Heath: Ditch Net Zero, Embrace Mediterranean Life
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- Allister Heath, editor of the Sunday Telegraph, wrote in the Daily Telegraph that Britain should 'scrap net zero and embrace Mediterranean life,' claiming the climate war has been lost and labelling emissions cuts 'suicidal empathy.'
- The Heath column landed the same day drought was declared across half of England and as the Mediterranean region itself went up in flames; amid derision on social media, editors changed the headline.
- Renewables are already cheaper than fossil fuels in almost all situations, Monbiot counters, arguing the Trump administration has spent billions resisting the free market to prop up fossil fuels and sustain coal burning.
- Reform UK insists Britain is 'better to adapt to warming, rather than pretend we can stop it' — the same political tendency, Monbiot writes, that defends austerity and privatization, both of which he says hamper adaptation.
- Telegraph columnists Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Tim Stanley broke ranks last week, arguing Britain should rise to the climate challenge — a minority view in the Telegraph and across the rightwing press, per Monbiot.
- Monbiot argues the media provides platforms for fossil fuel-friendly views because 'almost all the very rich are heavily invested' in fossil fuels, making climate restrictions feel like 'class war.'
Why it matters: Monbiot frames the right-wing British press as having shifted from outright climate denial to fatalism — a stance that arrives just as renewables become cheaper than fossil fuels, undercutting the economic logic Heath uses to justify abandoning net zero.
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