Nigel Farage’s ‘disingenuous’ campaign against net-zero ignores the staggering cost of climate crisis

The Brexit campaigner is now trying to raise the alarm over the cost of net-zero policies. But this doesn’t tell the full story, Zoe Tidman writes

Nigel Farage has launched a new campaign calling for a referendum on UK net-zero goals (AFP via Getty Images)

There is something Nigel Farage is overlooking in his push against the UK’s net-zero emissions pledge.

The pro-Brexit campaigner has now thrown his weight behind another referendum: this time on action to tackle the climate crisis and its devastating impacts we are already seeing.

One of the cornerstones of his argument for a public vote on the UK’s goal to reach net zero by 2050 is the cost, which he claimed would be £1tn. Experts who fact-checked this for The Independent concluded the figure was “inaccurate”.

It is true, however, that the cost of slashing emissions will not come cheap. But - even just in financial terms - the price of unabated global warming would likely be much higher.

“The costs of failing to get climate change under control would be much larger than those of bringing emissions down to net zero,” the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said last year.

The OBR said the net cost of reaching the UK’s emission goals would be around £11bn a year when spread across the three decades in the run-up to the target date of 2050.

Earlier this year, the British government ran an assessment of how much the climate crisis - which makes extreme weather events such as flooding and heatwaves more likely and more intense - is looking likely to cost.

This was also estimated to run into at least £8bn every year by 2050 for around 40 risk areas, even when global temperature increases capped at 2C.

If the climate crisis was allowed to go on unabated, this would most likely be even higher. And as global warming continues, so will its massive financial impacts.

Alyssa Gilbert, from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, told The Independent the cost of the climate crisis would end up “far outweighing” how much it would take to reach net-zero emissions in a few decades’ time.

The other question is how money could be better spent. Whereas funds used to tackle the damaging impacts of rising temperatures would - sometimes literally - just be fighting fires, those spent on slashing emissions would also work towards creating green industries, cheaper bills, healthier lives and a safer world.

“There’s nothing beneficial about the impacts we are going to have from climate change” Ms Gilbert says. “Whereas when you spend this money [on net-zero], you’re paying for something that’s an investment.”

Policies to slash emissions also help poorer communities, who would not only benefit from cheaper bills but who are often left most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis, she notes.

Ms Gilbert said Mr Farage’s supposed alarm over the cost of net-zero in his referendum campaign seemed “quite disingenous”.

“I don’t see evidence this is an argument that really demonstrates thought-through protection of the people who are most vulnerable and least well-off.”