The Conservatives are lagging far behind on the climate crisis, that much we know. But the Labour party is not showing the leadership that the country needs on reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions, the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has warned.
Lord Deben, a former Conservative environment secretary, has long been a critic of the government, and recently praised Labour’s stance on opposing new oil and gas licences in the North Sea.
But as he presented his final annual progress report as chairman, he warned that Labour was failing to take on vested interests.
“If you lead, then there are bound to be people who would prefer you not to have made those decisions,” Deben said. “And what we are seeing at the moment is not only in government but in opposition, people being unwilling to lead lest some people don’t like the decisions that are being made. But these decisions have to be made, and there will be some people who disagree with them, and it is no good hoping that it will all go away.”
He added: “Right across the political spectrum, there is an unwillingness to lead.”
If Labour can win the next election, Keir Starmer has promised to “throw everything at” the race for net zero. But he has been criticised for delaying a promised £28bn investment to the second half of the next parliament, and for not promising to revoke North Sea oil and gas licences granted by this government.
And meanwhile, the Tories are dithering and and showing even less leadership. Last year was essentially wasted, when it came to cutting greenhouse gas emissions and marching to net zero, the CCC found.
In power generation, the government has “dithered” on onshore wind; on transport, the government has “made a political choice” not to try to get people out of their cars; on land use, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has not brought forward fast enough incentive schemes for farmers to change their practices; and a programme of advice to consumers on behavour change is still “lacking”.
Chris Stark, chief executive of the CCC, was clear that new measures were needed now: “This can’t wait for the next general election. That would amount to a lost year over the next year, if we waited for that, for the next round of policy pledges and delivery pledges. That would leave us with too much ground to make up.”
And further stalling will add substantially to the cost of net zero “It would be very much more expensive [to wait a year],” pointed out Deben. “It gets more expensive the longer you put it off, so in financial terms it’s a great mistake. It would also be very much more difficult. And it puts the government in a real difficulty, or its successor, in the sense that it has a statutory requirement to reach these aims.”
Critics of net zero like to point out that the UK’s own emissions are small compared with those of China, the US and India. But what the UK does is of outsize influence internationally. The UK has a large historical emissions debt, and a recent record of leadership on the climate.
If the UK lags, other countries take it as a licence to lag. If UK ministers promote fossil fuels at home, they destroy their moral authority to encourage and enforce emissions reduction overseas.
Rishi Sunak and Grant Shapps, who both proclaim their green credentials, could heed the CCC’s advice and start upping their net zero policies. To do so, they would need to resist strong pressure from the right of their party, not only to stoke a culture war over net zero, but to keep the brakes on, making it harder for any future Labour government to act.
If the next 18 months are as bad as the last in terms of policy and implementation, any programme of climate action from 2025 will need to be more radical and almost certainly much more expensive than if the work started today.
Soon it will be, perhaps, a moment of decision for Labour if it wins the next election. It can make a start now, though, by indicating that it will act with firmness and purpose from the beginning and by showing the leadership this country so desperately needs. The party says it is proud of its world-leading climate and energy agenda, “the most ambitious of any major party in British political history”, according to a spokesperson. It says it will deliver clean power by 2030, a publicly owned energy company and a national wealth fund to invest in clean energy jobs. “Our plan will cut energy bills, create good jobs, deliver energy security, and provide climate leadership for our country, after 13 years of Tory failure,” the spokesperson said.
But right now is the moment of choice for the Tory party, and there is still time to take some decisive action. The government can, right now, choose between action that benefits everyone or a scorched earth policy that may hurt Labour in government but will hurt the planet a great deal more.
