{"id":610197,"date":"2026-05-29T11:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T11:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/610197\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T11:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T11:23:08","slug":"essex-county-council-leader-scraps-stupid-net-zero-policies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/610197\/","title":{"rendered":"Essex County Council leader scraps ‘stupid’ net zero policies"},"content":{"rendered":"

He had been backed up in the chamber by deputy leader Russell Quirk, who said: “The quest for net zero is fatally expensive and ironically unsustainable.”<\/p>\n

He said striving to become net zero was a “ridiculous endeavour” that was “as pointless as it is foolish”.<\/p>\n

Quirk said any efforts on the council’s part were “akin to a literal drop in the proverbial ocean”, while other countries increased their industrial activities.<\/p>\n

The state of Essex’s roads was also a major feature of the meeting, where Harris declared a “pothole emergency”.<\/p>\n

Library reservation charges, introduced by the Conservative administration in April, were also scrapped<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Responding to Reform’s criticism of net zero, Scott said: “Yes, there needs to be modifications to net zero and what we do and what we don’t do.<\/p>\n

“It has to be viable, but we also have to recognise that certain things will save our residents money.”<\/p>\n

Reaching net zero CO2 emissions is essential to limit global warming<\/a>, according to the UN’s climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).<\/p>\n

The world is warming because of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions, which increase global temperatures by trapping extra energy in the atmosphere near the Earth’s surface.<\/p>\n

This is bringing more frequent and intense heatwaves, rapidly rising sea levels and widespread harm to nature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He had been backed up in the chamber by deputy leader Russell Quirk, who said: “The quest for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610198,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-610197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}