The media hive mind has seized on a report from the Tony Blair Institute this morning, which amusingly says net zero policies are “doomed to fail.” The paper has sent Labour, the Greens and the wider left into complete meltdown and Sir Tony has since rowed back under pressure from No 10…

What does Sir Tony suggest as an alternative to fossil fuel phase out? Basically a word salad outlining a wide array of exotic measures such as “underwater drones/robots for seagrass and mangrove seeding, with autonomous vehicles capable of planting thousands of seedlings per day” and “digital tools such as geospatial mapping, IoT-enabled monitoring and predictive analytics.” Righto…

You can tell that no journalists have actually read the report because they have missed the bit where it promotes a bonkers plan to reflect sunlight back into space:

“In the most extreme case, in which we fail to make significant progress on decarbonisation, the world may need to seriously consider solar radiation management (SRM), a technology generally considered a last resort for addressing global warming. One of the most radical and controversial forms of disruption, SRM involves the direct manipulation of the Earth’s climate system to counteract global warming through techniques aiming to reflect sunlight away or limit the radiation that reaches the Earth. While highly controversial, such technologies may become necessary if mitigation efforts fail to prevent catastrophic climate shifts.”

One method of ‘SRM’ proposed by some scientists is indeed putting giant mirrors into space. Tone has managed to make Ed Miliband look sane…