Following the Labour party’s historic win in the UK general election, Carbon Brief put together a panel of climate and energy experts to discuss the key climate-related priorities for the new government.
More than 900 people joined the webinar to hear about the huge list of issues facing Keir Starmer’s government, including everything from Labour’s plans to reach zero-carbon power by 2030, to its climate-related industrial strategy and adaptation.
Carbon Brief’s deputy editor and senior policy editor Dr Simon Evans, as well as section editor for policy Molly Lempriere, were joined by three panellists:
- Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive, Energy UK
- Camilla Born MBE, independent climate advisor and former UK senior official at COP26
- Adam Bell, director of policy at Stonehaven
A recording of the webinar (below) is now available to watch on YouTube.
The conversation quickly turned to the rise of populism and its impact on climate action. Bell said that voters have resorted to populism because they have felt ignored by successive governments, and that tackle this rise needs a push to improve people’s lives.
Climate action can form a key part of this, he said, in particular the decarbonisation of energy, but there are other areas of climate action that can play a part. Bell explained:
“[O]ld seaside towns [feel they] have been ignored by government after government for decades upon decades. How you support those towns is, I think, going to be key, and that is through funding for adaptation, because some of those towns will be threatened by sea level rises.”
He added:
“You will need to find ways of encouraging culture to flourish in those towns as well…Margate is now a hub for hipsters, for example. How do you replicate that across Hastings, across Clacton and change the features of these towns so that they can feel as though the government is on their side and therefore the climate policy is on their side too.”
Born noted that the percentage of people who voted for a populist party in the UK in the recent election was roughly the same as voted for UKIP in 2015 and Brexit in 2016. While this vote share had not increased, it did suggest that the underlying problems have not been tackled, she said.
Beyond populism in the UK, Bell argued that one of the most important things the country could do over the coming years internationally is demonstrate the “politics of pace, demonstrating what is possible, [and] retaining public support for very, very rapid change”.
The Labour party’s 2030 net-zero electricity target will be core to this, he said, as “delivering that would mean that we have done what no nation has ever done, fully decarbonised our power system within five years now”.
Pinchbeck agreed, noting that the decisive factor in terms of global climate goals was around how fast emissions fall, driven by the rollout of renewable energy. She added:
“I think we need to see a massive roll out of infrastructure of the kind that we haven’t seen for the past decades – decades plural – [we’re] talking about sort of seven times the amount of infrastructure over the next 10 years that we built over the previous three, largely in the power sector.”
Born highlighted that the last time there was a Labour government in the UK, the Paris Agreement had not been made, marking how significantly things have changed over the period. She added:
“[The new government has to] really show what we’re doing at home, [because] the UK massively punches above its weight on what we’re doing on the transition internationally, people watch what we’re doing, and that is in both policy terms, but also in political terms.”
The panellists agreed that the 2030 net-zero electricity target is challenging, but doable, with Pinchbeck noting that it is not that much more ambitious than the previous government’s 2035 target. Bell added that efforts towards achieving the goal were likely to trigger “pylon wars”, given the need for infrastructure build out.
Nearly 200 questions were submitted during the webinar, ranging from food security to distrust in politics, making the conversation wide ranging across the hour.
Concluding the session, Born said “the shakeup is a really good opportunity” for the UK.
Pinchbeck highlighted that the UK is ahead of the curve in terms of power decarbonisation and this presented a raft of potential benefits that the new government should continue to pursue. She said:
“If you go early, you get the industrial benefits, the jobs, the growth and the industries in the country, and that’s the reason – apart from the altruism – that we should go faster. There’s loads of reasons the UK could still massively benefit from [decarbonising], even if we’re small and windy and rainy, cynical and tired, there’s still massive amounts of hope for us here. So don’t [let] anyone tell you otherwise.”
The post Webinar: What are the key climate priorities for the new UK government? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Webinar: What are the key climate priorities for the new UK government?
I fell flat on my backside one afternoon this January and, weirdly, it made me think of you. Okay, I know that takes a bit of unpacking—so let me go back and start at the beginning.
For the last six years, our family has joined with half a dozen others to spend a week or so up at Wangat Lodge, located on a 50-acre subtropical rainforest property around three hours north of Sydney. The accommodation is pretty basic, with no wifi coverage—so time in Wangat really revolves around the bush. You live by the rhythm of the sun and the rain, with the days punctuated by swimming in the river and walking through the forest.
An intrinsic part of Wangat is Dan, the owner and custodian of the place, and the guide on our walks. He talks about time, place, and care with great enthusiasm, but always tenderly and never with sanctimony. “There is no such thing as ‘the same walk’”, is one of Dan’s refrains, because the way he sees it “every day, there is change in the world around you” of plants, animals, water and weather. Dan speaks of Wangat with such evident love, but not covetousness; it is a lightness which includes gentle consciousness that his own obligations arise only because of the historic dispossession of others. He inspires because of how he is.
One of the highlights this year was a river walk with Dan, during which we paddled or waded through most of the route, with only occasional scrambles up the bank. Sometimes the only sensible option is to swim. Among the life around us, we notice large numbers of tadpoles in the water, which is clean enough to drink. Our own tadpoles, the kids in the group, delight in the expedition. I overhear one of the youngest children declaring that she’s having ‘one of the best days ever’. Dan looks content. Part of his mission is to reintroduce children to nature, so that the soles of their feet may learn from the uneven ground, and their muscles from the cool of the water.
These moments are for thankfulness in the life that lives.
It is at the very end of the walk when I overbalance and fall on my arse—and am reminded of the eternal truth that rocks are hard. As I gingerly get up, my youngest daughter looks at me, caught between amusement and concern, and asks me if I’m okay.
I have to think before answering, because yes, physically I’m fine. But I feel too, an underlying sense of discomfort; it is that omnipresent pressure of existential awareness about the scale of suffering and ecological damage now at large in the world, made so much more immediately acute after Bondi; the dissonance that such horrors can somehow exist simultaneously with this small group being alive and happy in this place, on this earth-kissed afternoon.
How is it okay, to be “okay”? What is it to live with conscience in Wangat? Those of us who still have access to time, space, safety and high levels of volition on this planet carry this duality all the time, as our gift and obligation. It is not an easy thing to make sense of; but for me, it speaks to the question of ‘why Greenpeace’? Because the moral and strategic mission-focus of campaigning provides a principled basis for how each of us can bridge that interminable gulf.
The essence of campaigning is to make the world’s state of crisis legible and actionable, by isolating systemic threats to which we can rise and respond credibly, with resources allocated to activity in accordance with strategy. To be part of Greenpeace, whether as an activist, volunteer supporter or staff member, is to find a home for your worries for the world in confidence and faith that together we have the power to do something about it. Together we meet the confusion of the moment with the light of shared purpose and the confidence of direction.
So, it was as I was getting back up again from my tumble and considering my daughter’s question that I thought of you—with gratitude, and with love–-because we cross this bridge all the time, together, everyday; to face the present and the future.
‘Yes, my love’, I say to my daughter, smiling as I get to my feet, “I’m okay”. And I close my eyes and think of a world in which the fires are out, and everywhere, all tadpoles have the conditions of flourishing to be able to grow peacefully into frogs.
Thank you for being a part of Greenpeace.
With love,
David
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