— Transform Politics đŚ (@tf_politics) July 25, 2023
We urgently need an answer. But in Britain, while the Tory party fuels these crises, the Labour Party is failing to provide an alternative.
The right wing has regained control of Labour. Jeremy Corbyn, and his politics that inspired millions across our society, have been cast out.
Labour now opposes a ceasefire in Gaza, doesnât support strikes, rejects nationalisation, refuses to defend refugees, and wonât scrap student fees â or even the two-child benefit cap.
Keir Starmer has overseen the driving out of 200,000 Labour members. âThe manyâ who supported Labour politics from 2015 to 2019 are denied a political voice.
We need a political organisation that offers a real solution: one that challenges the system at the root of every crisis we face.
Over recent months, organisations and individuals from the labour and trade union movement have come together to discuss a way forward. These include existing left parties, Breakthrough, Left Unity and the Liverpool Community Independents, together with others who were in the Labour Party and more from across the left.
Now weâve taken the next step: founding a new party of the left.
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Responding to the government publishing plans to disapply sections of the Human Rights Act to get around a Supreme Court ruling banning the deportation of people seeking asylum to Rwanda for processing, Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer said:Â
âThe fact that the government is going to try to use its parliamentary majority to over-ride established human rights protections is an affront to democracy.
âWe need a system that welcomes refugees through clear, open, safe and legal routes, that offers quick and efficient determinations and support for resettlement into local communities with properly funded local services.â
“Instead of creating an asylum system that works, the government is deliberately making it chaotic and inaccessible to put people off using their right to seek asylum.
“It is the use of cruelty and inhumanity as a tool of public policy and cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.
“Everyone deserves to be treated in a way that is fair and humane. This new legislation will remove fundamental legal protections designed to protect us all from the arbitrary power of the state.â
Exclusive: Under current policies, Britain could fall short of internationally agreed goal of 68% cut in emissions by 2030
The UK government is likely to miss its targets under the Paris climate agreement by a wide margin, analysis shows, dealing a devastating blow to Britainâs standing on the international stage.
Under current policies, the UKâs greenhouse gas emissions are likely to be 59% lower in 2030 than they were in 1990 â but the countryâs internationally agreed target is for a 68% reduction by the end of this decade. The gap is likely to leave Britain in breach of these commitments.
The 2030 emissions goal was agreed at Cop26, the UN climate summit hosted by the UK in Glasgow in 2021, and has been reaffirmed at Cop28, taking place in Dubai this week.
Failure to meet the UKâs commitments would hinder international efforts to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels.
The estimate comes from analysis of publicly available and government data carried out by Friends of the Earth. It found that current policies would achieve just over half the emissions cuts needed by 2030.
The gap had grown significantly under Rishi Sunakâs leadership, Friends of the Earth found.
Chris Packham has filed a high court legal challenge to the UK government over its decision to weaken key climate policies.
The broadcaster and environmental campaigner has applied for a judicial review of the governmentâs decision to ditch the timetable for phasing out petrol and diesel powered cars and vans, gas boilers, off-grid fossil fuel domestic heating and minimum energy ratings for homes.
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said it rejected Packhamâs claims and would ârobustlyâ defend the challenge. The measures and their schedule had been set out in the governmentâs carbon budget delivery plan, which was put before parliament in March this year.
In September, Rishi Sunak announced he would delay the ban on selling new diesel and petrol cars from 2030 to 2035 and that 20% of households would be exempt from a new gas boiler ban among other changes, arguing that he did not want to burden ordinary people with the costs.
Following the announcement, Packham wrote to Sunak, the energy secretary and the transport secretary to challenge the decision, arguing that the prime minister did not have the legal right to change the timeline of carbon budget pledges at will, since the actioning of the carbon budget delivery plan was governed by statute.
Packham said he did not receive a satisfactory response to his letter and therefore filed the judicial review application.
