We shouldn't have Net Zero in the first place

Matthew Parris gets close to the right question:

We’re no nearer the truth of net zero’s costs

But it’s still not the right question. For, “We’re going to have Net Zero now, what does it cost?” is the wrong query. The correct question is here’s the cost now, how much - or how close to - net zero can we get for that?

The base point here has an elegant simplicity. There are costs to allowing climate change to happen. There are costs to stopping climate change from happening. Our goal is the maximisation of human utility over time. Therefore we wish to have the minimal - ie, utility maximising - amount of costs. But, here’s the tricky bit, the minimal aggregate of both sets of costs, those of mitigating climate change and those also of suffering it.

So far everyone should be agreeing. Those who insist there is no climate change and therefore no costs to be carried from it, those also who insist there is, that’s it’s near terminal for the species therefore we should be willing to bear near any burden. Everyone’s base calculation should be the same - what’s the blend of policy to mitigate plus costs of allowing to happen that is utility maximising? Then that’s what we should do.

This is not an oddity by the way, it’s the logical argument at the heart of the Stern Review. This is entirely and wholly mainstream.

Therefore the question “What’s the cost of the target we’ve decided upon?” is logically the wrong question. For the correct one is “What is the cost of not mitigating? Therefore we’ll spend up to that amount to mitigate.”

That is, the cost of what we’re going to do is the first thing to work out. Because that then determines what we do do. We have, in fact, policy about climate change determined by people asking entirely the wrong thing. Failing to grasp even the basics of the logic of the subject.

But then that’s government for us, eh?