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?
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
There are 149 states party to the Genocide Convention. Every one of them has the right to call out the genocide in progress in Gaza and report it to the United Nations. In the event that another state party disputes the claim of genocide – and Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom are all states party – then the International Court of Justice is required to adjudicate on “the responsibility of a State for genocide”.
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There is, at the very least, a strong prima facie case that the actions of the United States and United Kingdom and others, in openly providing direct military support to be used in genocide, are complicity in genocide. The point of Article IV is that individuals are responsible, not just states. So Netanyahu, Biden and Sunak bear individual responsibility. So, indeed, do all those who have been calling for the destruction of the Palestinians.
It is very definitely worth activating the Genocide Convention. A judgement of the International Court of Justice that Israel is guilty of genocide would have an extraordinary diplomatic effect and would cause domestic difficulties in the UK and even in the US in continuing to subsidise and arm Israel. The International Court of Justice is the most respected of international institutions; while the United States has repudiated its compulsory jurisdiction, the United Kingdom has not and the EU positively accepts it.
If the International Court of Justice makes a determination of genocide, then the International Criminal Court does not have to determine that genocide has happened. This is important because unlike the august and independent ICJ, the ICC is very much a western government puppet institution which will wiggle out of action if it can. But a determination of the ICJ of genocide and of complicity in genocide would reduce the ICC’s task to determining which individuals bear the responsibility. That is a prospect which can indeed alter the calculations of politicians.
It is also the fact that a reference for genocide would force the western media to address the issue and use the term, rather than just pump out propaganda about Hamas fighting bases in hospitals. Furthermore a judgement from the ICJ would automatically trigger a reference to the United Nations General Assembly – crucially not to the western-vetoed Security Council.
All this begs the question of why no state has yet invoked the Genocide Convention. This is especially remarkable as Palestine is one of the 149 states party to the Genocide Convention, and for this purpose would have standing before both the UN and the ICJ.
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Any one of the 139 states party could invoke the Genocide Convention against Israel and its co-conspirators. Those states include Iran, Russia, Libya, Malaysia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Afghanistan, Cuba, Ireland, Iceland, Jordan, South Africa, Turkey and Qatar. But not one of these states has called out the genocide. Why?
People take part in the National March for Palestine in London on Saturday November 11, 2023. (Photo: Victoria Jones/PA Images via Getty Images)
“In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians,” demonstrators chanted at Saturday’s march, described as one of the largest political protests in U.K. history.
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of London on Saturday to demand an immediate cease-fire in Gaza as Israeli forces ramped up their aerial and ground assault on the Palestinian enclave’s hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, intensifying the territory’s humanitarian crisis.
Described as one of the largest political demonstrations in U.K. history, the march moved ahead despite criticism from British Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who suggested earlier in the week that the protest should have been banned by London police given that it coincided with Armistice Day. Braverman accused the police of giving favorable treatment to “pro-Palestinian mobs.”
“I am horrified by the tone, language, and incitement our own government is using to whip up hatred against its own citizens—citizens who are standing up in solidarity with the besieged and bombed citizens of Gaza,” British Army veteran and march participant Nadia Mitchell wrote for OpenDemocracy. “Personally, I cannot think of a more appropriate day to demand a cease-fire than on the day we remember the mother of all cease-fires, to remember and honor those who sacrificed their lives in pursuit of peace and an end to war.”
Some U.K. lawmakers, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Labour MP John McDonnell, joined Saturday’s march alongside hundreds of thousands of peace activists, union members, and people of all faiths.
“In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians,” demonstrators chanted.
(Photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)
Reuters reported that “police said far-right groups opposing the march were present in central London in ‘significant numbers,’ leading to skirmishes with officers near the Cenotaph war memorial, close to the Houses of Parliament and in Westminster.”
“Officers in riot gear sought to contain the far-right protesters, some of whom threw bottles at them, and police vehicles sped around the city to respond to reports of tensions in the streets,” the outlet added.
Participants in the mass demonstration, meanwhile, marched from London’s Hyde Park to the U.S. Embassy to protest the Biden administration’s unwavering military and political support for the Israeli government as the death toll in Gaza continues to climb.
The head of the World Health Organization told the United Nations Security Council on Friday that Israel’s bombing and siege are killing one child on average every 10 minutes in Gaza.
“Nowhere and no one is safe,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, deputy medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, toldThe Washington Post on Saturday that hospitals in northern Gaza have become “a graveyard” due to mounting Israeli attacks.
Medical workers at al-Nasr pediatric hospital were forced to leave babies in incubators behind as they evacuated south, Abu Mughaisib said.
“The medical staff evacuated because of the shelling on the pediatric hospital, and they couldn’t save the babies to take them out, so they left five babies alone in the intensive care on the machines and the ventilators,” he told the newspaper. “That’s the situation: leaving babies now alone on the ventilators.”
(Photo: Victoria Jones/PA Images via Getty Images)
Saturday’s march was organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Stop the War Coalition, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and other advocacy groups.
“We march to call for an end to the indiscriminate bombing of civilians and a #CeasefireNOW,” PSC director Ben Jamal wrote on social media. “We march in respect of the rights of all to live in freedom and with dignity.”
The demonstration is part of a growing international movement supporting a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip as Western leaders, including Sunak and U.S. President Joe Biden, refuse to demand an end to Israel’s siege and relentless bombing campaign.
Earlier this week, as Israeli forces encircled northern Gaza, Biden told reporters that there is “no possibility” of a cease-fire. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly rejected a proposed five-day cease-fire in exchange for the release of some of the hostages held by Hamas.
(Photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)
Video footage of Saturday’s march shows the streets of central London packed with demonstrators expressing solidarity with the people of Gaza and demanding an end to Israel’s assault, which began after a deadly Hamas-led attack in southern Israel last month.
An estimated 300,000 people took part in Saturday’s march, according to London authorities.
“This footage shows the true will of the British people,” wrote Ahmed Alnaouq, a London-based Palestinian journalist and co-founder of the nonprofit We Are Not Numbers. “Hundreds of thousands are protesting peacefully despite rounds of vicious smear campaigns and intimidation. “All say in one word: CEASE-FIRE NOW!”
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.