…
Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reads 1% RICHEST 100% CLIMATE DENIER
Rishi Sunak, David Cameron and King Charles are just three of the more than 70,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries at the latest UN climate summit in Dubai, COP28. But they are among hundreds who will have travelled there by private jet. In fact, the UK prime minister, foreign secretary and king even travelled in three separate planes.
At COP27 in Egypt last year, around 315 private jet journeys took place. This is an extraordinary statistic, especially as fewer world leaders attended that COP, as many were busy at a G20 summit in Bali.
Thatâs why we set up a team of academic experts to estimate the carbon footprint of travel to this yearâs meeting, COP28 in Dubai, for different modes of transport including private jets. We ultimately want to empower attendees to make informed climate-conscious travel choices.
We also compared the carbon footprints for the past three COPs to help see where the conferences could be located in order to dissuade attendees from using private jets, unless absolutely essential for security. The use of private jets last year â and presumably this year too, though we donât yet have full data â suggests this is becoming the new norm and has moved beyond just essential world leaders.
Carbon footprint of transport modes
Flying is already one of the most carbon-intensive forms of travel both due to emissions from burning jet fuel and because vapour trails help create high altitude clouds which trap more heat in the atmosphere. Itâs also particularly hard to decarbonise â there arenât electric planes we could simply use instead.
Private jet travel is the most polluting mode of all, consuming lots of fuel yet carrying few passengers. French economist Thomas Piketty argues they are an example of class inequality and must be tackled if we are to deal with climate change.
Their use by high-profile people clearly undermines the goal of a climate conference and symbolises a disconnect between environmental concerns and individual actions and a lack of commitment to sustainable practices. This in turn risks shaping and influencing public opinion. Previous research suggests members of the public take climate action less seriously if they feel that their leaders are not doing their bit.
We started by looking at the use of private jets for COP27 in Egypt (our results are available as a preprint ahead of formal peer-review). Most private flights were short-haul, often just an hour between the capital Cairo and the conference venue in Sharm El-Sheikh. Over shorter distances, planes are even less efficient as take off and landing burns more fuel compared to cruising.
So avoiding short flights and private jets is a must. With this in mind, we explored a range of travel options to get to COP28 in Dubai for participants from the UK, where weâre based.
For a journey from London to Dubai, private jet travel is 11 times more polluting than a commercial aircraft, 35 times more than train and 52 times more than coach travel (even after factoring in a flight from Istanbul, since you canât go all the way to Dubai by train or coach). For those flying from the UK, the longer flight to Dubai compared to Egypt means emissions will be higher this year.
Carbon intensity (grams of COâequivalent) of transport from London to COP28:
Flight emissions are based on journeys from London to Dubai. Car, train and coach emissions are based on journeys from London to Istanbul and then a flight. Private jet emissions are based on a Cessna 680 Citation Sovereign (most common in COP27 data), commercial flight emissions are based on an Airbus A380-300 and car journeys are calculated for a Vauxhall Corsa. Roberts et al (2023), CC BY-SA
Location of COP
Some of the blame for flight emissions must lie with the UN body which decides where COP meetings will be held, the UNFCCC. Dubai is surrounded by conflict zones, which block land routes from Europe, Asia and Africa and makes flying there essential.
While most delegates will want to travel sustainability, their actions will depend on the accessibility of alternative forms of travel such as safe land routes and for those coming from further away at least the option of direct flights to minimise their carbon emissions.
In this respect Dubai is a good choice as it is a major airline hub and so there are many direct flights and less need for second or internal flights.
Our analysis highlights the need to consider very carefully the carbon footprint implications of travel to COP meetings. Ultimately policymakers will need to identify host locations for climate change meetings which can help to minimise the carbon footprint of the participants.
Private jets are still not advisable, however. Their carbon footprint is substantially higher than other forms of transport, they exacerbates existing inequities at climate negotiations and send the wrong message to the world.
Carole Roberts, Researcher, Carbon Footprint of Transport, UCL; Mark Maslin, Professor of Natural Sciences, UCL, and Prof Priti Parikh, Professor of Infrastructure Engineering and International Development, UCL
