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Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate email Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are being urged not to “sideline” the climate crisis in their Tory leadership race, amid growing alarm that this issue is being forgotten. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) says […] More

Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate email A final decision on whether a hugely controversial new coal mine in Cumbria should get the go ahead has been delayed again. The government had been due to rule next week on whether planning permission […] More

Britain is likely to face more wildfires because of climate change and “must learn to live with extreme events”, said Cabinet Office minister Kit Malthouse.But he admitted that a plan to make the country more resilience to the climate crisis and other emergencies would be delayed until the new prime minister is installed at No 10.Labour claimed the government had gone “missing while Britain burns” during the recent heatwave which saw record temperatures and dozens of homes destroyed in wildfires.Deputy leader Angela Rayner accused ministers of dragging their feet – pointing out that they were yet to produce a national resilience strategy despite a consultation finishing in September.“It’s already been 10 months – why should British people be forced to wait a whole year?” said Ms Rayner. “It’s the primary duty of any government to keep the country safe.”RecommendedThe Labour frontbencher added: “It has literally taken the country to go up in flames for the minister to turn his focus on this emergency … Isn’t it the truth that the prime minister and his entire government have gone missing while Britain burned?”Mr Malthouse denied failing to prepare for the crisis. He told the Commons the government recognised that “we are likely to experience more of these incidents and that we should not under-estimate their speed, scope and severity”.He added: “Britain may be unaccustomed to such high temperatures but the UK, along with our European neighbours, must learn to live with extreme events such as these … We will continue to face acute events driven by climate change.”But the Cabinet Office minister said the national resilience strategy would have to wait until the autumn – promising it would be launched at “earliest possible opportunity by the incoming administration”.Mr Malthouse said the government was “at the forefront of international efforts to reach net zero” – and pointed out that the environment department has a national adaptation programme to help manage climate change.He also defended Boris Johnson, who was accused “clocking off” after it was confirmed he will miss a meeting of the government’s emergency Cobra committee at the weekend.Ms Rayner said the was “no Churchill – he has been missing in action. Where was he when Cobra was called last weekend?”But Mr Malthouse said the prime minister had “monitored our work and has been specifically briefed on a number of occasions”.The Labour deputy leader also warned that the Tory leadership contenders vying to succeed Mr Johnson “will leave us vulnerable” to climate change-caused disasters.Rishi Sunak, who vowed to uphold the ban on onshore wind farms on Wednesday, has warned that if progress on the plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 is “too hard and too fast” it would lose public support.Foreign secretary Liz Truss has suggested she wanted to look again at policies aimed at achieving net zero, vowing to stop the green levies which help pay for investment in renewable energy.Meanwhile, Labour MP Ian Lavery criticised the “paltry” 2 per cent pay increase proposed for firefighters, adding: “It is time we stopped clapping the great members of fire and rescue services, and start paying.”But Mr Malthouse said the pay review was “not within control of the government”, and involved local authorities who administered fire services – including councils run by Labour.RecommendedEarlier on Wednesday, Mr Johnson appeared to reject a call by Tory MP Caroline Nokes to help firefighters with a ban on disposable barbeques and Chinese sky lanterns.London’s Fire Commissioner Andy Roe had called for an urgent ban on disposable barbecues, as firefighters continue to feel the effects of unprecedented heatwave.“The key thing is for people to behave responsibly with these things,” the prime minister said at PMQs. “It’s clearly insane to take a disposable barbeque onto dry grass.” More

The UK government has given the go-ahead for the new Sizewell C nuclear power station to be built. The business secretary has approved the application for the development of the new plant in Suffolk. It has been estimated the nuclear power station will generate enough low-carbon electricity to power six million homes. The Planning Inspectorate said it would help the UK along the way to achieving net-zero emissions. The approval comes nearly two years after the application for Sizewell C to be built was submitted to the government agency. RecommendedThe Planning Inspectorate had recommended its approval only if the water supply strategy was resolved and more information provided to reassure ministers it was in line with habitats regulations. The business secretary approved the project on Wednesday. Campaigners against the site hit out at the decision, vowing to keep fighting against its development. “The government has been forced to ram through a damaging project to shore up its energy strategy but the fact that the Planning Inspectorate recommended Sizewell C be refused consent is a huge victory for all of us,” campaign group Stop Sizewell C said. “The wrong decision has been made but it’s not the end of our campaign to Stop Sizewell C.”RecommendedHundreds marched against the plant back in May, which has faced backlash from campaigners worried about the potential impact on water supply, biodiversity and coastal erosion. Mr Kwarteng said the move was part of a “big week of energy security” in a tweet on Wednesday. More

