As we hurtle knowingly towards a world that could be nearly three degrees hotter, scientists are running out of words to describe the urgency of taking action now.
The election was an opportunity for candidates of all political parties to outdo each other with the boldness of their ambitions to decarbonise the UK and repair and restore our devastated natural world. Yet neither of the UK’s two main parties has acknowledged the scale of the challenges ahead. Labour has not formulated plans ambitious enough to address them.
In the blue corner, the Conservative Party’s obsession with planet-wrecking fossil fuels continues unabated. In the end phases of their time in office, they stoked their reckless culture war in a desperate lurch to the right, doing immense damage to the UK’s precious political consensus on climate action.
In the meantime, you would expect the Labour Party to be announcing an all-encompassing, all-of-government environmental mission to improve the lives of millions with a nationwide drive to insulate homes, cut energy bills and improve the health of both people and planet.
However, any such plans were downsized when the party snatched back its flagship offer to voters to invest £28bn a year in green projects. Disappointingly, addressing the climate and nature crises didn’t even make the cut as one of PM Starmer’s “five bold missions”.
So with Labour now in office, here are five additional missions to guide Starmer’s new government to be bolder, braver and better than we have seen to date.
Be honest about the challenge
And that starts with being straight with the public about the scale and scope of the climate and nature emergencies. We need a government that will base its policies on what’s scientifically necessary, not what’s deemed to be politically palatable. Starmer needs to make clear that investing now to decarbonise Britain and restore our natural world is not only necessary, it is also beneficial for our health, quality of life and the economy.
Sadly, however, Labour already seems to be shying away from making that case, adopting the same negative framing as the Conservatives: investment in the environment is presented as a luxury we can’t afford, not a necessity we can’t afford to delay.
The reality is that the costs of runaway climate change could see national debt grow to a staggering 289% of GDP by 2050. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, our continued reliance on natural gas could cost more than double the public investment required to deliver net zero. And the capital investment to get to net zero will more than pay for itself through savings on fuel, healthcare and other costs. In short, the quicker we invest, the cheaper it will be.
Invest now and at scale
The second mission for the new Labour government should therefore be to reverse their U-turn and reinstate the £28bn annual pledge. For many – the Green Party included – £28bn a year was the floor, not the ceiling of what is so urgently required.
And it is also a figure that aligns with what experts including Nicholas Stern and his colleagues at the London School of Economics have called for – investment of around 1% of GDP in tackling climate change and biodiversity loss.
One of the biggest casualties of Labour’s U-turn was their plan to improve energy efficiency in 19m homes across the decade. Funding has tumbled from £6bn a year to £2.64bn, leaving ordinary people to pick up the tab for the state’s failure to invest. The result is higher energy bills, cold and draughty homes and poorer health.
Labour should not only reverse this decision and reinstate their mass drive for energy efficiency in homes at the original timeline, they should also increase state funding for clean and renewable energy.
The TUC recommends the new government should be allocating at least £40bn to a new public energy vehicle like Labour’s proposed GB Energy, followed by £20-40bn from 2030. So the announcement of just an £8.3bn capitalisation, while a welcome down payment, simply doesn’t go far enough.
Support the transition
This should be uncontroversial for a Labour Party – they need to support a worker-led just transition to a zero-carbon society. That of course will include oil and gas workers, who are currently being left in the lurch without a say on key planning decisions, and having to pay to retrain themselves.
The government needs a clear plan to ensure – in their words – that “no worker or community is left behind”. As a start, this should include an Offshore Training Passport to enable workers to move more easily into the clean energy sector, along with a retraining guarantee and improved pay and conditions.
But it is not just people in the oil and gas sector who are worried about their job security. Farmers, for example, are on the frontline of climate change and are also instrumental in our national efforts both to cut emissions and to halt national biodiversity loss.
They are crying out for support, but while the Labour Party has now committed to make Environmental Land Management schemes work, this falls far short of setting out how the farming budget could be allocated to restore the natural world. It also fails to support the shift to agro-ecological methods of farming.
We need the government to back farmers with the support they need to adopt sustainable practices. Whatever sector of the economy, workers and unions are best placed to lead the drive to decarbonisation.
Restore nature and public access to nature
As for the national scandal that the UK is now one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, there is serious concern among NGOs about Labour’s lack of policy on nature.
While it is welcome that Labour pledged to halt the decline of British species by 2030 and to protect 30% of our lands and seas, they urgently need to set out credible plans to actually achieve those targets, given how far off track the UK has already fallen.
A good starting point would be for Labour to fully back the Climate and Nature Bill. The government should also pledge to renew and increase funding for the Nature for Climate Fund, which is currently the biggest fund to invest in nature. They should also follow the Green Party’s plan to enshrine the rights of nature in law and bring in a new Independent Commission for Nature to protect and restore our natural environment.
But as well as a plan to restore nature, Labour should also have one to restore public access to it. There is a long history of the party fighting for such rights including, most recently, through the Countryside and Rights of Way Act under Tony Blair’s government. The time has come for Labour to open access further with the introduction of a more comprehensive Scottish-style Right to Roam in the next parliament.
Be an environmental world leader
Finally, prime minister Starmer must not be absent on the global stage at a moment that requires international collaboration on the same scale as the postwar era of reconstruction.
Labour must show similar determination now to bring in urgent reforms to address the global debt crisis and to help mobilise the trillions of dollars needed to address the climate and nature crises. We need to reappoint a global climate envoy who will play an active role across multilateral negotiations, including working with progressive allies through the High Ambition Coalition and joining the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance.
Nor should we ignore the obvious partnership at our own back door, however much Labour might wish to seem tough on Brexit. But now more than ever we need a close and effective partnership with the EU, focused on accelerating decarbonisation across the continent, for example by collaborating on the development of clean energy infrastructure or aligning on carbon pricing.
We also need to recognise that the UK has its own historic responsibility to play our part in global solutions. Labour needs urgently to restore our aid commitment to at least 0.7% of our gross national income, as well as pledge significant new and additional funding beyond that for climate finance. This can and should be paid for by the biggest polluters through taxes on carbon, and on wealth.
Whether it is action at home or abroad, Labour carries a heavy mantle of responsibility to this generation and those that will follow. The four new Green MPs in parliament will hold them to account, reminding them that improving millions of lives by addressing the climate and nature emergencies is, in fact, a core national mission after all.
Caroline Lucas is the former leader of the Green Party
