The UK has withdrawn from an international treaty that lets fossil-fuel companies sue governments pursuing climate policies for billions in compensation for lost profits.
The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) is meant to make it easier and cheaper to trade energy between countries.
But signatories have struggled to reform it – and late on Wednesday, the UK quit the treaty calling it “outdated”.
Green campaigners welcomed the news.
Energy Security and Net Zero Minister Graham Stuart said: “Remaining a member would not support our transition to cleaner, cheaper energy and could even penalise us for our world-leading efforts to deliver net zero.”
‘Cost of living support may be receding but the tide of people not being able to afford life’s essentials is not. It is time we moved from stop-gaps to sustainable solutions.’
February 22, 2024, marked the last of the cost of living payments being sent out. The cash top-ups had been awarded to people receiving means-tested benefits, disability benefits, and pension credits, at regular intervals over the course of the cost of living crisis. They have been a lifeline for around eight million low-income families.
But with rising living costs driving disadvantaged households further into poverty, with prices still rising despite inflation easing, and food and energy remaining at extortionate levels, charities and experts have warned that the payments are not enough. They have expressed fears about what may happen if the government does not announce additional payments.
The final cost of living payment has renewed calls for the introduction of a system that is there whenever anyone falls on hard times, rather than being just a ‘stop gap’ solution.
Ahead of the Spring Budget on March 6, anti-poverty charities and campaigners are calling on the Chancellor for bolder action to tackle poverty during the cost of living crisis.
A long article discussing the Rochdale by-election that has only one candidate – Mark Coleman – promoting green policies and many opposed.
[12.50 correction.] A long article discussing the Rochdale by-election. Independent Mark Coleman and Lib-Dem Iain Donaldson are the only candidates promoting green policies with many opposed. Monster Raving Loony Party appears absent prom this list of candidates.
Fomer Labour MPs Simon Danczuk and George Galloway are standing in the Rochdale by-election on February 29. Credit: PA images / Alamy stock photos
From attacks on “eco-madness” and accusations of a “Net Zero Hoax”, here’s our climate guide to the MPs contesting Labour’s seat.
Amid February’s record-breaking temperatures, climate is emerging as a battleground – and faultline – between the UK’s two biggest political parties in the run up to the next general election.
In the past weeks, the Labour Party has dramatically scaled back its £28 billion green investment plans, while the Conservative government has committed to annual licensing rounds in the North Sea in a new oil and gas bill.
This legislation saw former green Conservative Chris Skidmore MP resign in protest in January, triggering last week’s by-election in Kingswood, which Labour won.
Wrangling between the Tories and Labour has also opened the door for fringe political activists. Parties such as Reform UK have exploited mixed messaging over climate policy, which the UN authority on climate science, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says is essential to secure “to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”.
Next Thursday (February 29), voters in the Greater Manchester seat of Rochdale will go to the polls in a by-election triggered by the death of Labour MP Tony Lloyd.
The campaign has been overshadowed by the sacking of the frontrunner candidate, Azhar Ali, who was dropped by Labour over his controversial comments about the October 7 Hamas attacks. It is too late for Labour to field another candidate, and Ali will now run as an independent.
Green Party candidate Guy Otten was also dropped over past statements on Islam and Palestinians. Otten will appear on the ballot paper, but has abstained from campaigning.
The rows have given more airtime to several fringe parties fielding candidates strongly opposed to climate action.
Simon Danczuk, who is standing for Reform UK, and George Galloway, the candidate for the Workers Party of Britain, have both repeatedly attacked the UK’s legally binding net zero targets, while Galloway has spread climate misinformation and backed new fossil fuel extraction.
Read on to find out all you need to know on where the candidates stand on net zero and climate policy.
Simon Danczuk – Reform UK
This month Danczuk announced he had joined Reform UK. Danczuk was the MP for Rochdale between 2010 and 2017. He is seeking a return to the constituency following his expulsion from the Labour Party in 2015 after sending sexually explicit messages to a 17-year-old (he served as an independent until 2017).
As an MP, Danczuk voted for measures to prevent climate change, and in 2015 shared an article on Twitter criticising climate denial in the Daily Mail. However, Danczuk’s views appear to have changed.
