasonable. No, there are many, many, many scientists who they just don't get airtime, but you know, Nobel winning scientists who really do question
net zero, the whole thing. I'm not here to do that. I'm here to say I do want a much cleaner environment. I do think it makes sense over a period of time to move away from fossil fuels. I do believe in renewable forms of energy being better for the world. I think wind is the least efficient. I believe in hydrogen. I think that's a wonder fuel that we are deliberately suppressing.
Vested interests who are making a huge amount of money out of renewables subsidies are deliberately dissing hydrogen as a viable option. JCB have just built an incredible internal combustion engine that runs on hydrogen. the only emission of which is water, right?
And if you use renewable winds to do the electrolysis that generates the hydrogen in industrial quantities, and then you use that hydrogen and it emits water, you have perpetual clean energy, right? And that will really undermine the businesses of lots of people. That's why it's so little talked about, but I believe in that. So I'm by no means not interested in this agenda.
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Chapter 4: How does the UK contribute to global carbon emissions?
This is one of the most sophisticated car plants in Europe. And BMW are probably not going to come back. They're not saying that now, but they're probably not going to come back. And look at the ban on drilling for new oil and gas in the North Sea. Again, insane.
Because what we're doing instead, France, is even the Climate Change Committee, which is our kind of in-government think tank that has the legal rights to tell ministers what to do effectively, even the Climate Change Committee says that by... 2030, we're going to still use oil and gas for 50% of our energy. It will actually be much higher. Even by 2050, it will be 25% of our energy.
It will actually be much higher. So even the most woke, green civil servants say we're still going to need lots of oil and gas, even if we hit net zero by 2050. So why not use our own oil and gas? Because if instead of using North Sea oil and gas, by the way, the North Sea oil complex employs about 300,000 people, many of them unionized, which is why the unions are upset.
We are importing liquefied natural gas from Qatar and America on ships. That uses five times the carbon emissions because you've got to pump the gas, right? You've got to liquefy it, which is a very energy-intensive process, stick it on a diesel ship, go 3,000 miles across the Atlantic, regasify it here, which is a very energy-intensive process.
When we've got oil and gas in the North Sea, to close that down... just for ideological reasons, because Labour wants to appeal to their trendy urban electorates, who are very wealthy, is madness. Because they are not only really, now I think, threatening the energy security of this country, they are also... hammering their traditional blue-collar base that works in these industries.
And that is why that blue-collar base is increasingly looking for alternative political representation.
The one thing you will need to do if you want to re-industrialize Britain is go from having the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world to producing lots and lots of cheap, reliable energy, which means
you just have to say net zero in the bin day one we're going to make energy in britain we're going to produce our gas etc is that the plan yes yes so the reforms policy which i've advocated for some time as well is the aim of british energy policy is energy abundance let's go for cheap and reliable energy and we'll do that however we can if there's treasure in the ground or
In our seas, we should make use of it. So as much as we can get from North Sea oil and gas, let's use it. If there is fracking that can be done in a way where there's commercial interest and it's safe, we should do so. We should be honest enough to say that gas is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
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Chapter 5: What are the challenges of transitioning to renewable energy?
Overall, as a package, it's not cheaper at this point. Or we don't have the way to make it work without fossil fuels. Whatever way you want to put it, it's not a viable alternative that is cheaper as well.
If you are taking all of the pros of all of the different energy sources and all of the cons of different energy sources and you factor in the impact of the use of fossil fuels into that equation, then it drives you necessarily to forcing the pace on some of the alternatives. Now, some of the alternatives are perfectly workable and will become better, we know, if we drive them.
So nuclear technology, for instance, stood still for 20, 30 years because we got scared about it after Chernobyl and we froze the development of that technology where it was. The existing nuclear power stations are using 30-year-old technology, basically. That's reassuring. Fourth generation, absolutely. Fourth generation nuclear solves a lot of the problems that we were worried about.
If something goes wrong, plants will shut down safely rather than melt down. They don't create very much nuclear waste. In fact, they can use old nuclear waste as fuel. As with anything, if you work a technology to scale, then you gradually make it better and you solve the problems.
So if we work nuclear technology to scale, as the Chinese are doing, because they can see that this is the technology of the future, if you push yourself as pioneers into that space, you become the providers of that technology to the world.
So then what you've done by putting money into it when it was less cost effective is you've invested in the new technology, which you then recoup the cost of that investment from by selling it to the world. Because the world will go net zero in a blink of an eye when you've got the cost-effective technology that works. But how do you get that?
You get it by investing in developing that technology. We already know that nuclear works. It's just that we've got ideological stuff going on that has said that, you know, even though we say that there's a climate crisis, we're also going to be anti-nuclear. And how could you ever come to that conclusion if you're simply thinking this is a pragmatic problem to be solved? It's not.
It's an ideology that is driving these. Why is Germany shutting down nuclear power stations right now and ramping up coal when it says that it's going to be a climate leader?
And by the way, making it extremely vulnerable to Russia, which is why the current situation with Ukraine, Germany can't do shit because they've closed all their power stations.
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Chapter 6: How do current policies affect the car manufacturing industry?
No one's going to say that now because what they see is a bunch of people whose first preference is to cram down lifestyle restrictions on people. First preference.
Do you support the government's efforts to reach net zero by 2050 broadly?
I mean, it's such a difficult thing to say yes or no for something like that. Probably yes, but it's not as simple as just saying net zero bad or good. It needs to be reasonable and it needs to be controlled. It can't just be something that we cut off all fossil fuels and just expect it to carry on and not affect anyone badly.
Constantine. Can I just first of all ask Douglas and James, what percentage of global carbon emissions is Britain responsible for? Historically or in present terms? Currently. About 1%? 1%. So if we reduce our carbon emissions to zero and destroy our economy even more than we already have, we will reduce global carbon emissions by 1%. That's what we're talking about. Now...
That's what we're talking about, right? And the promise of net zero was, well, it doesn't matter that it's 1%, because Britain is a global leader. We will inspire the world if we destroy our industry and hand it over to China, who's going to make the same things that we still need but dirtier, and then we ship them back here on ships that use the dirtiest fuel imaginable.
If we do that, the Chinese will be inspired to commit industrial suicide as well. The Chinese, clearly, are not as stupid as our leaders, so they haven't committed industrial suicide. That is what net zero has done. We have the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world. That means we basically cannot make anything in this country anymore.
And we will not be able to make anything in this country anymore until we let go of this ridiculous idea that we will inspire other people to jump off a cliff like Lemmings, because we did. It doesn't work. It's not going to deliver prosperity. And James talks about we need a strong economy and we need net zero. Those two things are incompatible. You can't have both.
So either you choose to make your people prosperous or you choose to pursue... That's not what I said. If that's not what you said, then forgive me. I thought what you said is we need both of those things, and I'm saying we can't have both of those things. We are going to have to abandon completely the idea of net zero.
We can definitely continue to invest in new technology, and we should be, and we should be pursuing newer, cleaner, cheaper forms of energy. But the number one priority of government policy going forward should be to deliver the cheapest...
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