Tony Blair warns that any strategy based on short-term or limiting consumption of quantified fossil fuels is doomed to fail.

The former prime minister called for a reset on climate change, and the UK government should focus less on renewable energy and more on technological solutions such as carbon capture.

Blair said in a confrontation with some labor and industry that people “were asked to make financial sacrifices and lifestyle changes when they know their impact on global emissions are small.”

He wrote the foreword to the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) report, saying the current climate debate is “irrational” and suggests net zero net loss of public support.

His comments are similar to those of conservative leader Kemi Badenoch's criticism of Net Zero.

The paper itself was written by TBI's Lindy Fursman, who said that the net zero policy is now "increasingly seen as unbearable, ineffective or politically toxic".

However, in the UK, climate change policies have been popular. Britain's wisdom persuasion said in a report released on Monday that Labor Party in the next election could damage the Greens' seats by disillusioning the left-wing voters rather than from defection to reformed seats. A recent YouGov poll on the topic found that 66% of British voters were concerned about climate change.

Last week, Keir Starmer said the government would “go out all out” to achieve a low-carbon future and that at a meeting in London, meetings to address the climate crisis and strengthen energy security were “in my government’s DNA” and “we won’t wait – we will accelerate”.

But Blair said that the current policy solutions are insufficient and leaders should turn toward prioritized technological solutions toward “pragmatic policies.” He said this is due to the growing demand for fossil fuel production, especially in China and India, where airline travel doubles and demand for steel and cement increases.

He said he still believes that climate is “one of the fundamental challenges of our time” and that renewable energy is necessary. But he said the government needs to "change where we focus on".

Blair said that although the UK government has made some important commitments in terms of carbon capture, he said policies such as carbon capture should be reversed and dismissed. He called for the embrace of international nuclear energy and to do more work on the new small modular reactor.

A Labor MP said it was a useless intervention that could be interpreted as a direct criticism of Starmer and his energy minister Ed Miliband. "We know that businesses see renewable energy as a key avenue for economic growth, and that's not like the government hasn't done anything like carbon capture yet. I don't know that pushing something like this, and net zero's unpopularity is just wrong," they said.

"I don't think the industry needs a vision of technological advantages for climate action, and that doesn't represent the excellent work the industry has done today to decarbonize and launch clean energy on an unprecedented scale, and it seems strange that the TBI report doesn't seem to recognize that," an industry source said.

When the seventh carbon budget was released in February, TBI had a high influence in the labor community and had always welcomed renewable energy actions. Fursman said in a statement released at the time that the plan was “rightly ambitious.”

Campaigners and industry figures say there are flaws in the TBI argument. "Given the disappointing good performance of Tony Blair on climate action, this seems to be a solution to avoid the worst climate impacts and promote failures rather than a realistic one, not support for the public, especially in the UK, especially for climate action," said Holly Braziler Tope, deputy director of politics at Green Alliance.

Adam Berman, Director of Policy and Advocacy at UK Energy Corporation, said: “Net zero is an economic opportunity in the 21st century. Through rapid absorption of technologies such as wind and solar energy, UK emissions have halved since 1990. This is not a problem. In addition to investment in new technologies, the UK also needs traditional cleaning technologies that are operating at a large scale today. ”