Last June he wrote an article attacking the “eco-madness” of Labour’s (now scaled back) green investment plans and its pledge not to approve new oil and gas projects. He wrote that Labour “see implementing a green ideology as more important than jobs, security and sustaining the economy”.
The article was published in Spiked, an online “libertarian” outlet which has a record of climate science denial and fossil fuel-linked funding. Between 2015 and 2018, Spiked received $300,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation, an arm of oil giant Koch Industries and a major funder of climate denial.
Danczuk repeated the “green ideology” argument in an interview with the fringe right-wing outlet Epoch Times, stating: “The idea of banning gas and oil exploration in the North Sea, before we’ve got alternatives in place, is just absolute madness.”
In September 2023, Danczuk publicly voiced support for the Conservative government’s net zero U-turns, telling TalkTV that voters “are very despondent about these targets” and that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had “called it right”. TalkTV has its own record of spreading climate denial, and until last year employed Reform leader Richard Tice as a presenter.
Reform is campaigning to “scrap all of net zero” and received £135,000 in donations from climate deniers and fossil fuel interests in 2023. Tice has said “CO2 isn’t poison, it’s plant food”, while the party’s London mayoral candidate Howard Cox has said “man is not responsible for global warming”.
George Galloway – Workers Party of Britain
Another ex-Labour Party MP, George Galloway, is standing for the Workers Party of Britain, a party he founded after the 2019 general election. Galloway was expelled from Labour in 2003 for “bringing the party into disrepute” after a party tribunal found he had “incited Arabs to fight British troops” and “incited British troops to defy orders”. He has since been elected to parliament twice – in 2005 for his Respect party and 2012 as an independent – each time serving one term.
The Workers Party of Britain, calls itself a socialist party that “defend[s] the achievements of the USSR, China, Cuba etc”.
The party is hostile to climate policies. Its website calls for “a much clearer debate on Net Zero” and argues that “a halt must also be made to the attempt to make working people pay for subsidies for large-scale green industrialisation”.
Last July the party called for a Brexit-style referendum on net zero, a policy originally pushed by the right-wing Reform UK and led by its honorary president Nigel Farage. (Galloway and Farage have worked together in the past as part of the Aaron Banks-funded ‘Grassroots Out’ campaign for Brexit.)
Galloway has attacked net zero targets, advocated for clean coal extraction and spread misinformation about climate change.
In December, Galloway called for a net zero referendum in a post on the social media platform X. On his YouTube talk show in August 2022, Galloway spread the false claim that people would be forced to “eat insects” to tackle climate change, adding, “I think this net zero is one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics.” He then took a swipe at climate activist Greta Thunberg, a regular target for climate deniers, calling net zero “a 14-year old schoolgirl leading grown men and women up the garden path.”
The following month, he again dismissed climate warnings from activists like Thunberg, arguing that the main climate risk came from NATO and the “military industrial complex”. He said: “We are facing climate catastrophe; not man made the likes of Greta Thunberg talks about, but through our own governments.”
Galloway has also called for more fossil fuel extraction. In an X post in March 2022, a month after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Galloway wrote: “Britain needs to ice its [Net] Zero fantasy, step up its oil exploitation [and] invest in peaceful nuclear energy and seek to re-harvest the 1,000 years of coal under our feet employing clean-coal technology. Our Energy policy is hopelessly unbalanced.”
From 2008 to 2013, Galloway worked as a presenter for Press TV, the English-language channel run by the Iranian government. From 2013 to 2015 Galloway was paid £100,000 to present a show on RT (Russia Today), Russia’s equivalent. Both countries are major oil and gas producers. The channels have since had their broadcasting licences revoked by Ofcom for breaking its rules (Galloway’s broadcasts were not referenced in the ruling).
Paul Ellison – Conservative Party
Little is known about the climate views of Conservative candidate Paul Ellison, who has been dubbed “Mr Rochdale” in the local press.
According to a favourable profile in Rochdale Online, Ellison has been active in the local community protecting green spaces, and is credited with winning Rochdale recognition by the Royal Horticultural Society In Bloom awards.
He does not appear to have commented publicly about climate change.
Azhar Ali – Independent (formerly Labour Party)
Newly independent candidate Azhar Ali criticised the government’s U-turns on net zero in September, accusing the Prime Minister of “playing to the climate change deniers in his own party”.