Conservative leadership contender Rishi Sunak has promised to “scrap” Boris Johnson’s plan to relax a ban on onshore wind farms in an appeal to the Tory right on climate.The former chancellor said he would uphold the ban if he wins the contest and becomes prime minister – citing the “distress and disruption” that onshore wind farms can cause.David Cameron’s government introduced a de facto ban on new onshore wind farm construction in 2016 when development was excluded from any green electricity subsidies.And under current government plans, local communities in England would be asked to consent to host new turbines in return for discounted electricity bills.But Mr Sunak said on Wednesday: “I want to reassure communities that as prime minister I would scrap plans to relax the ban on onshore wind in England, instead focusing on building more turbines offshore.”A YouGov poll from September found that 62 per cent of Tory voters would support an offshore wind farm being built in their area, while on 28 per cent would be opposed.RecommendedEd Miliband, Labour’s shadow climate change secretary, said it was “economic illiteracy and unilateral economic disarmament in the fight against the climate crisis that Rishi Sunak wants to keep the ban on onshore wind”.Wera Hobhouse, the Lib Dems’ energy spokesperson, said Mr Sunak’s promise showed “he is completely out of touch with reality”.She added: “Any supposed energy security strategy without onshore wind simply makes no sense … Onshore wind sites can be up and running, providing low-cost clean power for bill payers, in around a year.”The frontrunner – just one vote short of becoming one of the final two candidates – also pledged to make UK self-sufficient in energy production by 2045.Under Mr Sunak’s plan a new “energy sovereignty” target for 2045 would be written in to law, and an energy security committee would co-ordinate action to keep power stations online, protect gas reserves and reform markets to cut consumers’ bills.A dedicated energy ministry would be formed by breaking up the current Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).Mr Sunak said: “As energy bills skyrocket in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it has never been more important that our country achieves energy sovereignty, so that we’re no longer reliant on the volatility of the global energy supply.”It comes after Mr Sunak warned that if progress on the plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 is “too hard and too fast” it would lose public support.Climate campaigns and Tory supporters of the net zero commitment fear Mr Johnson’s successor will backslide on policies aimed at achieving the landmark 2050 pledge.Foreign secretary Liz Truss suggested she wanted to look again at policies aimed at achieving net zero, vowing to stop the levies which help pay for investment in renewable energy. Rival Penny Mordaunt said the 2050 target “mustn’t clobber people” financially.Chris Skidmore – chair of the Net Zero Support Group of Tory MPs keen to uphold the target – welcomed Mr Sunak’s latest announcements.“A dedicated Department for Energy gives better focus on net zero, while an energy security target highlights that renewable energy provides energy sovereignty – ending foreign fossil fuel dependence,” he tweeted.Tory MP Robert Jenrick also defended Mr Sunak’s green credentials, describing him as “in favour of a sensible and credible plan to net zero”.The former minister told Sky News: “What he has said is that this is a big and expensive and logistically difficult journey for the country, and we’ve got to make sure we keep the public with us on that path.”Mr Jenrick added: “When we’re thinking of new pledges – whether that’s the introduction of electric vehicles, or mandating that homes have to have ground-source heat pumps – we’ve got to think about the pound in people’s pocket.“Because if the public lose faith in this, then we’re only going to set back our path to net zero.”RecommendedA final vote of Tory MPs on Wednesday will select the two candidates to be put to the party’s membership in the race for No 10.Ms Truss and Ms Mordaunt are battling to win over Kemi Badenoch’s supporters after she was knocked out of the contest. More

