Mr Hunt told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that when he became chancellor, he worked closely with Mr Skidmore on climate change issues.
He said: “The independent panel for climate change that we have in this country are very clear that even when we reach net zero in 2050, we will still get a significant proportion of our energy from fossil fuels, and domestic oil and gas is four times cleaner than imported oil and gas.”
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dizzy: four times cleaner is just total BS, isn’t it?
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer reacts to the resignation of Tory environment champion Chris Skidmore:
“As the world burns, the Tories turn in on themselves. The government’s green credentials are truly in tatters.
“The climate crisis is here and now and being experienced by people across the country, but the Prime Minister can’t hold on to anyone who has any good intentions toward the environment.
“Labour has to be held to account as well – it refused to block Rosebank and other new oil and gas licences. How long before Labour’s own green champions feel their principles are too compromised to continue?”
Healthcare workers at Al-Awda hospital. Photo: Al-Awda
The number of people infected with contagious diseases in Gaza continues to rise. The latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO) warns that 180,000 people are currently suffering from respiratory infections. Additionally, the UN’s health agency reports that 55,000 people have lice and scabies, 42,000 are experiencing various forms of skin rashes, and 136,000, half of whom are children under 5 years old, have contracted diarrhea.
While these diseases would not be deadly under conditions with a functioning health system and adequate living conditions, in the current situation, they could be life-threatening. “Unless something changes, the world faces the prospect of almost a quarter of Gaza’s 2 million population – close to half a million human beings – dying within a year. These would be largely deaths from preventable health causes and the collapse of the health system,” estimated Devi Sridhar, Chair in Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, at the end of 2023.
If a permanent ceasefire does not take immediate effect, though, things are unlikely to change, as reiterated by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement. WHO teams, now participating in fairly regular missions on the ground, are sending reports about overcrowding in Gaza’s hospitals and shelters. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, on January 4, only 9 out of 36 hospitals were partially functioning in the Strip, resulting in an average bed occupancy of 351% and 261% occupancy in intensive care units.
Israel’s attacks on healthcare in Palestine are affecting everyone, especially the most vulnerable. Cancer and dialysis patients cannot access the specific care they need, and most have not yet been transferred to hospitals abroad as announced. The Ministry of Health estimates that 5,300 patients need to be transferred abroad for treatment, but until January 5, less than 1,000 were moved. This number includes 571 people injured in the attacks and 401 patients who required distinct forms of care, including cancer patients.
Children and pregnant women are also groups most at risk from the attacks and their consequences. Over 5,000 babies were born in Gaza just last month, all requiring adequate care and nutrition. With mothers and families going hungry, it is evident that some of them are also lacking proper food. Among the newborns are about 130 premature babies dependent on incubators, yet most incubators are located in northern Gaza, which, in terms used by the WHO, has become a medical disaster zone.
In addition to going hungry and sleeping in overcrowded tents, newborns and children are also not getting vaccinated. Recounting the experience of a woman who recently gave birth, Nareman, who was “taken from her tent in a temporary camp by horse-drawn carriage to a hospital to give birth to her daughter, before returning to her makeshift home straight after,” the WHO warned that the health system in Gaza is struggling to ensure standard immunization routines. Nareman’s baby is among those who are yet to receive planned vaccines, and she is staying with her sisters and brothers at the camp, who are reportedly in ill health themselves.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has managed to deliver 600,000 key vaccines into Gaza in the period between December 25-29, 2023, and is planning to deliver some 960,000 more together with WHO and UNICEF. Yet, this is no easy feat as Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) continue to target health infrastructure and health workers. Since the beginning of the attacks on October 7, 326 health workers in Palestine were killed by Israeli attacks, 764 were injured, and 65 were arrested, according to Ministry of Health data.
Many more experienced violence and intimidation by the IOF, including ambulances and partners of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS). On January 4, Israeli soldiers attacked a PRCS ambulance. Not long before that, the organization reported attacks targeting the house of Anwar Abu Holi, Director of the Central Gaza Ambulance Center, as well as multiple attacks on the Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis.
As shelling in the proximity of the hospital began, Al-Amal offered shelter to approximately 14,000 forcibly displaced people. The attacks, said the PRCS, endangered the lives of thousands. “The displaced persons are living in an atmosphere of horror and panic.”
The attacks that have taken place since the beginning of January killed 7 people, including a days-old baby, injured 11 more, and were reported by the PRCS to be ongoing on January 5, without a meaningful indication they would stop anytime soon.
Firefighters demand emergency funding as thousands evacuated across Britain
FIREFIGHTERS have demanded emergency funding to tackle widespread flooding after thousands of residents were evacuated from their homes and transport links ground to a halt in the wake of Storm Henk.
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Since 2010 funding for the Environment Agency has been axed by two-thirds, including funding for flood defences and resilience. More than 2,000 jobs have been axed.
In the call for emergency funding, Fire Brigades Union (FBU) general secretary Matt Wrack said: “When floods threaten people’s homes, lives and livelihoods, it’s firefighters who step in to protect communities.
“Storm Henk follows a winter of storm after devastating storm and more is to come.
“It’s high time that the government woke up to the realities of the climate emergency.
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Greenpeace UK climate campaigner Georgia Whitaker said: “While the prime minister is on a tour to kick off the election year, thousands of people are seeing their homes, businesses and fields wrecked by rising water.
“We’ve known for decades that the climate crisis would bring more rainfall and flooding and yet the government completely failed to prepare for it.
“Thousands of flood defences are in a state of disrepair and ministers are still allowing developers to build in high-risk areas, while also pushing for more oil and gas drilling that will only make the problem worse. It’s a double failure.
“(Prime Minister Rishi) Sunak should take a break from his glad-handing tour and see for himself what the real consequences of climate inaction look like.
“He might learn how voters waist-deep in flood water feel about his plans to slow down climate action ahead of the election.”
A Tory MP has launched a spectacular attack on Rishi Sunak’s climate record as he announced he was quitting.
Former energy minister Chris Kingswood, who led a Government review of net zero, warned: “I can no longer stand by.”
His decision creates another by-election nightmare for the Prime Minister. Mr Kingswood has resigned with immediate effect from the Conservative Party and will formally stand down as an MP when Parliament returns after the Christmas break on Monday.
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In a statement posted on X, the Tory who signed the UK’s net zero commitment by 2050 into law said he was resigning as he could not support proposed new legislation that “clearly promotes the production of new oil and gas” by handing out more North Sea drilling licence.
He said the “future will judge harshly” anyone who backs the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, which is due to be voted on by MPs on Monday.
“I can… no longer condone nor continue to support a government that is committed to a course of action that I know is wrong and will cause future harm,” he wrote in the excoriating statement. “To fail to act, rather than merely speak out, is to tolerate a status quo that cannot be sustained. I am therefore resigning my party whip and instead intend to be free from any party-political allegiance.”
He added: “I can no longer stand by. The climate crisis that we face is too important to politicise or to ignore.”
Mr Skidmore said the Bill that will be debated next week “achieves nothing apart from to send a global signal that the UK is rowing ever further back from its climate commitments”
… In September 2022, he was appointed by the Truss government to chair the Independent Government Review on Net Zero.[5] On 5 January 2024, Skidmore announced that he would resign his party whip and his Parliamentary seat in protest at the introduction of the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill.[6]
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On 27 June 2019, as Interim Minister for Energy and Clean Growth, Skidmore signed the UK’s Net Zero Pledge into law, becoming the first major economy to do so.
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Net zero
On 26 September 2022 Skidmore launched the Net Zero Review, pledging to use the review to focus on the UK’s fight against climate change while maximising economic growth to ensure energy security and affordability for consumers and businesses.[28]
On 19 October 2022, Skidmore put out a statement on Twitter, in advance of a debate on fracking, saying that “[a]s the former Energy Minister who signed Net Zero into law”, he could not vote “to support fracking and undermine the pledges I made at the 2019 General Election”. The government was reportedly treating this vote as a confidence vote, putting Skidmore at risk of losing the Conservative Party whip.[29][30]
On 16 January 2023, Skidmore published “Mission Zero”,[31] the final report of the Net Zero Review. The 340 page report, containing 129 recommendations on how to deliver the UK’s net zero commitments, has been widely welcomed by the energy and climate sector.[32][33]
In June 2023, it was announced that Skidmore had been appointed to a professorship at the University of Bath to undertake research on sustainability and climate change.[34][35]
Although in November 2022 he had declared he would not stand again, in January 2024 Skidmore stated he would leave Parliament “as soon as possible”, stating that the relaxation of net zero targets was “the greatest mistake of [Rishi Sunak’s] premiership”.[36]
Resignation
On 26 November 2022, Skidmore announced that he would be standing down at the next general election, later stating in Parliament that ‘my constituency of Kingswood is being formally abolished in the boundary changes and there is nowhere for me to go.’[37][38][39]
However, on 5 January 2024 Skidmore announced that he would resign his party whip and his Parliamentary seat in protest at the introduction of the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill.[40]
dizzy: From the Resignation section immediately above, by resigning Skidmore is forcing a by-election in a seat that will cease to exist at the next general election expected this year. From his statement and the rest of the Wikipedia entry, it’s clear that he’s doing it because he’s opposed to Rishi Sunak’s energy policy. Part of his resignation statement reads “I cannot vote for a bill that clearly promotes the production of new oil and gas. While no one is denying that there is a role for existing oil and gas in the transition to net zero, the International Energy Agency, the UNCCC and the Committee on Climate Change have all stated that there must be no new additional oil and gas production on top of what has already been committed, if we are to both reach net area carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 and keep the chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.5 degrees.”
He ends his statement “I can no longer stand by. The climate crisis that we face is too important to politicise or to ignore. We all have a responsibility to act when and where we can to protect the future: I look forward to devoting my time in 2024 and beyond to making the future a better place, in whatever capacity I can.”