He doesn’t appear to have commented publicly about Labour’s weakening of its own net zero plans. Earlier this month, the party dropped its pledge to invest £28 billion per year in green measures, cutting its spending plans by 75 percent to £23.7 billion in total. Labour says it will still keep to its target to decarbonise the UK’s power grid by 2030.
The party opposes new North Sea exploration, but supports unproven carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology on existing rigs. Earlier this month, Labour leader Keir Starmer said current pipelines would “continue for decades”.
In October 2016, Ali attacked plans to introduce fracking for shale gas in Lancashire, saying on Twitter (now X): “Conservative government gives green light to the ‘rape’ of our environment.”
Iain Donaldson – Liberal Democrats
Lib Dem candidate Iain Donaldson has said he wants to hold the government to account on “water companies polluting the rivers with filthy sewage”, among other issues. In a 2017 tweet he criticised the then U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.
Donaldson was one of eleven of the party’s 15 MPs who voted against the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill this week, while four abstained. The Liberal Democrats propose moving the net zero target forward five years to 2045 and support large investments in renewable energy.
A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said Donaldson had opposed the oil and gas bill, which “fails to take vital steps to grow the UK renewable energy sector and reduce energy bills, and fails to form a coherent path to net zero”.
“Iain wants to see the de facto moratorium on onshore wind farms lifted,” they added, “and allow the expansion of the cheapest form of energy to drive down bills in this cost of living crisis, and reduce our emissions helping to slow climate change.”
Mark Coleman – Independent
After dropping its own candidate, the Green Party has urged its members to back Reverend Mark Coleman, who has put climate at the forefront of his campaign.
Twice arrested for climate protest, Coleman was sentenced in April 2023 to five and half weeks in prison for blocking the M25 and other roads with campaign group Insulate Britain.
Just Stop Oil has also asked its supporters to back Coleman. In a statement, the climate protest group said he is “the only candidate in the Rochdale by-election worth voting for”.
In a campaign blurb for local news outlet Rochdale Online, Coleman calls for “radical action on climate right now to stand any chance of a safe and stable future”.
All candidates named in this article were contacted for comment.
The Melitaea trivia butterfly, one of many endangered species in the EU. The nature restoration law offers a lifeline for natural habitats in the bloc where one in three bees, butterflies and hoverflies are disappearing.
At the eleventh hour, right-wing politicians have launched a bid to block the passing of the EU’s flagship nature protection law, which scientists have described as a “cornerstone of food security and human health”.
The pro-nature plan, which could see as much as 90 percent of damaged ecosystems repaired across the bloc, is due for final sign off in Parliament on Tuesday (27 February).
Usually a formality, the vote follows six months of intense – and at times bitter – negotiation of the law between the European Commission, Parliament and EU member states that saw an agreement reached in November last year.
But on Wednesday the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) party filed amendments calling for Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to reject outright the so-called Nature Restoration Law – an extremely rare move so late in the decision-making process.
Scientists have condemned the call, as well as six other amendments that could see the law delayed or weakened. They say the proposed policy offers a lifeline for natural habitats in the bloc where one in three bees, butterflies and hoverflies are disappearing.
“In Europe we are in a critical biodiversity situation, which climate change is accelerating,” Daniel Hering, professor of aquatic ecology at the University of Duisburg-Essen, told DeSmog. “Without such an ambitious legislation, it will not be possible to bend the curve of declining biodiversity.”
A number of proposed green laws have been rolled back or delayed over the last 12 months, as opposition mounts to the EU’s Green Deal – a flagship plan to reach net zero by 2030.
The eurosceptic ECR party has justified its last-minute attempt to block the law citing “great social unrest”, in apparent reference to farmer protests that have spread across the continent in recent weeks, with tractors blocking roads and motorways in the majority of EU countries.
But scientists told DeSmog that derailing the law could come at significant cost to farmers, who are facing increasingly uncertain conditions due to climate breakdown and biodiversity loss.
The former EU climate chief Frans Timmerman has stated that “already half of crops in the EU that depend on pollination face a deficit.”
If any of the ECR’s amendments – such as deleting a target to restore 30 percent of Europe’s damaged ecosystems by 2030 – are accepted, a final decision on the law would be delayed until after the EU elections in June when right-wing parties are expected to make major gains.