Conservative leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch has performed a double U-turn on whether she supports climate change targets, backing and then rowing back from the policy.Ms Badenoch, a right-winger who has focused her campaign on culture war issues, attracted criticism after she described net zero targets as “unilateral economic disarmament” early in the contest. There is a scientific consensus that the earth will face catastrophic levels of climate change unless carbon emissions are reduced to a net zero by 2050 – with some calling for an earlier target.But under pressure at a climate hustings on Monday she then told an audience that she backed the policy, joining the four other candidates in the scientific mainstream.Yet soon after the debate she reverted to type, taking to the Murdoch-owned TalkTV news channel to again voice doubts about the policy.Recommended“Yes, there are circumstances where I would delay it,” she told TalkTV’s The News Desk programme when asked about net zero.”But I think that the target itself is a bit of a red herring. We need to look at the plan.”I believe there is climate change and that’s something we do need to tackle, but we have to do it in a way that doesn’t bankrupt our economy. “We’ve got to take people with us. What would happen if we moved it to 2060 or 2070? We’re not going to be here. Let’s be realistic”.The net zero 2050 target was written into law by Theresa May and continued by Boris Johnson. RecommendedUnder the plan the UK would have to emit no more carbon than it absorbs by 2050, bringing it into line with its Paris climate commitments.Ms Badenoch remains in the race to replace Boris Johnson, alongside Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt. Tory MPs will vote later on Tuesday on which candidate to eliminate next. More

Ministers failed to outline exactly how their net zero strategy will achieve emissions targets, a court ruled on Monday – dealing the government’s climate change credentials a serious blow on the day Britain sweltered under its first ever red extreme temperature alert.Proposals for meeting emission targets were too vague for business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng to claim in parliament that the government was on track to fulfil its global warming promises, the High Court said.Detailed analysis was omitted from the strategy even though “it is plain from the evidence before the court that the information existed at the time”, Mr Justice Holgate concluded.Legal campaigners the Good Law Project, who mounted the challenge with Friends of the Earth and Client Earth, said the ruling amounted to a finding that the strategy was “illegal and inadequate” and said Mr Kwarteng had been ordered to produce an improved version within eight months and to pay the activists’ costs.The embarrassing setback came as an influential parliamentary committee warned of a “major hole at the centre of government” over the resilience of the UK’s critical national infrastructure to climate change.RecommendedAnd Boris Johnson was accused of “clocking off” as he missed a third meeting of the government’s emergency Cobra committee to discuss the heatwave, which saw flights disrupted by melting runways at Luton airport and RAF Brize Norton as temperatures topped 38C.Record temperature levels were broken twice in a day in Wales, and firefighters reported at least 24 wildfires in 48 hours in England and Wales – double the number recorded in all of July last year.Tuesday is expected to be even warmer, with some forecasts estimating highs of 43C – well above the previous peak of 38.7C recorded in 2019.People are being advised not to travel on public transport unless “absolutely necessary”, while multiple schools have told The Independent that around a third of their pupils – or in some cases more than half – are absent today.Experts said that more must be done to “heat-proof” the country, which is “not built for 40C”.Professor Hannah Cloke, a natural hazards researcher at the University of Reading, said “severe heatwaves are a problem that’s not going away – and they will get worse.”She added: “We can no longer tolerate poor design of our buildings and our cities, and we urgently need to think about things like reducing overheating, shading, trees, building for cooling, and providing these public cooling spaces … because we’re not prepared and we’re not built for 40 degrees.”All five of the contenders for the Conservative leadership are now committed to Mr Johnson’s 2050 target for net zero carbon emissions in the UK, after Kemi Badenoch became to last to back the goal.But Ms Badenoch later branded the deadline a “red herring” and indicated she was ready to let it slip to avoid damaging the UK’s economy, telling Talk TV’s The News Desk: “There are circumstances where I would delay it…“The legislation we’ve put in is for 2050. That is a long, long time in the future. Practically none of us will still be here to be held accountable for it. So, I think it’s a red herring.“What would happen if we moved it to 2060 or 2070? We’re not going to be here. Let’s be realistic about what we can do now with the responsibility and the power and the levers that we have available.”Monday’s High Court ruling found that information supplied by officials to Mr Kwarteng about the effectiveness of various climate change policies was not precise enough for him to be able to assure MPs to a “legally essential” standard that the government was on track for net zero.And it said the net zero strategy did not make clear that official predictions were for 95 per cent of emissions to be eliminated, rather than 100 per cent, or explain how the 5 per cent shortfall could be made up.The Good Law Project said: “The dangerous heatwave this week is a stark reminder of the very real threat we face.“Our infrastructure and homes were designed for a climate that no longer exists. This cannot wait. The net zero target must be a road map to a sustainable future – not a lie we tell our children.”A Beis spokesperson said: “The Net Zero Strategy remains government policy and has not been quashed. The judge made no criticism about the substance of our plans which are well on track and, in fact, the claimants themselves described them as ‘laudable’ during the proceedings.”Meanwhile, parliament’s joint committee on the national security strategy blasted government minister Michael Ellis for refusing to give evidence to its inquiry on how critical national infrastructure, like power networks, railway lines and roads, is being prepared for the effects of climate change.Despite previously describing himself as the minister “responsible for resilience and security”, Mr Ellis told the committee he would not attend a 4 July hearing as he was “not best placed to give evidence” on a “technical and specialist matter”.Committee chair Margaret Beckett said: “The unfortunate impression that we are gaining … is that there are no ministers with responsibility for the resilience of critical national infrastructure to the effects of climate change, nor for cross-government climate adaptation efforts. This would be quite a shocking admission from the government.”Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Johnson appeared to have “checked out” as the prime minister missed a Cobra meeting on the heatwave to attend Farnborough Air Show, where he boasted to business leaders about his record in office and recounted how he had taken the controls of a Typhoon fighter jet on a visit to RAF Coningsby last week.The PM was previously criticised for missing a Cobra meeting on the heatwave on Saturday, when he hosted a farewell party for supporters at country retreat Chequers.“For many people it’s going to be a real struggle today and tomorrow in the heat, and they’re seeing a prime minister who’s basically checked out, so he’s not really doing anything,” said Starmer.And London mayor Sadiq Khan said Mr Johnson should resign immediately rather than enjoy a “joyride” on a fighter jet and “go on a jolly”.But Downing Street insisted it was “not unusual” for meetings of the emergency committee to led by ministers rather than the PM. Cabinet Office minister Kit Malthouse, who took the chair today, said Mr Johnson was being regularly updated and denounced what he said was “a politically motivated assault upon the prime minister, which is completely unfair”.The shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband told The Independent: “While Britain boils, the Conservatives bury their heads in the sand about the greatest long-term threat our country faces, the climate crisis.“For years we have heard the warnings about a rapidly warming world. But Tory politicians failed to listen. Now, as Britain swelters and our railways melt, the Conservatives waste their time on fantasy economics and climate denial.Recommended“Britain faces a choice – higher energy bills, instability and the chaos of a rapidly warming world with the Conservatives, or a plan for a green energy sprint to tackle the climate crisis and the cost of living crisis with Labour.”A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said: “The net zero strategy remains government policy and has not been quashed. The judge made no criticism about the substance of our plans which are well on track and, in fact, the claimants themselves described them as ‘laudable’ during the proceedings.” More

