• 2023 was the peak of net zero
  • Politics is turning on the emissions crackdown
  • Specific events will define the end of net zero

One of the things I have learned from Nigel Farage is the power of events rather than trends. In financial markets, it’s the opposite. Trends tend to define your investment returns. They take time to play out and have causes that drive them over that time. Events are unlikely to be as profitable to investors, even if they do manage to capture them.

But in politics and government policy, the big moments are the key instead. Perhaps because they stick in people’s minds. Names like Tavistock, Wuhan Institute of Virology and Brexit define years of growing pressure. People think of specific moments that come to define something that was brewing for much longer.

And so, when I asked Nigel how the implausible nature of net zero would make itself felt, I was expecting him to point to rising power prices or soaring commodity prices, which would squeeze the economy over time. Or perhaps the government would give in when its long-term projections looked absurd.

However, he pointed out that net zero is not a financial trend but a government policy. And its fate would therefore likely be defined and determined by a specific high-profile event – something like a large-scale power cut or a political spat over transferring power across the English Channel.

Suddenly, with one relatively unpredictable event, the whole facade would crumble. We don’t know what it’ll be, but we do know one’s coming – that’s what my new book focuses on.

And when the event hits, people will think of the failure of net zero as being defined by that isolated event rather than the vast trends that made it occur in the first place.

Nigel’s foreword to Threat Zero: The Dark Side of Going Green and How Investors Can Profit digs into this distinction between events and the trends that make them happen…

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Foreword

By Nigel Farage

In 2023, the mood on net zero suddenly turned decidedly sour. Some of the early consequences of this inherently flawed goal were finally exposed, and so the country began to have an open debate about the government policy for the first time. Some even suggested having a referendum on the most important law to smuggle its way through our parliament since the European Constitution was replaced by the Treaty of Lisbon. But I won’t be holding my breath…

The political uncertainty over net zero was dashed by the July by-elections, when the Conservatives won in Uxbridge and South Ruislip while losing seats elsewhere. The deciding factor that explained this geographic divergence seems to have been the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone – a net zero policy prototype if ever there was one. And so it came as no surprise when the prime minister subsequently delayed several key net zero pledges, hoping to boost his popularity, if one can call it that. But, as is growing increasingly obvious as I write this, it won’t be enough to save the prime minister.

Although history is often seen through the lens of a sequence of events like this, it is the growing pressure behind those crucial moments that all too often remains unappreciated. While school children must memorise dates, names and locations, those who seek to truly understand history immerse themselves in context, trends over time, and flawed assumptions waiting to be exposed.

This book by Nickolai Hubble is certainly focused on the latter. It seeks to expose why the events that will come to define net zero will occur rather than what those events might be. It explains them before they take place and shows investors how to position themselves should they agree with the analysis.

Ironically, it is notoriously difficult to predict the specific events that are subsequently branded as history. But the forces that give us those events are perfectly visible to us today, as Threat Zero shows when it comes to the goal of net zero. The real question is whether people choose to be a bystander and allow those events to occur around them, and indeed to them, or whether they choose to inform themselves in advance and then participate in the buildup of pressure that eventually delivers the changes they seek.

It took a dedicated team many decades to deliver the Brexit referendum, before the event that will be etched in the memory of the establishment for decades finally occurred. A steady amount of growing pressure fuelled by the EU’s many failings eventually delivered the result I hoped and campaigned for. That is what occurs when the British public are given their say on crucial policies usually made for them by the establishment, such as net zero.

As ever more consequences of our net zero commitment emerge in the ways predicted by Nickolai in Threat Zero, I am sure net zero will unravel in much the same way. The pressure will steadily grow and a growing group of net zero sceptics will eventually force the establishment to accept change.

Historians will point to specific events that “caused” net zero to fail, and most of us will be caught out by those events, such as blackouts and energy rationing, but those who read Threat Zero will not be surprised, to say the least.

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Nigel is so passionate about opposing net zero that he’s even decided to demonstrate what life without carbon emissions really looks like… in the Australian jungle. If you don’t want to join him in an environmentalist’s utopia, check out how my book recommends you escape.

Until next time,


Nick Hubble
Editor, Fortune & Freedom