Backsliding on Climate Commitments
You don’t have to look far to see wildfires, soaring temperatures, epic floods and destructive storms. Climate change is all around; the UN is unequivocal. Humanity has “opened the gates to hell”, according to the secretary general Guterres. The response has to be absolute resolve, common purpose and consistent leadership to tackle global emissions and accelerate down the route to net zero. Any other path may delight climate sceptics, but sows confusion amongst investment decision-makers, delivering to our children an even more uncertain future than they already face.
Since the birth of the industrial revolution, the UK has benefited from fossil fuels, a bold leader in shaping the world. The fairness and morality of some of those changes can be questioned, but not our leadership. We have also been one of the fastest to decarbonise, setting the agenda on fighting climate change and biodiversity loss. This had a double benefit: demonstrating the capacity to change and thereby taking other countries with us. That continued leadership is needed more than ever.
And yet…
The recent announcements by Prime Minister Sunak have sent a different signal. Though couched in the language of Net Zero, weakening rules on fossil fuel car and boiler phase-out are disappointing and damaging. If the announcements were tweaks on the path to delivering the more challenging targets, that would have been an understandable, but instead they frame climate action as a too high-cost action that can be deferred. We believe action is an investment that will avoid the far higher costs of inaction.
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffet.
An immediate follow-up saw the approval of the Rosebank oil field project in the North Sea, a decision described variously as abject madness, morally obscene, and of no contribution to the UK’s energy security. The world is a long way off-track to control global temperatures at 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
Now is the time when the UK should be coming forward and demonstrating even stronger leadership, rather than backsliding on. As King Charles said last week, climate change is the greatest existential threat to the world and as such it should be our greatest priority. Treating it as a short-term political tool demonstrates a level of desperation and a lack of understanding about the true future cost of climate change.
Paul Crowe 04-10-23