Taking action on the climate emergency is the bottom priority for Conservative members in the party’s leadership contest, a poll has found.Just 4 per cent of those surveyed by pollster YouGov said hitting the UK’s net zero emissions target by 2050 was one of their top three priorities for the next prime minister.The survey, commissioned by the Times found that winning a general election, cutting taxes, increasing defend spending and strengthening the UK’s global standing were all more important to members.Out of the 10 policy areas listed, reaching net zero was placed bottom.The news comes as an “unprecedented” heatwave triggers red warnings and advance to remain inside across southern Britain, with temperatures expected to reach 40 degrees celsius.RecommendedWhile the YouGov survey suggests apathy to the climate emergency among the governing party faithful, previous research has suggested that this does not necessarily translate into antipathy. The Independent last week reported a poll of members conducted by Opinium that only a small minority, 37 per cent, of Tory members think the UK government is “overreacting” with its climate policies.22 per cent of Tory members believed the government had been underreacting while 30 per cent say it is getting the balance of action about right – an apparently endorsement of net zero.That finding came despite a push from figures on the British right like ex Brexit party leader Nigel Farage and Tory backbencher Steve Baker to campaign against the policy. Out of all the Tory leadership candidates only Rishi Sunak has been vocal in his support of the net zero target without reservation, and right-winger Kemi Badenoch has described it as “unilateral economic disarmament”.She and other conservatives argue that the UK can gain an advantage by not pulling its weight on climate targets. Under net zero, the UK would have to produce no more carbon than it absorbs by 2050. There is a scientific consensus that this approach is required to avert catastrophic climate disaster, though some significant effects will still be felt.RecommendedPolling by Ipsos MORI conducted in October found widespread public support for both net zero in principle and for policies such as frequent flier levies and phasing out gas boilers. Half (54 per cent) of UK voters think that the country should be reducing its carbon emissions to net zero sooner than 2050, with 83 per cent extremely, very or fairly worried about climate change. More