Over 60 Percent of UK Wants Referendum on Net Zero Carbon Policy: Poll

A giant sand artwork adorns New Brighton Beach to highlight the forthcoming COP26 global climate conference on in Wirral, Merseyside, on May 31, 2021. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

A poll has found a desire for a referendum on net zero is popular among the public, with one political party calling for carbon policies to be taken to the ballet box amid “growing dissatisfaction” with current and future policies.

According to a commissioned YouGov poll, excluding “don’t knows,” 62 percent want a referendum on UK’s net zero carbon policy as compared with 58 percent asked the same question last year before COP26.

The survey was commissioned by Car26, which is campaigning for a referendum on net zero and a pause in carbon-related regulations until such a ballot is held.

The UK has signed into law a policy to achieve net zero by 2050 with the Conservative government setting out a strategy called “Build Back Greener” to decarbonise all sectors of the UK economy.

The UK faces the phasing out of petrol and diesel cars and gas boilers, and calls from statutory bodies like the Climate Change Committee to cut meat by 20 percent in 2030 and by 35 percent by 2050.

National Referendum

Car26 said that across all demographics, there was more support than opposition to holding a referendum.

The online poll conducted between Nov. 21 and 22 asked 1,661 people “To what extent do you support or oppose holding a national referendum to decide whether or not the UK pursues a Net Zero Carbon policy?”

Excluding “don’t knows,” 66 percent of 2019 Labour voters backed a poll, compared with 60 percent of Liberal Democrat voters and 56 percent of Conservative voters.

Lib Dem voters were the keenest, with only 15 percent “don’t knows,” compared with 25 percent for Labour and 24 percent for the Tories.

Remainers and Leavers supported a net zero referendum, at 58 percent and 61 percent respectively. Both sexes polled the same with 62 percent support.

“Last year we polled before COP26. In the spirit of the times, we decided to give the Climate Cultists a free kick by polling right after the wall-to-wall unquestioning coverage by mainstream media of COP27,” said CAR26 Director, Lois Perry in a statement.

“Net-Zero policy is vastly expensive and entirely futile, it will make no difference to the natural cycles of climate,” she added.

“Our polling, especially among the young, gives us hope that as people understand how Net Zero pointlessly raises the cost of living and will steal our freedoms. We think greater support among Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters is a consequence of seeing Net Zero-caused inflation hitting family budgets. 2023 will see greater public debate and we welcome that, Net Zero will become the major factor in political party life towards the next General Election and a referendum in 2025,″ she said.

Richard Tice (R) listens as Nigel Farage speaks during the launch of the Brexit Party at BG Penny & Co, in Coventry, England, on April 12, 2019. Matthew Lewis/Getty Images

The Reform Party

Founded by Nigel Farage, Reform UK, formerly the Brexit Party, is seeing an uptick in memberships.

Its current leader Richard Tice told The Epoch Times that net zero could be the new Brexit.

“Sadly, the difference here is that this is actually costing people a great deal of money,” he said.

Farage and Tice were a major force behind the referendum in 2016 when the UK voted to leave the European Union with a 52 percent majority.

“Our approach to this is that Westminister and all parties including the civil service are obsessed with net zero,” he said.

In early November, Reform UK was polling at 9 percent, higher than the Lib Dems (7 percent) and the Greens (5 percent) according to the market researcher Omnisis.

Tice said that we “all care about the environment, and we all want clean air in our towns and cities,” but he said that he wants to use the “energy treasure under our feet” such as oil, gas, shale gas, and coal and it “keep our money and jobs here in the UK.”

He also said that this “stops the import of gas in big LNG ships” or the “importing of 5 million tonnes of coal from the other side of the world with all the emissions from shipping.”

Tice added that energy prices have soared to the point where “utterly humiliatingly, yesterday there was a serious threat that we were going to have to shut down power and ration power today.”

‘Net Poorer, Net Colder’

On Monday, the National Grid issued and then cancelled a notice that warned of tight margins between the amount of electricity available and decided not to trigger an emergency plan.

“For a nation that is sitting on a century’s worth of energy, this is nothing short of gross, gross negligence by the political class and managerial civil service class. And the result of it, is that ordinary working people are net poorer and because people are terrified if you put the heating on, and when old people are cold, guess what, they die,” said Tice.

“So literally net zero is making us net poorer, net colder and it’s killing people,” he added.

Reform UK is one of the only parties to be explicitly critical of net zero policies and is also associated with “Vote Power, Not Poverty,” a cross-party, grassroots campaign made up of activists from different parties which is demanding a “referendum on the life-changing Net Zero plans forced upon us by Westminster politicians.”

“It is all part of the technocratic, elite-knows-best-attitudes,” a Vote Power, Not Poverty spokesman told The Epoch Times, adding there is a “growing dissatisfaction with policies that are driven not by saving the environment, but by imposing controls through taxes and fees.”

“They’ve lost any sense of normal and common sense—and they believe themselves to be the priests of a new religion and the rest of us are serfs,” he said.

“The only people who really suffer with the passage of increasingly strict net zero-based regulations and laws are the weakest and poorest in society,” he added.

The debate has become increasingly politicised, with some criticising net zero measures like ultra-low emission zones and road pricing, and some claiming it has more to do with making up shortfalls in extra taxes than saving the environment.

No Delay

Talking to The Telegraph, the Conservative government’s net zero tsar, Chris Skidmore, said there could be no delay to measures such as banning petrol cars because it would damage public trust.

Skidmore launched a review in September to “ensure that delivering the net zero target does not place undue burdens on businesses or consumers,” which will end this year.

“The review is going to look at those mandates, but it won’t make the case for delaying them,” he told the publication.

“If we don’t achieve those mandates, it puts public confidence in our ability to be able to deliver change at risk. I always believe absolutely when it comes to policy, you should always under promise and over deliver, rather than over promise and under deliver,” he added.

The Epoch Times contacted Skidmore for comment.

PA Media contributed to this report.