Boris Johnson may have told world leaders ‘it’s easy being green’ – but events at home tell a different story

Boris Johnson’s trip to the US has been a parable of the green religion. He went to lecture the world about the need to produce less carbon dioxide while his ministers back home were scrabbling to subsidise a fertiliser company to produce more. Normally, people don’t make the connection between carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere as a by-product of burning fossil fuels and carbon dioxide produced on purpose – or, actually, as a by-product of making fertiliser – to make drinks fizzy. Well, we know now.

The second part of the parable is more telling. The prime minister gave a speech at the UN taking “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green” by Kermit the Frog as his text, trying to persuade world leaders of the opposite, that it is easy to adopt policies to curb the burning of fossil fuels. One of those policies might be to put up the price of fossil fuels compared with green energy. Meanwhile, his ministers back home are rushing between pillar, post and broadcasting studio to reassure people that the price of natural gas will be kept down so that we can burn lots of it to “keep the lights on” this winter.

Just as Johnson told world leaders Kermit was wrong, and that being green is easy – “it’s not only easy, it is lucrative and it is right to be green” – it turned out that it was Kermit who was right. The rise in the price of natural gas is nothing to do with green policies, but it underlines a stark environmental message. The price rise is the result of the global economy bouncing back from Covid-19 lockdowns faster than expected, although Paul Scully, today’s minister for broadcast studios, sounded a bit cautious about the prime minister’s blithe assurances in New York that the price rise was “temporary” and business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng’s description of it as a “spike”. Scully is now insulating himself against hostages to fortune by talking about a “worst-case scenario” in which prices fail to return to pre-pandemic levels.

However, a government that was seriously green might use the price rise as a chance to tilt the market in favour of low-carbon energy. It has been one of the aims of greens since they were called ecologists to use carbon taxes to put a price on the environmental damage caused by fossil fuels, and thus to use market forces to help drive the shift to clean energy.

To a limited extent, that has happened, in that the Labour and coalition governments subsidised wind and solar power, allowing those markets to grow and to achieve unexpected economies of scale. But the difficult bit has always been making fossil fuels more expensive. David Cameron came up against the democratic brake on carbon taxes when consumers revolted against levies on their energy bills to pay for the subsidies for renewables. That was when he ordered officials to “get rid of the green crap”. He had been driven to distraction partly by Ed Miliband, the Labour leader who faced both ways, trading on his credentials as former energy and climate change secretary while demanding a cap on energy prices.

Since then the “Miliband Contradiction” has been the foundation of government policy: full-fat green rhetoric combined with a promise to keep energy prices down. That means that incentives to save energy and to insulate homes remain weak. So now it is Johnson facing both ways: less carbon dioxide, more carbon dioxide; burn less fossil fuel, keep prices low.

The other part of the long-term aspiration of a carbon tax, of course, was always to protect the earnings of lower-income families. The right policy mix from a green perspective is to put up the price of oil and gas, while also putting up universal credit and pensions to protect those on low and fixed incomes. How awkward for Johnson that oil and gas prices are rising at just the moment he intends to cut universal credit and has broken a manifesto promise to raise the state pension by more than general inflation.

What he could be saying is that this price spike, or plateau or whatever it is, is a warning and an opportunity: that we will have to to get used to paying more for energy from fossil fuels because that is the only way that we will learn in the long term to love electric cars and heat pumps. He could be saying that the government will impose carbon taxes when prices start to fall towards pre-pandemic levels, to make sure that the green alternatives become cheaper than the carbon-based options.

And he could be saying that the cut in universal credit is cancelled, and that the winter fuel payment for pensioners will be increased, so that those who are less able to switch are protected.

But he won’t do that, because for all his brave words at the UN he cannot put up fuel bills for the great mass of the electorate. He will get enough of the blame as it is for bills going up because of the global natural gas shortage. Instead, he will insist on keeping the price cap forced on the Tory government by Ed Miliband, and no doubt he will have to bail out millions of customers of energy retail companies that are going bust because they have locked themselves into low prices. He will pray for a mild winter and that the price rise really is temporary. And he will still preach the net zero religion.

Kermit got it right the first time. It’s not easy being green.