It is so far unclear whether the proposals will succeed in gaining a majority in the vote next week. But the choice made by the centre-right European Peoples’ Party (EPP) – the largest in the EU parliament – will be a deciding factor.
The EPP’s Christine Schnieder, chief negotiator on the nature law, told DeSmog that her party had “serious concerns” and would “determine its voting behaviour for the vote on Tuesday at the Group meeting on Monday evening”.
‘Misinformation’
The law has long been portrayed as a burden to the farming industry. The EPP has repeatedly attempted to block the legislation following intense lobbying by farm union Copa-Cogeca, which represents producers and agribusinesses across the bloc. It succeeded in deleting the most ambitious agriculture clauses from the law, including targets to re-wild 10 percent of farmland.
However, scientists told DeSmog that jettisoning the legislation would cause major harms to the industry – a stance backed up by some small scale producers who are calling for more environmental support.
“Our food systems are at extreme risk. Looking outside and seeing the current temperatures, we can see that the coming summer will be even worse than the last one,” said Guy Pe’er, an ecologist at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research. “Farmers will soon need help maintaining production under very difficult conditions. The Nature Restoration law is a crucial part of this package.”
Pe’er also told DeSmog he was concerned Tuesday’s outcome could be “based on misinformation”. He was one of more than 6,000 scientists to sign an open letter in July, warning of a “lack of scientific evidence” for arguments opposing the law, including suggestions that it would harm EU food security and take away farming jobs across the continent.
Christine Schneider of the EPP told DeSmog that the EPP remained concerned that the law would lead to onerous regulations in member states with “far-reaching monitoring and reporting obligations for agriculture and forestry”.
‘Election Strategy’
If parliament supports any amendments on 27 February, negotiations on the Nature Restoration Law will extend beyond EU elections, which are due to take place between 6-9 June later this year.
Polls are currently suggesting a major ballot swing towards right-wing parties, which have pledged to use election success to fight the Green Deal.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right party National Rally is expected to claim more than 30 percent of the country’s vote. It said in January it planned to form a “blocking majority” with other parties that target environmental laws.
The EPP, which is likely to retain the largest number of seats in the EU parliament, has likewise opposed multiple environmental regulations in the run-up to the elections in recent months, including overturning plans to halve pesticide use.
The ECR is so far not expected to gain many seats in the coming election.
Environmental activist Chloé Miko told DeSmog that if the law was voted down on Tuesday it would be “the final nail in the coffin for the Green Deal” – which has been seen as the lead policy package for the current Commission.
She added that the ECR was deploying a cynical “election strategy”, by linking its opposition to the law to farmer protests across the continent.
“It is not a sign of goodwill towards farmers,” she said. “The far-right, sometimes with the help of the Conservatives, have been on a journey to weaken, delay or even kill every remaining part of the Green deal. It is part of this process.”
Jutta Paulus, the Greens’ negotiator on the law in Parliament, told DeSmog: “The ECR’s attempt to stop the legislative procedure is typical for this euro-sceptic group,” adding that the EPP’s concerns about the law had already been addressed during trialogue negotiations between parliament, the commission and the council over recent months.
“I expect the constructive, pro-European parties to take a firm position and vote in favour of the trilogue agreement,” she said.
ECR did not respond to Desmog’s request for comment.
People walk past the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which provides assistance to millions of Palestinians, in Gaza City, Gaza on February 21, 2024. (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The warning came as a U.S. intelligence officials said they have “low confidence” that Israel’s accusations against UNRWA workers were true.
Notifying the United Nations General Assembly of numerous steps Israel has taken in the last month to dismantle a humanitarian agency that serves millions of Palestinians, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East warned Thursday that it has reached a “breaking point” as it attempts to provide shelter and other aid amid Israel’s bombardment of Gaza with sharply reduced funding.
Since Israel claimed last month without providing evidence that 12 UNRWA staff members—out of 30,000 total—had been involved in a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 16 countries including the U.S., Germany, and Canada have suspended funding for the agency, which relies on donations to operate.
The funding cuts have gone into effect as UNRWA itself faces violence from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), with 150 of the agency’s facilities having been hit by bombs or shelling that have killed more than 390 people and injured more than 1,300. Since October, the IDF has killed a total of at least 29,514 Palestinians in Gaza.
