GWPF TV: The Net Zero Threat to Economic Recovery
In the GWPF's latest webinar, Harry Wilkinson speaks to Rupert Darwall, John Constable and Lord Lilley about the increasing threat to prosperity from decarbonisation plans.
In what now seems like a different era, the EU and a few other governments announced radical plans to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to zero. Today, in a global coronavirus-induced recession, attention is turning to how policymakers can assist economic recovery once the pandemic is over.
The European Commission and environmental activists are demanding that we need to see a 'green recovery'. But what does this actually mean? Can and should 'Net Zero' ambitions be sustained in the face of deepening economic hardship, or could they stifle a rapid recovery?
The Panellists
Rupert Darwall is a strategy consultant and policy analyst, and a fellow of the Real Clear Foundation. After reading economics and history at Cambridge University, he worked in the City of London as an investment analyst before becoming a special adviser to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont. He has written extensively for publications on both sides of the Atlantic, and is the author of the widely-praised The Age of Global Warming: A history (2013) and Green Tyranny: Exposing the totalitarian roots of the climate industrial complex (2017). He has just written a new report for the GWPF: The Climate Noose: Business, Net Zero and the IPCC's Anti-Capitalism (2020) .
John Constable is an energy analyst and the Global Warming Policy Forum’s energy editor. He is also the director of the Renewable Energy Foundation and a member of the GWPF's Academic Advisory Council. Amongst his many energy-related publications are The Green Mirage: Why the low carbon economy may be further off than we think (Civitas: London, 2011), Energy Policy and Consumer Hardship (REF: London, 2011), and Shortfall, Rebound, Backfire: Can we rely on energy efficiency to offset climate policy costs? (REF: London, 2012).
Peter Lilley is a former Conservative MP, who represented St. Albans between 1983 and 1997, and Hitchin and Harpenden between 1997 and 2017. Before entering Parliament he was an energy analyst at the City of London stockbroker, W. Greenwell & Co. He has held a variety of ministerial and shadow ministerial roles, including serving in the Cabinet between 1990 and 1997 as Trade and Industry Secretary and Social Security Secretary. He sat on the Exiting the European Union Select Committee between 2016 and 2017 and joined the House of Lords in June 2018.