Ed Miliband to tell MPs who reject net zero policies they are betraying future generations
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/14/ed-miliband-net-zero-betraying-future-generations
Posted by JRugman
Ed Miliband to tell MPs who reject net zero policies they are betraying future generations
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/14/ed-miliband-net-zero-betraying-future-generations
Posted by JRugman
30 Comments
Betraying future generations seems to be a national pastime here.
Could say that about a lot of policies they’re not taking forward
The irony in this comment ! The youth of today are having their futures absolutely screwed by current decisions being made……
And they won’t care. Did he think they were going to hang their heads after his rousing speech and have a change of heart?
The UK is not driving climate change alone. Yet one could argue we need to ‘set an example’.
This is naive. India Brazil China Russia (USA?) are industrial countries still and contribute most emissions. They aren’t gonna stop because the UK is setting an example
Edit: there’s no way I’m replying to all these but go ahead and debate each other… lots of good points made, some less good
I’m not anti renewable but I am anti not drilling for our own oil while continuing to BUY AND USE oil.
By all means develop renewable energy sources
Remember: if you don’t flush the countries future down the toilet to make Ed and friends feel good then you are betraying future generations.
Global Net Zero is a good goal. Domestic net zero is irrelevant nonsense, and I have literally never seen a single argument for why I should care or why it matters all that much whether the UK is 1% or 0.5% or 0% of global emissions. These are rounding errors.
Net zero will also lead to energy diversity and independence. We need to be pushing both narratives.
This clown is throwing us into fuel chaos when there is no reason to. We could get our gas from the north sea, employ thousands of people in doing it and still reduce oil extraction and exports [not imports though]. Instead we buy gas from Norway and wood from everywhere else to pretend we are Net Zero, we are Not Zero and will never be so; this is politicising the energy stability of the UK for dogma and idealism, from a failed leader who should never have used the unions to rob his more able brother of the job. Yes lets move away from ICE vehicles but we ain’t moving from gas boilers for air pumps that don’t work in our climate and for our existing housing stock. We are ruled by idiots. Also, yes, Tories are just as bad.
We need to drop it, your taxes are going to increase
Well none of them lost a general election to Cameron with all his clever Brexit ideas.
I’ve given up on hoping the world governments will take climate change seriously. The solutions are available now, it just needs the money putting behind it and for politicians to stop being fucking cowards and stand up to the industries that lobby against change. I have 3 children, and I am terrified that my generation will see the transition to a world of climate chaos, and my children will be the ones to ultimately suffer long term.
Daily reminder that there would be almost zero renewables investment in the UK if it wasn’t for the government paying for it and guaranteeing stupidly high prices for energy the renewables don’t even generate.
Because economically hamstringing ourselves on a global scale isn’t betraying future generations. I always feel that people don’t realise just how large the impact of these policies are from the top down, they serve as the basis for much of our infrastructure and construction woes.
I mean we’ve completely fucked them harder and much faster than climate change ever will with the ungodly amount of debt we’ve built up.
Lots of wringing of hands from the right wing press “who will pay for it” “it costs xxx” – twenty years later – same problem just a hundred times bigger and equally more expensive.
Same mentality that sees the same British public grumbling that 14 years of decay can’t be fixed overnight.
Ditto the lazy media who think a country is run by gut reaction daily polling of the public – a pretty lousy way to run a country. Most people can’t think beyond next week never mind next generations.
God looking at some of these comments we are doomed to die out in a few generations. Climate change is here and it is real. Places like sub Saharan Africa, the Maldives and Pacific Islands are already experiencing the effects of an anthropologically changing climate. And you sit there in your cushy life and say meh not my problem… Selfish
Net zero policies have failed and continue to fail. We need to rethink what we are doing.
What specific policies though?
Some net zero policies are genuinely shit.
Our resistance to air conditioning is rooted in net zero principles, and it’s completely stupid.
Lots of net zero policies are just “tax people to death and stop people from having nice things”. Net zero seems to revolve around expecting people to sacrifice quality of life, which is a complete non-starter (especially when the impact of the UK on the global climate is essentially zero – so sacrifices made here will have no tangible gain whatsoever).
If you’re gonna sell net zero to the public, come up with net zero alternatives that are genuinely better for end users so that people will organically chose to use net zero alternatives themselves rather than having to be forced to.
Sacrificing today for tomorrow is betraying the current generations.
Funny that soon they’re voting on a statutory instrument that will allow more money to be given to Ed’s mates in the green energy industry.
I watched this interview of him the other day. Would recommend people here watch it, it’s really good and he shows a tonne of passion about climate policy.
https://youtu.be/rvMgNgoaKd8?si=VpTEXCn_PS8e_fHI
Is that it? While your at it, how about telling the pensioners the same thing with their privilege on triple lock and WFA
The “Chaos with Ed Miliband” timeline would have been so much better.
Anyone want to tell him that thats what MPs have been doing on all fronts for decades?
Net zero isn’t going to mean a damn thing if society collapses due to kleptocratic wealth transfer and the inevitable collapse of underfunded and mismanaged social systems.
Sorry Ed but you’re not going to emotionally blackmail me into high energy bills and sleepless nights.
So we should just not think about the massive consequences or wider context, I suppose?
Aside from the case that we dont actually know what is going to happen, it’s all extrapolation and scientific guesswork. Sure we have the ‘overwhelming consensus’ but then we also had that for the serotonin theory of depression and it turns out that very probably isn’t true and the vast majority of the tens of millions of antidepressants handed out were done so in error.
We also seem to forget that this whole thing is about human survivability, not protecting some gaia.
Spains recent power outage shows the fragility of over reliance on non synchronous power sources, a few years ago we had an anticyclone that meant we had to beg our partners for energy across our subsea connections because the wind wasn’t blowing – that level of power draw from of neighbours not isnt actually possible.
As for reliance on foreign despotisms, most steel used to be Russian prior to the invasion because of our insistence that we don’t dig for coking coal or smelt it here. It will now be Chinese, so that will be fun when they invade Taiwan or continue their information and monetary war against us.
If sensible options like nuclear were being suggested then I see no downside beyond excessive regulation causing high cost. However even then we can’t build our own because we decided to abandon our nuclear capabilities and retire all our engineers because of a few whining hippies. We could have had a reliable net zero energy grid 60 years ago. France did and they sold power to us.
Those future generations will be bankrupt if we continue to push this. All whilst other countries continue pollute the earth, so they’ll be bankrupt and living in a Mad Max wasteland.
He’s not wrong.
It breaks my heart to think about because this is something we should have been properly dealing with decades ago.
I’m sorry but in the long, long list of ways which future (and current) generations are being screwed in this country, the UK emitting less emissions than it already does has to rank near the bottom on the list.
We’ve made some really good progress, even if it is held back by poor infrastructure which needs investment. But we need to acknowledge that our reductions are dwarfed by continuous coal ramp up in India and China and we have hit the top of the S curve in what we can now achieve as a country without pushing prices up even further and handicapping what little industry we have left.
This ideology that we will somehow reduce global emissions by ourselves is a dead end and the longer this farce goes on, the more apathy and climate denial will become mainstream and undo real progress we’ve made.
This whole net zero is pointless, it’s impossible to achieve.