The Road to Not Zero

Conservative U-turns on climate undermine belief that change can happen

If you’re hatching a plan to promise the British people the greenest government ever,? then driving a team of huskies to the Norwegian-Arctic border to declare a climate emergency is a winning strategy. It’s high drama, headline-friendly and has the added value of making you look like a genuine action hero, laser-focused on saving the world.?

Fast-forward a decade or so and David Cameron’s green rebrand of the Tories (the logo literally became a tree) is looking less robust if not completely mutilated and moribund. After the baton-relay of May-Johnson-Truss-Sunak we now have a Conservative Government [sic] that is rolling back on net zero, granting new oil field licences, allowing our rivers to be polluted at an unprecedented scale and has decided to delay bringing in rules to make developers deliver a net-gain in biodiversity.

Britain’s much-lauded leadership on climate, anchored by our hosting of COP26, is falling apart as we risk missing our carbon targets, losing investment, and consigning the British people to energy insecurity and spiralling bills.?

Time to calibrate: as Victor Hugo put it so beautifully, ‘an invasion of armies can be defeated, but not an idea whose time has come’. Our struggle towards a climate-safe world will of course continue, in spite of Rishi Sunak’s climbdown, but it will lack the leadership it needs, for now, from a government willing to set a clear course for the country.?

Leadership matters. It signals our collective endeavour. It encourages citizens to meet government and business halfway, in making low carbon behaviours part of everyday life.

And leadership matters. It signals our collective endeavour. It encourages citizens to meet government and business halfway, in making low carbon behaviours part of everyday life. Leadership delivers partnerships and only partnerships can change the world for the better.?

Signals are certainly being sent. To roll back our net zero ambition during UN Climate Week sends a very strong (and negative) signal to the international community. It will make us a weaker participant at COP28 and as Chatham House has pointed out, easier to ignore as we lose ground in the one key area where we could be said to be leading, internationally, in terms of government policy.?

This action also tells those still unsure about the transition to net zero that it might be too hard, too complex, or too costly to achieve at pace. This in turn makes inaction more likely, and with 62 per cent of net zero measures requiring some form of individual action by citizens, this is nothing short of catastrophic.?

So why? What’s to gain from this pivot on climate and nature? One initial reason might be that in truth, Rishi Sunak doesn’t actually believe in showing climate leadership. His voting record is clear; he has almost always voted against more ambitious action on net zero. There’s also the inconvenient fact that the Conservative Party and its MPs have registered more than ￡1.7m in donations from climate sceptics and fossil fuel companies since the election in 2019.?

And finally there’s the ULEZ factor. Having narrowly retained Boris Johnson’s seat through a campaign railing against the extension of London’s clean air zone, the Tories think that appealing to a base for whom action on the environment is anathema, might somehow rescue them in the polls. It won’t. Surveys now consistently show a solid 70% of the British public showing concern about climate change and backing action.

What’s perhaps most damaging in all of this is the semi-deliberate sowing of disbelief that we can achieve net zero at all. Based on last week’s speech many may think that there are actual plans for a meat tax, or for a mandatory programme of insulation for homeowners costing thousands (there are not). They may have bought the line that net zero will make us poorer. That drivers, homeowners and holidaymakers will foot the bill for addressing the climate crisis. They will believe that pain lies ahead in a net zero future, and that their resultant anger is more than justified.?

And at that point, you’re just a few clicks away from the whole thing being a woke conspiracy to trap us all in our under-insulated homes.

This is all about how things look, how they land, and what it might mean for electoral dynamics.?

Sunak claiming to scrap policy measures that never even existed makes it all the clearer that this is actually nothing more than campaign strategy. Positioning, posturing, procrastination – even as we open up another oil field. This is all about how things look, how they land, and what it might mean for electoral dynamics.?

More critical still is the fact that 2023 has been another year of climate records being smashed like an infernal pi?ata. Heatwaves, fires and floods have been decimating habitats, communities and livelihoods from North and South America, to Europe, India, Japan and China. According to the IPCC we’ve already brought about 1.1°C of climate change and we are accelerating towards climate meltdown, overshooting 1.5° of global heating and hurtling headlong towards 2° or more. In 2023, the record for the hottest day ever recorded on Earth was broken three times – in one week.?

Climate change threatens human survival as a species here on planet Earth every bit as much as it makes life worse for all those species whose habitats are somehow moving North or whose stability is being badly disturbed by extreme weather events. We are in existential territory.? As ever with the climate crisis, one of the most saddening factors is that those communities, such as low lying island states, that are likely to be hit the hardest are far and away the least culpable when it comes to the foundation of this crisis in the first place. As the UN puts it, ‘vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to current climate change are disproportionately affected’.

Climate change isn’t fair, and fairness is a critical factor in getting the public on board with a journey to net zero.

Climate change isn’t fair, and as Climate Outreach and others have outlined, fairness is a critical factor in getting the public on board with a journey to net zero.? Only 28 per cent of people when questioned think that the UK has a clear plan to address climate change and this will only get worse as Rishi Sunak doubles down on his anti-environment rhetoric. If people think that they’re being treated unfairly they will push back hard. If they see no clear leadership on climate, they will simply refuse their support for any and all measures to cut emissions.

So apart from working for political change, the challenge for climate campaigners and communicators at this moment in time is clear. We have to show that across cities, regions, businesses and neighbourhoods, millions of people care about the future of our planet and are working hard on a more sustainable future. We need to showcase the solutions that we know can work, and that will actually reduce the economic burden on ‘hard working families’ and not increase it. We all need to show leadership even if our current Government is showing none. A shared social mandate for climate action must be nurtured and hope needs to be built.

We need belief, and not disbelief, in a better future.