In a cunning trick, Theresa May has locked her Tory successor into doing something about climate change.
The outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May is scrambling to build a legacy after three years of Brexit chaos. It is no surprise – her domestic agenda has up to now fallen flat, and five of her keystone pieces of legislation have ground to a halt in the House of Commons.
At the very least, she can claim to have played her part in attempting to avoid climate disaster, by today announcing that she will put into law a new target for the UK to be zero-carbon by 2050.
The Prime Minister’s pledge to “leave the environment in a better state than we inherited it” has, up to now, fallen completely flat.
Although the government has published endless “strategies” and “plans” making lots of bold, broad brush policy commitments, not a single piece of legislation has put any of it into force.
The Government’s Draft Environmental Bill got chopped in half after Tory MPs complained about the protections for animal sentience that it contained.
The Agriculture Bill and the Fisheries Bill, which were both intended to give effect to the major Brexit promises that leaving the EU will allow us to replace the Common Agricultural Policy with an environmentally focused scheme, have quietly disappeared and show no sign of returning. The government has been held hostage by the extremists in their own Tory Party.
This track record of failing to deliver on the legislation needed to turn big environmental promises into any real action explains why the Prime Minister has chosen the Net-Zero target as her legacy.
Unlike the other measures, which require an Act of Parliament to pass through her unruly House of Commons and the sticklers for detail in the House of Lords, the Prime Minister can change the UK’s carbon targets using a statutory instrument.
Statutory instruments are subject to very little parliamentary scrutiny: they aren’t routinely debated and, although Parliament can vote them down, this is a once in a generation event.
We are left in a rather ironic position. A lame duck Prime Minister circumventing her rebellious Tory MPs using secondary legislation to implement one of the most important policy decision in UK history.
Net zero by 2050 is too little, too late; and dumps the real work of implementation on her successor’s head – but it’s a huge step forward which would have been politically unimaginable if she didn’t seize the moment in the way she has.
I’m not sure whether history will remember Theresa May for it, but at least she has set a baseline target from which Greens and future governments can continue to improve on as we work towards a sustainable future for humanity and our one Planet Earth.
In contrast to the ongoing Brexit chaos, the Prime Minister has set our country on a clear path to a better future.
Jenny Jones is a Green Party peer in the House of Lords.
See also: Extinction Rebellion brand Theresa May’s new zero-carbon target a ‘death sentence’
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10 Responses to “Green peer: Theresa May deserves credit for sticking it to the climate change deniers”
Tom Sacold
This an attack on the traditional British working-class, their values and their jobs.
wg
Questions, questions…
How do we stop this Earth’s elliptical orbit around the Sun?
How do we stop it wobbling and tilting like a child’s top?
How do we stop the Sun’s activity increasing and decreasing?
How do we stop the Sun, and the Earth, flipping magnetic poles?
How do we stop this solar system – held together by a mysterious gravitational force – swinging about on the wing of a galaxy?
How do we stop the Earth’s mantle from moving about; or volcanic activity?
How much CO2 is desirable: at what level of CO2 will our natural eco-systems cease to survive – and how do we ‘regulate’ a chaotic system to achieve that level?
What temperature is ideal; and in what parts of the planet – do we turn down the heat for Africa, and allow it to get warmer in Northern Europe?
Like Grandad Jeremy, I have a plot on an allotment – if I were to be in a market gardening scenario, I would be pumping CO2 into my greenhouses; are my carrots and beans being starved of CO2 outside that scenario?
I am not a scientist (I’m a bloody carpenter, for God’s sake) but I can ask these questions.
My only point of reference is this: If the people, who are telling me of this impending disaster, own several beach-front homes, and drive cars and fly on planes on a regular basis, why should I give a toss when they come up with a stupidly unscientific description of me as a ‘climate denier’?
It’s all hypocrisy and fraud on stilts.
Dave J.
My main point of reference when it comes to welcoming or criticising environmental policy is that most of those with a scientific mentality and perhaps a science based job have read enough on the subject to agree that we’re on the edge of assorted potential positive feedback loops that are markedly reminiscent of Venus. My other point of reference is the way most climate change deniers are either rich enough to think they can ‘afford’ to ride out the results or so far removed from scientific thinking that they can convince themselves that there’s nothing but fakery behind all the research analysis and warnings.
wg
@Dave J – you’ve just prompted another question – although, I’m sure that this question is related to points one and two of my comment.
The Earth has experienced several ice ages – how did it warm out of those without a human presence?
Milutin Milanković would have had something to say, I would suggest.
“Happy the eyes that can close”.
Dave J.
There have been temperature cycles and co2 variations in the past, some of which have surpassed the current predictions, however it has never ever happened as fast as it is happening today – by orders of magnitude – this means that a) we stand a chance of pushing it further than it has gone before eventually although by the time it threatens that there will be so much damage done that only assorted tech miracles will be keeping our species alive. It also b) means that there is no hope at all of species’ adaptation, mobility or evolution mitigating the damage and therefore the extinction wipeout will be way way worse than has happened in the past. Hint: The past wipeouts were seriously horrific, imagine what that’s like with a couple of noughts on the end of the speed.