Keir Starmer arrived at the Baku COP climate summit yesterday bearing something unusual — an actual plan with a new government behind to limit global warming. He had one of the more substantial pledges at a notably thin summit, where the main proposals come from China, while the US absorbs the impact of a Donald Trump victory.
The UN’s climate outings are intended to keep the minds of wayward governments on the agreed UN goal. That is to limit the rise in global temperature to under 2°C (compared to pre-industrial levels). Theoretically almost everyone agrees with this. A rise in extreme weather events, from the disastrous floods in Spain to the soaring temperatures and wildfires on America’s West Coast, has brought home to governments the correlation of climate with extreme weather in volumes that are now harder to dismiss as coincidence or cyclical .
In practice though, these gatherings can feel like a jarring collision of higher purpose speeches and “host-washing”. Last year, I covered the COP “conference of the parties” in the UAE. A row broke out about whether the authorities had used the occasion to tout for more oil and gas investment, all while promising to end reliance on fossil fuels — plus Saudi hiking up its oil production in the wake of the Ukraine crisis.
This year, it’s in Azerbaijan, where an unaccountable, autocratic government with roots in the Soviet period muzzles the press and locks up political prisoners and activists (including climate protestors). Oh and helps Russia circumvent sanctions by routing Russian oil through its territory.
Oil people gonna oil — regardless of what the targets say. The bigger question is whether, given the gravity of a worsening climate situation, these multi-sided processes are getting anywhere at all. That is clearly a difficult proposition as Trump, who has no natural affinity with climate action, returns to the White House with a plan to ramp up domestic oil production.
But it does leave a gap for other countries. Not least in terms of putting in place the financial incentives which will make renewables more attractive to investors.
This is going to be dividing line with a Conservative Party which is backing away from the Johnson-era Net Zero pledge
The Starmer plan is one of his clearer ideas in government — to boost offshore wind production, where the UK has a thriving industry and can punch above its weight in terms of attracting more funding for big projects in order to to expedite the switch from fossil fuels.
That is going to be dividing line with a Conservative Party which is backing away from the Johnson-era Net Zero pledge. But the pledge is already off course for 2030. What matters more is a direction of travel. In fairness to the PM, he has kept the UK on the front foot and invested in the “green tech” revolution Labour hopes will power jobs. The party also hopes it will make London a key player in raising the massive amounts of finance needed to redress climate woes..
This is not always a popular and Net Zero is fast becoming a noisy dividing line between the parties.
Added to that a lot of doubters now have a German word “Dunkelflaute” — to dress up ingrained scepticism about acting on climate (it means the period when there is very low or no wind to generate). But no one is seriously suggesting we move to a complete reliance on wind power. And while Ed Miliband can attract the tag of “zealous” (which is a glib way of saying you don’t really want to hear that a climate situation needs something done, rather than targets set and then ignored). The best way to think about transitions in energy supply is to start work on better ways to ramp up massive battery storage capacity and more efficient ways of transferring power by upgrading the patchy UK grid.
There might sometimes be better ways for Miliband to convey this than a tone which can veer close to the “climate emergency” breathlessness of cross activists. But fundamentally, he is right. It isn’t only the Greta Thunbergs of the world who are saying so. Speaking to Paul Polman, the veteran ex Unilever CEO who was one of the earliest supporters of businesses addressing their own role in global warming, he makes this salient point: “The reality is that there is no prosperous or safe high-carbon future for anyone.”
Damage from climate change damages economies and will do so more. It raises insurance costs for businesses in threatened areas to unsustainable levels and adds to an already unstable global picture by depressing growth the more so if conservatives from the US to the UK continue veer from being sensibly interested in defining balance between planet protection and profit to opposing any meaningful target for limiting warming.
Having Britain as a country able to help lead in the west as a hub of investment (“climate finance”) is not a retrograde step — it is exactly what London as a powerful financial capital should do and where we have the expertise to make an impact. So, good for Miliband and Starmer for showing up, when so many other European leaders fell by the wayside, citing national woes or busy washing their hair. They ranged from Olaf Scholz in Germany, to Justin Trudeau in Canada and Macron, once a loquacious leader at these shebangs, now hanging on grimly to the domestic driving wheel and off the global grid. Sometimes, it’s right to turn up, however odd the setting and easy the brickbats, to pursue what needs to happen — and to stave off something a lot worse.
Anne McElvoy is a columnist for The Standard and head of audio at Politico