“It is with profound regret that I must now inform you that the agency has reached breaking point, with Israel’s repeated calls to dismantle UNRWA and the freezing of funding by donors at a time of unprecedented humanitarian needs in Gaza,” wrote Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of UNRWA, in a letter to the president of UNGA.
In just over four months in #Gaza, there have been more #children, more journalists, more medical personnel, and more @UN staff killed than anywhere in the world during a conflict.
Lazzarini warned that the agency’s ability to “fulfill the mandate given through General Assembly resolution 302,” the 1949 measure that created UNRWA and tasked it with providing aid to Palestinians in Gaza, “is now seriously threatened.”
UNRWA is a major employer of Palestinians in Gaza, where almost half of adults are unemployed. The agency runs schools for 300,000 children, provides housing assistance, runs health clinics, and oversees other public works such as playground and road construction.
Since Israel began its assault on Gaza in October, up to 1.9 million displaced Palestinians have found temporary housing at 154 UNRWA shelters, according to the agency.
Since Israel made its accusation against UNRWA, in addition to fueling a loss of $450 million in funding, the government has taken further steps to render it inoperable, despite Lazzarini’s immediate dismissal of the workers implicated in the allegations. Israeli officials have:
Taken steps to evict UNRWA from the headquarters it’s used for 75 years in East Jerusalem;
Limited visas for its staff to one or two months;
Announced a plan to revoke UNRWA’s tax-exempt status;
Suspended shipments of UNRWA goods;
Blocked the agency’s bank accounts;
Refused to grant hundreds of staffers access to UNRWA’s schools, health centers, and headquarters;
Tabled bills to eliminate the agency’s U.N. privileges and immunities and to prevent “any activity by UNRWA in Israeli territory”; and
Publicly accused UNRWA of being “in the service of Hamas.”
With UNRWA struggling to provide assistance to Gaza residents—about 85% of whom have been displaced and virtually all of whom are facing “crisis-level hunger“—Lazzarini warned UNGA President Dennis Francis that the agency is “on the edge of a monumental disaster with grave implications for regional peace, security, and human rights.”
“In the short term, dismantling UNRWA will undermine U.N. efforts to address Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and worsen the crisis in the West Bank, depriving over half a million children of education and deepening resentment and despair,” said Lazzarini. “In the longer-term, it will end UNRWA’s stabilizing role that is widely acknowledged, including by senior Israeli civilian and military officials and key donors, as vital to the rights and security of Palestinians and Israelis. It will also weaken prospects for a transition and a political solution to this long-standing conflict.”
Journalist Owen Jones noted on Friday that the “throttling” of Gaza’s primary humanitarian aid organization has taken place as Israel has failed to provide evidence of its claims against the UNRWA employees, with a U.S. intelligence assessment saying officials had “low confidence” that staff members had participated in the Hamas-led attack on October 7.
The clearly nonsense claims against UNRWA – the UN's Palestinian refugee agency – are falling apart.
Throttling Gaza's main humanitarian agency in the midst of a humanitarian catastrophe was a genocidal act.
The assessment noted that Israeli officials have not “shared the raw intelligence behind” the accusations that led 16 countries to pull crucial funding from UNRWA—a fact that didn’t surprise Intercept journalist Ryan Grim.
“Why would Israel provide evidence?” said Grim. “Without any evidence, the U.S. suspended UNRWA funding and then [President Joe] Biden endorsed a new law permanently banning funding. Israel would be stupid to bother to present evidence, they know they don’t need to.”
In his letter to Francis, Lazzarini asked whether UNGA would allow “the parameters of peace for Palestinians and Israelis” to be “wiped away by obstructing UNRWA’s mandate and defunding the agency outside of any political agreement and consultation with Palestinians.”
“Should the General Assembly opt to continue to sustain UNRWA in the best interests of Palestine refugees, then I further appeal for a solution that closes the gap between UNRWA’s mandate and its funding structure, which relies upon voluntary contributions that make it vulnerable to wider political considerations, such as UNRWA faces now,” wrote Lazzarini.
“I finally appeal to the General Assembly to bring human rights and international law back to the center of multilateral action,” he added, “beginning with the catastrophic situation in Gaza that has worsened by every measure in recent weeks.”
