Cameron must make a climate U-turn immediately if he isn’t to betray Paris
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Version 0 of 1. The prime minister is right. He concluded his speech at the start of the Paris climate change summit by saying: “Instead of making excuses tomorrow to our children and grandchildren, we should be taking action against climate change today.” Friends of the Earth could not agree more. So why is it that almost everything Cameron’s government has done on climate and energy since being elected in May has moved us in the wrong direction, towards pitiful excuse-making when we come to look our children in the eye, let alone our grandchildren? Related: Climate deal: the pistol has fired, so why aren’t we running? | Bill McKibben The Paris agreement falls far short of the soaring rhetoric from world leaders less than two weeks ago. An ambition to keep global temperature rises below 1.5C is a positive step forwards, but there is no real plan to make this a reality. As it stands, the agreement leaves millions of people across the world under threat from climate-related floods, droughts and super-storms. If you judge Paris by what’s required by science, or justice, it’s hard not to find it wanting. But this is still a historic moment. For 195 countries to agree on anything is remarkable. For them to agree to profoundly transform their economies in just a few decades is astonishing. This summit clearly shows that fossil fuels have had their day and that the future is clean energy. If you judge Paris by politics, it looks a lot better because in Paris the politics changed. Enough has now been done by enough people in enough places to demonstrate that a climate safe and climate just world is possible. And the staggering fall in the cost of renewables provided much-needed confidence to many negotiating teams, whether from fossil fuel-dependent rich nations, or poorer countries in which local pollution is becoming politically unsustainable. What matters now is not so much the detail of the text but the spirit of determination with which we carry this momentum forward. And make no mistake, all eyes will be on the UK in the days, weeks and years ahead. Britain gave birth to the fossil fuel era; we are a nation of inventors; we have a finance sector that knows how to make things affordable; and we have some of the best renewable resources in the world. We were also the first country in the world to introduce legislation to tackle climate change, something that has since been copied in 99 countries and, surely, will now be copied in many more. That’s why it is so tragic that the UK has lost much of its reputation for climate leadership over the past seven months, as George Osborne has ordered the dismantling of climate and energy policies developed over many years and with cross-party consensus. Everyone knows Osborne’s behind the moves to take us back to the fossil-fuelled 1970s; but Cameron is the apologist In the run-up to Paris, newspapers around the world ran stories asking why the UK seems to be moving backwards on climate change. And just a few days ago at the Paris talks, a negotiator from another EU member state said to me: “We cannot believe what’s happening in Britain. We now see David Cameron as greenwasher- in-chief.” Everyone knows Osborne’s behind the moves to take us back to the fossil-fuelled 1970s, but it’s David Cameron who’s the apologist. So what must Cameron do? First, he must write to the European commission president and all his EU counterparts and ask them to make good on their promises of moving to a higher level of European emission cuts if an agreement was reached. It has been. Move it on up, prime minister. Second, he must write to the committee on climate change – his government’s advisers on climate action – and ask them to design all future budgets around the 1.5C target. Failure to do so would be a travesty of the spirit of Paris. Related: Grand promises of Paris climate deal undermined by squalid retrenchments Third, the terrible damage that his government has done to the climate economy in the UK must be repaired. As soon as this week, his energy and climate change secretary is going to decide the future of UK solar power. Current government plans would see the industry brought to its knees. They must think again. Beyond that, George Osborne must end his ideological love affair with fracking; scaling up of shale gas in the mid-2020s is completely incompatible with Paris. And as for new runways; forget it. No ifs, no buts, as someone once said. It is not too late. But starting with its decision on support for solar power, nothing less than a 180-degree turnaround is needed to get the UK’s approach to tackling climate change back on track. Putting the grand rhetoric of the past two weeks into practice – and looking our children in the eye – starts now. From now on every decision has to be the right one. |