To get to net zero, we may have to sell off the UK’s future

Something of a headline in The Observer there.

The observation is that getting to this Net Zero by 2050 target is going to be howlingly expensive. We might have to sell off all the assets owned by government to finance it.

What this tells us, of course, is that it’s the target which is wrong. As the Stern Review itself pointed out. The aim is to make us better off over time. Climate change will have costs, dealing with climate change will have costs. Dealing with climate change will have benefits, not having to spend on climate change has benefits. So, we need the finest balance of costs and benefits that we can reach.

That means, obviously, balancing costs and benefits. Not a target that must be reached at any cost. And the Stern Review is entirely clear on this - if those costs change, as is claimed here, then the amount of dealing with climate change that we do should also change. Which is exactly what people are not admitting, let alone doing.

Why, it’s almost as if people are using the Stern Review - and other such economic investigations - as excuses for what they desire to do anyway rather than as guides to good policy. That can’t possibly be true though, can it, for politics really never does work that way.

No, really. Never.