Rishi Sunak is focused on the big stuff, or what he repeatedly insists are our priorities: boats, economy, boats, hospital waiting lists, boats, inflation, boats. The naysayers would uncharitably point out that he’s failing, to which I repeat the PM’s own words: “I’m totally, 100% on it and it’s going to be OK.”
In this Mr Big Stuff vein on Tuesday it was reported that Sunak and his home secretary, Suella Braverman, would be meeting sports supremos and senior police in an effort to save the great British sporting summer from climate activists. Later that day, three sexagenarian Just Stop Oil protesters brought a couple of tennis matches to a standstill by sprinkling confetti and jigsaw pieces on court. One sporting supremo, at least, was philosophical: ‘‘You don’t want things to be disrupted but at the same time they will really be disrupted with climate change,” said Gary Lineker. Advantage activists.
Arresting “groups with unreasonable demands” seems to be the extent of Sunak’s interest in global warming – let alone other environmental issues that the electorate bores on about. Climate consistently ranks in the top issues of concern among voters, but presumably Sunak knows better what’s best for us and has a plan. And better than the UN secretary general, António Guterres, who last week declared that “climate change is out of control”.
After all, the alternative is almost too horrific to contemplate. Hubris leads to tragic nemesis, as the Covid inquiry into pandemic preparedness is so painfully detailing.
This June was the hottest, breaking all records for average air and sea surface temperatures, and also for the lowest ice coverage. Last Monday, as we tipped into July, the world experienced its hottest day ever recorded – a record broken by Tuesday, which turned out to be a hotter hottest day.
In summer 2022, the UK passed 40C, railways buckled, schools and airports closed, hospitals struggled to cope and wildfires caused the biggest firefighter call-out since the blitz.
Heat-related deaths across Europe numbered in the tens of thousands. In September, scientists warned that we are on the brink of passing several disastrous climate tipping points. This year we are additionally dealing with an El Niño weather phase, which is expected to worsen many of the impacts caused by our greenhouse gas emissions.
The ancient Greeks, who taught us about hubris, also gave us Cassandra, the cursed Trojan priestess who was fated to have her accurate predictions disbelieved and warnings ignored. There has certainly been a corrosive contingent of disbelievers over the past decades, notably in the United States, where belief in the scientific evidence has been captured by identity politics. Whether or not you “believe in climate change” is closely aligned to whether you identify as a Trump supporter. Here, too, the rightwing media rubbishes not just the policies around climate action but the climate science itself and its findings and predictions, in a cynical attempt to similarly politicise “belief” in global heating and the need for action. It’s worth noting that disbelief in Cassandra’s warnings didn’t end well for the Trojans.
While the Tory-supporting papers campaign for fracking and to delay climate action, and members of his own party conspire to sow division over the same, Sunak is no disbeliever. After all, his government signed a legally binding agreement to reach net zero – reducing the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 100% of 1990 levels – by 2050, having been elected on a manifesto promising “the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on Earth”. Government targets to achieve this include heat pumps, home insulation and a ban on the sale of new combustion engine cars.
Yet, the government’s Climate Change Committee last month published a damning report on our net zero progress, finding us on track to miss almost all our targets. Its chair, Lord Deben, described policies to issue more than 100 new oil and gas licences, and open a new coal mine, as “utterly unacceptable”. Zac Goldsmith, who resigned from the cabinet over Sunak’s environmental “apathy”, last week was scathing of the government’s plans to drop its £11.6bn climate support for poor countries. I guess they’re just like those pesky “eco-zealots” Just Stop Oil.
What do they know? Sunak clearly has bigger plans and priorities that supersede anything as pedestrian as international agreements, net zero commitments and manifesto pledges.
It seems churlish to point out that at our current global average of perhaps 1.35C above pre-industrial temperatures, we’re already experiencing climate disasters with economic losses in the billions of dollars, millions of people regularly displaced by unliveable conditions, and vast agricultural and infrastructure losses. So if we’re not going to decarbonise by 2050, what is Sunak’s grand plan?
We need honesty from our leaders. If the new policy is to abandon the goal of limiting heating to no more than 1.5C, or even 2C, above the pre-industrial average, then what is the plan for dealing with the consequences of this more extreme Britain? Let Sunak tell us frankly what east London or Cardiff or Lincolnshire will look like in 2050 when sea level rise and intense deluges are causing severe flooding. How many reservoirs is he planning for the chronically drought-afflicted south-east? What are his plans for dealing with climate migrants from the increasingly unliveable tropics?
I’d love to know the strategy in place for managing large numbers of fish and insect deaths as the temperatures rise. Given the policy of not adequately insulating and adapting UK housing stock to the extreme conditions, I wonder what the acceptable heat death toll will be for citizens over the coming decades.
As for the economy, Sunak is “on it”, so I am wondering what the cunning plan is behind backing the dying fossil fuel industry rather than massively investing in electrification with renewables, heat pumps, onshore wind and grid infrastructure.
If delaying action on climate safeguards is necessary to continue his important political experiment, I hope Sunak isn’t too hubristic not to have fully prepared an alternative liveable planet for us all.
• Gaia Vince is the author of Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval
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