UK politicians cannot be trusted to protect our planet

Keir Starmer announced his decision to cut Labour’s pledge to spend £28 billion a year on green investment to just under £15 billion a year on the 8^th of February.

Unfortunately, by wanting to prove that Labour can be fiscally responsible, the decision only really proved that the party cannot be relied upon to be environmentally responsible and that other issues will always be of more importance to them than our planet. Even more unfortunate, however, is the fact that this news is hardly a surprise following on from similar decisions made by other senior politicians in Westminster recently. Labour’s green investment cuts have followed on from Sunak’s September review over environment policies, for example, in which he delayed the ban on new petrol and diesel cars by five years and delayed the phasing out of gas boilers. Downing Street has also hinted in the past few weeks that it has plans to drop the fines for boiler makers failing to meet their heat pump targets – another policy reversal that will have a damaging impact on the government’s ability to reach net zero by 2050, as promised by Theresa May in 2019. 

This string of policy changes from the two major parties in the past few months are clear indications that the environment is not a priority for many of our politicians, and that they cannot be relied upon to protect it. This is especially concerning when coupled with the recent revelation that for the first time global warming has surpassed 1.5°C (the temperature acknowledged by world leaders in 2015 as being crucial to avoid) over an entire year. It should be abundantly clear to those in Westminster that this is not the time to be cutting pledges on green investment, especially when the Climate Change Committee already warned last year that the UK’s efforts to meet their net zero commitment were “worryingly slow”. There is still hope however, as scientists have said that if urgent action is taken to heavily reduce carbon emissions then global warming can still be slowed, but the Labour and Conservative parties seem to be more concerned with the short-term effects of their policies on the number of votes they win instead of the long-term effects of their policies for our Earth. 

It is not just about the amount of money spent on green investment, or the amount of U-turns on green policies either, but “the signal it sends” as Emma Pinchbeck, the Chief Executive of Energy UK, stated. The signal that our government and shadow government are sending through their recent policy decisions is that they are growing increasingly indifferent about the issue of climate change and believe that it is not something that needs to be urgently solved. This message increases the risk of further moves away from net zero being made in the future, and discourages the British people from trying to do what they can to stop climate change. Of course there are many immediate issues nationally and internationally that need to be contended with, and fiscal responsibility is obviously extremely important, but protecting the planet that we live on is a matter of urgency and no longer an issue that can be pushed aside for future generations as many politicians are trying to do. The time to start taking action was decades ago. It is now time for politicians to recognise their mistakes in delaying climate action, realise that this is not a hypothetical issue that can be ignored, and to do everything in their power to make change. 

The Earth is the only home that we have and deserves to be treated as such. It is also the home of millions of beautiful creatures whose habitats we are destroying and lives we are ending. The people of this country cannot help to protect the planet by ourselves; we need our leaders to actually do the right thing and step up to this mammoth task.

It may be daunting to battle an issue for which there is no precedent, but all we are asking for is that they at least try to take action instead of sitting on the sidelines and cowardly reversing any decisions that get made. Something needs to change before the only thing we can do is sit and watch our planet as it burns.