Killing
the climate change department could be Theresa May's first and
biggest mistake
It
was bad enough when David Cameron told his officials to cut the
'green crap' but his successor just sent out a massive signal she's
not remotely bothered about global warming
Ian Johnston
Environment Correspondent
It was, with the
possible exception of appointing Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary,
the starkest statement of intent made by Theresa May in her first 24
hours in Downing Street.
Amid mounting
concern that the world must do much more to prevent the worst effects
of climate change, our new Prime Minister decided to abolish the UK’s
climate change department.
In 2013, in the
teeth of an energy bill crisis, David Cameron reportedly said it was
time to “get rid of all the green crap”. That statement can be
interpreted in two ways: cut everything green because it’s all crap
or cut the green policies that are crap and keep those that work.
To be fair to the
departed Prime Minister, while support for renewable energy was
slashed under his watch – as the fossil fuel industry continued to
benefit from lavish subsidies – there was still significant funding
to help offshore windfarms and biofuels, for example. About half the
power generated by the giant Drax power station currently comes from
biofuels thanks in part to Government help.
And Cameron never
decided climate change was such a trivial issue that it did not
deserve its own Government department.
May’s priorities
could not be more clear. The clues are in the titles.
Britain now has a
Secretary for Exiting the European Union – a very sensible move if
Brexit is inevitable – a Secretary for International Trade and a
Secretary for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. You wouldn't
know it, but the latter will be responsible for dealing with climate
change.
The majority of
‘experts’ warned leaving the EU would cause serious economic
problems for the UK and, potentially, the rest of the world. Michael
Gove, sacked from the Cabinet, dismissed their warnings, but May most
certainly did not.
So, it appears,
Britain will concentrate on one thing for the next four years –
preventing the economy from disappearing down the toilet.
Fear of a Brexit
apocalypse seems to have prompted May to sacrifice the fight against
climate change in the hope of avoiding a recession that would almost
certainly see her removed from office – by her own side, if not
Labour.
But, make no
mistake, this could be a historic blunder of global proportions.
The UK and Germany
drove much of the European Union’s world-leading environmental
policies. Only last month, the then Energy and Climate Change
Secretary Amber Rudd announced the UK would reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by 57 per cent by 2030.
It was target widely
praised by environmentalists with Hugh McNeal of industry body
RenewableUK hailing the “clear signal” that the UK would “show
bold leadership on carbon reduction”.
Rudd is regarded as
a genuine ‘green blue’, a Conservative who understood the
pressing need to deal with climate change – even if it meant making
an announcement that sounded better than it actually was ahead of the
Paris climate summit.
The new Home
Secretary was “a driving force” behind international deal agreed
at Paris last December, according to Professor Corinne Le Quéré,
director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the
University of East Anglia.
Asked about the
prospect of occasional climate sceptic Boris Johnson becoming Prime
Minister before May’s coronation, Rudd stressed she would be “very,
very clear” and “very vocal” in holding Britain’s next leader
to account on the issue.
But as she
struggles, and likely fails, to deliver May’s ambitions to reduce
immigration to tens of thousands, she may find that commitment
slipping down her agenda.
Now at international
meetings, world leaders expecting to meet the UK climate change
secretary will instead be introduced to the Business Secretary.
There are worse
people than Greg Clark who could have been in this role. The UK’s
new Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom, on becoming Energy
Secretary last year, decided to make her first question to officials
“Is climate change real?” She claimed she had since been
convinced but it shows an alarming lack of knowledge and interest in
the world’s most pressing issue.
Clark was hailed as
an “excellent appointment”, someone who “understands climate
change” and the “the benefits of Britain developing a low-carbon
economy” by Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate
Intelligence Unit.
But in a Cabinet
packed with people with dubious voting records on climate change and
funding links to sceptics, Clark may find projects that do not
immediately turn a profit get short-shrift.
And he may come
under pressure from companies with the mindset of Volkswagen -- which
"cynically" deceived the authorities to enable their cars
to pump out exhaust fumes at levels harmful to human health – to
push for the cutting of ‘red tape’ and ‘Brussels-style
bureaucracy’ that hit their profits in the Brave New World of
Brexit Britain.
That this red tape
helped reduce the number of premature deaths caused by the air
pollution may be overlooked, as it was during the referendum
campaign.
The UK’s focus on
the need to survive Brexit may be sensible. But the risk is we become
dangerously short-sighted.
Stripped of a leader
on climate issues, the world’s efforts to prevent global warming –
already half-hearted at best – may falter. The talk at Paris was
limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, but the
actual pledges could see temperatures rise by more than 3 degrees –
perilously close to a scenario so extreme and unpredictable that few
experts attempt to predict what the world would be like. If those
pledges turn to nothing, our children may find out.
Another possibility
is that Britain will be left behind as the world moves to a different
kind of economy, one turbocharged by the virtually free power that
mass renewable energy is already starting to deliver. In Germany,
customers have even been paid to consume electricity.
The UK would then be
forced to belatedly catch up by buying technology from other
countries – many of our windturbines already come from Denmark.
A future Britain
could be a bleak place: lashed by devastating Atlantic storms,
sweltering in heatwaves that kill the young and the old in
ever-increasing numbers, a countryside left scarred by disused
fracking wells as fossil fuel companies go bankrupt.
But I don’t think
this will happen. I actually think we – the UK and the world –
are too sensible for that. We will wake up just in time. We will.
I just hope those
experts are wrong and that Brexit won’t be so bad the British
government decides to think of nothing else.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário