Experts warn UK’s regulations now lag behind those of the EU and that Britons will be exposed to more toxic chemicals as a result
The government is to loosen EU-derived laws on chemicals in a move experts say will increase the likelihood of toxic substances entering the environment.
Under new plans the government will reduce the “hazard” information that chemical companies must provide to register substances in the UK. The safety information provided about chemicals will be reduced to an “irreducible minimum”, which campaigners say will leave the UK “lagging far behind the EU”.
The UK’s scheme, called UK Reach, is falling behind the EU’s as it is. The UK has not been part of the bloc’s chemicals regulations scheme, EU Reach, since 2021. Eight rules restricting the use of hazardous chemicals have been adopted by the EU since Brexit, and 16 more are in the pipeline. The UK has not banned any substances in that time and is considering just two restrictions, on lead ammunition and harmful substances in tattoo ink.
Campaigners have called for the government to follow EU chemicals regulations as standard, diverging only if and when there is a good reason to do so. This would free up time and money for regulators and mean dangerous chemicals banned by the EU do not enter the environment before there is time to ban them.
Responding to Rishi Sunak’s extensive cabinet reshuffle today, co-leader of the Green Party, Adrian Ramsay, said:
“This reshuffle looks desperate and is a sign that Rishi Sunak has run out of talent. David Cameron started the programme of cuts to our public services which has now brought the NHS to near breaking point. Since his disastrous exit he has cashed in on dodgy lobbying for global oligarchs. And on the odd occasion where Cameron did take a principled stand – such as on maintaining the international aid budget – the government has since reneged.
“As to the departure of Therese Coffey as Environment Secretary, nature can at least temporarily breathe a sigh of relief as we await to see who replaces her. She put in place a subsidy system which is not working for farmers or the environment, and she has failed to tackle the blight of sewage in our rivers – a situation she herself described as ‘a scandal’ when I challenged her on it at a public meeting in Suffolk last month.
“We need a fresh start on the environment, with real action to stop the water companies profiting from failure and a proper system of nature-friendly farming payments which are easy for farmers to access.
“This chaotic and unprincipled government has reached the end of the road. It is doing great harm to the country. We need a general election now.”
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has rowed back on UK net-zero targets, incurring the wrath of industry, charities and academics.
Rishi Sunak offers to dance
The UK will water down policies aimed at achieving its target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 following Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision, announced on 20 September, to push back the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in the UK from 2030 to 2035.
Sunak also announced an easing of energy efficiency targets for rental properties and backtracked on plans to make homeowners replace gas boilers with heat pumps.
“We can adopt a more pragmatic, proportionate and realistic approach to meeting net zero” that would bring the UK in line with countries such as France and Germany, he said.
Reacting to the news, Halima Begum, CEO of ActionAid UK, told our sister site Investment Monitor that the UK Government’s sudden reversal of its net-zero commitments “is reckless and irresponsible”.
“Climate action is not a political bargaining chip that can be taken on and off the table to satisfy party political squabbles, but a global imperative,” she added. “The climate crisis is not a future event, it is happening now. People are facing flash floods, droughts, rising sea levels and irreversible damage that has already led to tragic deaths around the world this year alone.”
Meanwhile, Nick Kirsop-Taylor, an expert in environmental governance from the University of Exeter, joined a chorus of other academics in saying it is “truly disappointing news” since time is running out for the global action required to keep global temperatures to below 1.5°C, let alone 2°C.
Campaigners take part in a Stop Rosebank emergency protest outside the U.K. Government building in Edinburgh, after the controversial Equinor Rosebank North Sea oil field was given the go-ahead Wednesday, September 27, 2023. (Photo: Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)
Since winning a July 2023 by-election in the London suburb of Uxbridge, the UK government has made polarising voters on climate policy one of its main strategies. The Tory campaign had focused on opposing a new low emission zone for cars, and prime minister Rishi Sunak took its victory as vindication of a clear “pro-motorist” and anti-climate policy stance.
The apparent lack of public support for strict climate policies such as a ban of fossil-fuelled cars is now being used as an excuse to roll back policies urgently necessary to reach net zero targets.
In a recently study in the journal Climate Policy, we demonstrate that, by betting on a public tired of stringent climate policies, the government is backing the wrong horse.
We asked 1,911 people that are representative of the UK population in terms of age, gender and ethnicity to indicate the extent to which they support different climate policy instruments. Almost two thirds support the most stringent climate policies, while others receive even higher support.
In short, people in the UK favour all kinds of policy instruments to tackle climate change, even the most stringent ones. There is a lesson here for the opposition too, which should put forward more effective climate policies, and not shy away from regulation.
A vote in favour of UK climate politics
In our study, we asked people about actual policy proposals by UK government bodies and political parties (as opposed to hypothetical ones).
We put each into one of four categories based on the type of policy instrument: regulation (such as banning the sale of fossil-fuel-powered cars or stopping drilling for oil and gas), market instruments (carbon trading, stopping fossil fuel subsidies), informational tools (consumer labels, advertising campaigns), and voluntary initiatives (carbon offsets, non-binding product standards).
The UK public is mostly happy to support measures like phasing out petrol cars. Kittipong33 / shutterstock
Contrary to the government’s rhetoric, our findings point towards a more optimistic view of the UK’s future climate politics – at least from a voter perspective. A large majority supports strict regulations that mandate or prohibit specific behaviour. An even larger share backs market-based initiatives (78%), information tools (86%) and voluntary measures (87%).
While the important thing here is that the UK public wants a package of different policy instruments to decarbonise the economy and reach net zero, one could rightly argue that more still needs to be done to increase support for stricter measures. So what drives public support for climate policies?
Drivers of public support
In line with previous research, our study found that free market and environmental beliefs have the biggest impact on whether someone supports climate policies.
The more people believed that a free market acts in the interests of the public, the less they supported all climate policies. Similarly, people that believe nature is important voiced stronger support for all policies.
Interestingly, support for regulatory and market-based policies didn’t change according to a person’s income. This is important because the current government usually tries to appeal to working class voters in its attempts to demonise ambitious climate policies.
These are important findings that highlight the need to challenge free market ideologies by publicly and repeatedly scrutinising their validity for a functioning and just society. We also should start recognising their detrimental effect on climate policy preferences.
Regional variations in public support
However, only looking at national results might hide important differences. Our research found important regional variation, with London often being an exception compared to the rest of the UK.
People living in other regions were about 30% less likely to support regulatory and market-based climate policies compared to people in Greater London, for instance.
Regulatory measures were the least popular around the country, though still had majority support everywhere and a strong majority in London. Bretter and Schulz, CC BY-SA
Drivers of these differences are both ideological and structural. People living in Greater London tend to believe less in the free market system compared to people in regions which had significantly lower support for climate policies. This indicates that neoliberal ideology favouring free markets is discouraging climate action.
Yet it is not only what people believe in. Those in more rural regions with higher emissions show less support for stricter climate policies. These tend to be regions with less access to public transport where people have to rely more heavily on high-emitting cars.
More needs to be done to improve public infrastructure in rural areas. This will require investment in affordable, low-carbon transport networks rather than championing the continuation of the combustion engine.
How the media may shape policy support
Of course, our study only captured a snapshot of people’s policy preferences. We are constantly confronted by news stories, particularly through social media.
These often act as echo chambers to reinforce existing ideologies (and by extension, policy preferences), thereby strengthening existing polarisations. This will make it harder to engage people with contrasting beliefs in a discussion on climate policies.
On the other hand, being repeatedly confronted with particular views and ideas can shift one’s beliefs. In psychology, this is referred to as “repeated priming”. In Germany, we have seen how newspaper campaigns against the slow phase-out of gas boilers have further undermined public support for this specific climate policy.
Could something similar happen in the UK? To avoid the gradual weakening of support by particular news outlets, the UK opposition parties need to be consistent and persistent in their communication of climate policies and their effects.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
This is the Coming soon article, may get revised or elaborated.
Our recent ancestors – parents, grandparents and great-grandparents – likely fought a war against the realization of an evil, racist ideology called Fascism. Most of the World fought Fascism in the Second World War with Russia paying the far heaviest price in killed soldiers. German Nazi Fascists murdered many people: political opponents like Communists or Anarchists, homosexuals or those they considered inferior due to disability or race e.g. Slavs, Roma and Jews. The concept of subhuman (Untermensch) was employed by Nazi Fascists to rationalise or justify their systematic mass murders.
Image of Fascists Mussolini and Hitler
I would point out that race is a fake, synthetic construct and that people of geographical regions will have a similar mix of genes. You are welcome to disagree is you’re a racist in which case I challenge you to prove me wrong ;) It follows that a heirarchy of races is not possible since races don’t exist. There can be no superior races if there are no races.
The war to defeat Fascism and the United Nations have failed in the sense that war crimes and the mass murder of civilians regarded as racially inferior and less than human occurs and is witnessed today. There is complicity in war crimes by Biden, Sunak, Starmer and European leaders. Human rights are not protected, international law is not upheld. Prosecutions for war crimes and complicity should but I expect are unlikely to happen. There is a democratic deficit: ordinary people worldwide are witnessing genocidal atrocities which their governments often facilitate or are complicit in. We need to prosecute, get rid of those evil politicians and try to ensure that no more are elected.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the only permanent global court to have jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. It recently issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, has said the court has “active investigations ongoing” in relation to Gaza and the West Bank going back to 2014.
During its current campaign against Gaza, Israel has violated Article 31 of the Geneva Convention on Protection of Civilians by imposing collective punishment on 2.3m people by withdrawing all water, food and electricity.
By targeting civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and schools, Israel has also violated the same convention. Amnesty International has referred to Israel’s “killing of civilians on a mass scale” and documented “indiscriminate” attacks on civilians.
A team of UN experts has said Israel’s campaign in Gaza involves “crimes against humanity”.
Rishi Sunak has given Britain’s full approval to the flattening of Gaza.
Late on 7 October, the prime minister tweeted “we stand unequivocally with Israel”. Sunak had expressed “full solidarity” to Benjamin Netanyahu, the tweet added.
As Netanyahu had promised “mighty vengeance” following the Hamas-led offensive that morning, there was no room for doubt about the signal which Sunak was sending.
In a few words, Sunak took Britain’s foreign policy to a new extreme.
Israel’s “mighty vengeance” is shaping up to be its most destructive bombardment ever of Gaza and its 2.3 million inhabitants.
A “mighty vengeance” endorsed by 10 Downing Street.
There is a long history of the UK supporting Israel’s wars.
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11 Nov 23 11.55 It is the same democratic deficit where politicans fail to address the climate crisis and the transition to net zero. By sucking up to the rich and powerful and actively undermining such a transition politicians such as Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak make that democratic deficit clear to all. They’re representing twisted and evil vested interests instead of the interests of their electors and constituents.
18 Nov 23. I am disappointed with Bernie Sanders, Jon Lansman and the likes. They’re unable to call for a ceasefire despite the obvious atrocities committed by Israel on a largely defenceless population. Like Starmer, they are siding with Israel.
