Every day, we get closer to losing our grip on the climate change issue. Every day, it moves steadily from a matter of cross-party consensus to one of culture war.
We see the effects of it all around us. Europe burns. But at home, we’re lost in a parochial, short-termist, idiot debate about ideology and electoral tactics.
Greenpeace activists scaled Rishi Sunak’s house yesterday and draped it in black fabric. It was another photo stunt action, of the type which Just Stop Oil has deployed against sporting events over the summer. The Daily Express plastered the images over its front page, with the words: “Heads Must Roll!” Inside, they branded the activists “eco-zealots”. An anonymous Tory MP told the newspaper they should “shoot them”. Another proposed that environmental protesters be “locked up for 20 years”.
These are the voices Sunak is currently trying to placate. He’s found a new lease of life since the Uxbridge by-election saw him retain a seat apparently on the basis of a local campaign against London’s ultra-low emission zone. Challenging climate change policy now appears to be the key element of his political activities.
Ostensibly, he is still committed to the ban on selling new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 and the 2035 carbon-free electricity target. But underneath those commitments, he is doing everything possible to put himself on the side of those who resent the net zero agenda. “I am on motorists’ side” he told The Daily Telegraph. He pledged a review into low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs). He considered limiting councils’ power to impose 20 miles-per-hour zones. He promised to “max out” North Sea gas and oil reserves. And all of this done not with regret, but with gleeful tribal abandon – the enthusiastic creation of dividing lines with Labour.
It’s been music to the ears of the party faithful. This week’s ConservativeHome survey of members revealed an organisation which has come completely unmoored from any kind of moral or empirical reality about climate change or the policies required to address it. Sixty-six per cent are opposed to LTNs. Eighty-three per cent oppose the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles. Only 48.6 per cent of members believe in the scientific fact that climate change is happening and is the result of human activity. Only 27 per cent accept there is a climate emergency.
Now that Sunak has started to show his climate change scepticism, members are demonstrating more support for him. He went from eighth from bottom in the ConHome’s Cabinet league table last month to placing solidly mid-table in 14th place this month.
It’s like watching history repeat itself. As political scientist Tim Bale pointed out, we already watched this same process take place when the Conservatives first came to power. David Cameron defined himself in opposition as a modern eco-Conservative. But once in power, everything changed.
Between 2010 and 2015 he did not make a single keynote speech on climate change. Indeed, his only memorable comment on the subject was that they had to “get rid of all the green crap”.
The disgraced former MP Owen Paterson was made secretary of state for the environment, despite being a climate sceptic. Fellow sceptic John Hayes was made energy minister. Subsidies for renewables were cut, a zero-carbon homes policy was mothballed, planning rules for onshore wind were tightened, the Sustainable Development Commission was closed, plans for a Green Investment Bank were watered down, major road building programmes were announced and fracking was enthusiastically supported.
Why does this keep happening? Why are Conservative commitments to the environment so flimsy?
The answer is ultimately ideological. Climate change is an example of market failure. It requires state intervention. If we allow the market to operate without intrusion, it will keep churning out the same planet-destroying products which we have experienced until now: oil, petrol cars, dirty energy. Doing so will have a profound negative effect on everyone. So instead we need government to get involved – to ban certain activities and products and subsidise the introduction of others.
That is the reality of the situation. It cannot be avoided and it cannot be denied. But the Conservative disposition has never been comfortable with these ideas. It is based on the idea that governments should, generally speaking, do as little as possible and that markets should, generally speaking, do as much as possible.
Once upon a time, Conservatives were better than this. Even Margaret Thatcher, whose free market credentials are not in doubt, was able to see the extent of the threat the climate emergency posed. Humanity, she said in 1988, has “unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself”. She subsequently opened the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research at the Met Office, Britain’s leading centre for the study of scientific issues associated with climate change.
Modern Conservatism does not seem to have this degree of pragmatism. The party membership has become radicalised in a way that is systematically under-discussed in political debate. It is parroting views which have no rational or evidential underpinning, denying peer-reviewed science and standing against the actions in the face of it.
The leadership is too cynical, short-termist and self-interested to stand up to this tide, and instead aims to eke out some meagre electoral gains by placating it. Slowly but surely, climate change is moving from a consensus issue to another weapon in the culture war.
It’s an obscene act of irresponsibility. It will not save Sunak. But it will damn him in the history books once he’s flung from power.