COP29: A missed opportunity to take the heat out of global warming
Those who shout the loudest about climate change tend to have a disproportionate influence, but we’ll never solve this challenge without being realistic and practical, says Eliot Wilson
There was a time when climate change – ”global warming” was the argot when I was young – was accepted by politicians as a major challenge. Margaret Thatcher gave an historic address to the United Nations General Assembly in 1989 in which she declared the threat “has grown clearer than any other in both urgency and importance – I refer to the threat to our global environment”. That consensus has since fractured, and differences over the scale, pace and mitigations have become fiercer, to the point that the climate has been subsumed into wider ideological clashes.
Those on the extremes, shouting loudest, are having a disproportionate influence. When Rishi Sunak tried to steer a middle course on achieving net-zero emissions in 2023, it had the opposite effect: the left howled at his betrayal and the right hailed the defeat of climate alarmists. We urgently need to restore a sense of pragmatism and reality to the issue, to address the threat and maximise the opportunities of mitigation and resilience. It was opportune, then, that last week saw the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Azerbaijan.
Unfortunately, the Prime Minister, having hurried to Baku from remembrance events in London and Paris, has chosen a course of action likely to exacerbate divisions rather than minimise them. Sir Keir Starmer told the delegates that his aim was “renewing UK climate leadership” and he was therefore setting “ambitious targets” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 81 per cent by 2035 compared to 1990 levels.
Politicians are susceptible to the lure of targets as a substitute for action. To announce an eye-catching ambition is gratifying, headline-grabbing and cost-free, yet gives an impression of seriousness of purpose. That was part of the motivation behind Gordon Brown’s government passing the Climate Change Act 2008, which mandated an 80 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050. The Conservatives then raised this target to 100 per cent with the Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019.
Constitutional graffiti
This was declaratory legislation, the worst kind of constitutional graffiti: enshrining the target in statute did nothing to affect its achievability or otherwise, but allowed ministers to appear purposeful. It is the same trap into which Starmer has now fallen. Setting arbitrary targets is also a damaging act of self-delusion. The Climate Change Act showed how arbitrary these targets are: how likely is it that 80 per cent was a reasonable level of reduction to expect to achieve by the suspiciously convenient year of 2050? These are numbers picked for headlines rather than the outcome of rigorous scientific assessment.
The Prime Minister has also made a political miscalculation. When soi-disant moderates and pragmatists decide to take on extremists by doubling down, they generally succeed instead in making the situation worse and pushing the two sides further apart.
Sure enough, GB News wheeled out public relations veteran Piers Pottinger to denounce the “absurd conference, under the auspices of the UN” as a “pointless exercise”. The government’s new targets had been plucked out of thin air, “net zero by 2050 is not going to happen” and “it’s just because [Ed] Miliband is a mad zealot that we’re having to listen to this nonsense”.
Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy secretary, was more moderate but pointed to problems. She argued that the government’s policies will increase energy bills, and “all that would happen is that we would end up importing more from China, the world’s largest polluter. It makes no sense for the climate, the economy or for the British people.”
This is an area where we need to be realistic and practical. Emissions will fall as we wean ourselves of fossil fuels, as we must. Of course there must be a sense of urgency, but we should balance that against the undoubted economic opportunities in renewable energy and new technologies. There will be short-term compromises, but the overall goal remains the same.
There was an opportunity to take some of the heat out of global warming, but the Prime Minister has instead chosen virtue-advertising ambition in the hope we will be admired internationally. John Bunyan had extraordinary foresight: “the path made by the pilgrims… lay through this town of Vanity”.
Eliot Wilson is a writer