Rishi Sunak still occasionally speaks the language of Net Zero, much to the fury of those Conservative sceptics who would have him ditch all reference to the project all together – but it seems increasingly like undisguised hot air.

It’s not just the 27 oil and gas licences, issued yesterday by the North Sea Transition Authority, and just around a quarter of the 100 that are set to be fast tracked, or even the fact that Rosebank, the UK’s biggest undeveloped oilfield, recently got the green light. It's also there in the news that, in the King’s Speech, the prime minister is going to double down even harder on the retreat from Net Zero.

Sources quoted in the press have said he is set, on November 7, to announce a new system for awarding oil and gas exploration licences, as well as measures that will make it difficult for local authorities to introduce 20mph speed limits or low emission zones.

That Sunak is petrolhead-in-chief is hardly news. It’s the way he and his government have been  for some time. It was there in September when he insisted that "we're going to take every last drop" of oil from the North Sea.

The non-existent meat tax that he said he was going to "scrap”, alongside delaying the ban on petrol and diesel cars and other policies, says it all. Even members of his own party were declaring that he had invented “straw men”.

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On climate his vision comes across as the opposite of the "long-term" it claims to be.

In choosing, as he has done, to  make climate a “wedge” issue through which he can create distance between himself and Keir Starmer’s green strategy, he reminds us of his lack of vision. This is surely something that Starmer and Humza Yousaf can make much of - for the person who stands for wedges stands for nothing.

Sunak is gambling on the idea this is what voters want or can be encouraged to want: a prime minister and government that will rid us of any meaningful Net Zero strategy and prioritise the continued supply and consumption of oil and gas; a slowing of the attempt to mitigate climate change.

He might turn to some polls for reassurance. For instance, there’s the Savanta survey which found that 56% of Scots backed a delay to the ban on new petrol and diesel cars (but not on second hand which make up the bulk of the market) from 2025 to 2030. Or the poll by True North that found that 54% of Scots back Sunak's policy on oil and gas licences.

But I’m sceptical about polls that take a single green issue to read the pulse of the nation on Net Zero. When we focus on just one green measure, particularly a penalty or ban, then it’s more likely that we will find approval for delay or dilution. But when we put the picture together and ask what a package of policies represents we might come up with a different answer.

READ MORE: Rishi Sunak defends plan to drain 'every last drop' of North Sea oil

A snap poll by More in Common, published in September, found that "few Britons (20%) want the government to slow down on net zero" and "almost half (49%) thought the government should do more to pursue net zero, with 34% thinking they should do the same".

It also found that 61% of those voters who abandoned Labour for the Tories at the last election (that  blue wall that replaced the former red wall) backed Labour’s green policies.

Meanwhile, whatever the climate denial on social media, people are also increasingly looking outside their doors and at weather reports, and seeing a climate change that looks more real in terms of record-breaking global temperatures and battering storms. 

Few of us are particularly good at thinking in terms of the long term. We put things off because they seem right now to be too hard, and somewhere round the corner there will be a time when they will be that bit easier or  some deus ex machina will descend and sort it out -  which is perhaps what Sunak's "long term" vision is all about .

But when we feel the water is at our door, or are reminded that the heat is beating down on others that long term starts to seem closer. The deus ex machina is not enough.

We are also reminded of other costs. Only last year the LSE published a paper which compared the costs of climate change impacts and the cost of mitigation efforts. It found that “under current policies, the total cost of climate change damages to the UK are projected to increase from 1.1% of GDP to 3.3% by 2050 and 2.4% by 2100. Strong global mitigation action, it said, could reduce the impacts of climate change damages to the UK from 7.4% to 2.4% of GDP by 2100.

Of course, 2100 is a lifetime away. But we need to keep counting the cost of climate damage alongside that of climate mitigation. 

On climate, as on everything, we are crying out for someone who can bring long-term together with short-term,  to help us believe that we can do hard things.

Above all, we need leadership that appears to care about Net Zero and doesn't turn it into hot air.