Wednesday 01 July 2026 5:50 am
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Tuesday 30 June 2026 12:21 pm
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We do not solve a warming planet by lowering our standard of living, raising taxes and making ordinary people poorer. We solve it with engineering, enterprise, adaptation and abundance, says Albie AmankonaFor decades, the British national pastime has been complaining about the weather. We have endured centuries of grey, damp, drizzling misery, huddled around radiators while dreaming of Mediterranean sun. Well, the sun has finally arrived. Climate change is no longer a distant forecast, it is reality. While the professional doom-mongers of the eco-lobby would have us don hairshirts and weep into our oat milk, it is time for some great British pragmatism.The age of pretending Britain can control the planet’s thermostat from Whitehall is over. Net zero may satisfy the moral vanity of our political class, but it will not stop the world from getting warmer. The serious question is no longer whether the climate is changing, it is whether Britain intends to adapt, build, profit and win.The green lobby’s vision for Britain is depressing and economically illiterate. Too often, their answer to a warming world is less growth, less comfort, less energy, less mobility and less ambition. They would rather we sat inside, in pitch darkness, performing some cosplay of a nomadic desert tribe, than admit that modern civilisation has already invented air conditioning.Britain contributes a tiny share of global emissions, and we have already done more to decarbonise than most industrialised countries. Crippling our economy with state edicts will not meaningfully change global temperatures. We do not solve a warming planet by lowering our standard of living, raising taxes and making ordinary people poorer. We solve it with engineering, enterprise, adaptation and abundance.The solution to a hotter Britain is not boiling in the dark. It is unleashing private enterprise to cool the nation down. Commercial landlords, offices, hotels, restaurants, shops and gyms should be able to deduct the full cost of installing modern air conditioning, ventilation and cooling systems from their taxable profits. VAT should be slashed to zero on residential cooling systems, shutters, awnings and other adaptations. Installing solar panels, external cooling units, retrofitting Victorian terraces, upgrading windows and adapting historic buildings should be treated as basic property rights, not an excuse for local councils to trap homeowners in paperwork for months.
