Connect with us

Published

on

The UK has unveiled a punchy new climate goal to slash its emissions by 81% by 2035.

The government said it is on a mission to “tackle the climate crisis in a way that makes the British people better off”, by investing in clean, home-grown power and cutting ties with volatile fossil fuel markets.

Announcing the pledge at the COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, the prime minister Keir Starmer said: “The race is on for the clean energy jobs of the future, the economy of tomorrow.

The target forms part of the UK’s new climate plan, and Sir Keir urged other countries at the summit to “come forward with ambitious targets of their own.”

So far the UK has cut emissions by 50% compared with levels in 1990.

The pledge has gone down well at the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, where rich, polluting countries like the UK are expected to lead by example among the 200 countries gathered for the talks.

Kenya’s foreign secretary called the target “quite ambitious”.

The world needs “concrete examples of one of the key economies making positive strides towards dealing with climate change”, Musalia Mudavadi told Sky News.

But he warned countries would be watching to ensure “that nobody is back-pedalling”.

Read more:
Starmer tells private sector to ‘start paying their fair share’
The almighty row over climate cash that’s about to boil over

The UK’s pledge matches what its climate advisers say is needed to tackle climate change at home and meet a promise it made under the landmark Paris Agreement, struck at COP21 in 2015.

But the advisers, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), warned the government is missing plans it needs to get to that target.

“The good news is [the 81% target] is achievable,” said the CCC’s new chief Emma Pinchbeck.

“The less good news for government is they are behind on their [existing] targets.”

That’s not because “we don’t have the technologies available, or that the economics don’t work”, she said.

“The issue is that we haven’t had a delivery plan from the government that can get us there.”

Starmer’s promise a small ray of sunshine



Tom Clarke

Science and technology editor

@t0mclark3

Sir Keir Starmer’s arrival at COP29 with a promise to drastically cut the UK’s carbon emissions will be a small ray of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy start to the climate talks.

The election of Donald Trump, who has vowed to drag the world’s largest economy out of the negotiations, was a colossal setback for a round of talks dedicated to raising ambition – and cash for the transition away from fossil fuels.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Sir Keir was one of the few heads of the G20 to actually show up at the talks. President Biden is absent, so too are the leaders of China, Brazil, Germany and France.

The UK’s commitment to cutting emissions will be seen as a statement that it is possible to be a leading economy and leave fossil fuels behind. This reinforces the message these talks are urgently trying to send: that net zero is an opportunity for growth, not economic suicide.

But it’s a political risk. Getting to the 81% cut in emissions within 10 years will take a colossal and, in the short term, costly effort.

Labour’s plans for zero carbon electricity, already ambitious, won’t get us there alone. Making homes more energy efficient and heating them without gas will be essential. So too will fiddly things like protecting peat bogs, uplands and reforming agriculture.

Within the corridors of this summit, Sir Keir’s gamble will be celebrated. Back home, the response might be less enthusiastic.

The UK has been “arguably the leading country in the world at getting emissions out of the power plant that provides the electricity coming through your plug”.

But the “problem right now is definitely in how we heat our homes and transport, how we get around”, and flying and shipping also need plans to get clean, she said.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Leaders are ‘pressing on’ with climate action

Oil and gas are a ‘gift’ from god

The announcement puts more pressure on other major emitters, as well as host nation Azerbaijan, to publish their own climate plans, known in UN jargon as NDCs (nationally determined contributions).

In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, Azerbaijan’s lead negotiator refused to commit to upgrading its current plan while leading the talks.

Azerbaijan’s autocratic president Ilham Aliyev used his opening speech to defend the country’s fossil fuel industry, calling oil and gas a “gift of the God”, just like the sun and wind.

He lashed out at Western critics of his country’s oil and gas industry, saying it had been the victim of a “well-orchestrated campaign of slander and blackmail” and “fake news”.

President Aliyev called it “not fair” to call Azerbaijan a “petrostate”, because it accounts for less than 1% of the world’s oil and gas.

His government relies on fossil fuels for 60% of its budget.

Continue Reading

Politics

Conservatives call for Labour’s Lucy Powell to resign over grooming gang remarks

Published

on

By

Conservatives call for Labour's Lucy Powell to resign over grooming gang remarks

The Conservatives are calling for Lucy Powell to resign after the Labour MP’s exchange with a commentator about grooming gangs.

The comment was made by Ms Powell, the leader of the House of Commons, after Conservative political commentator Tim Montgomerie started to ask a question on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions.

“I don’t know if you saw the documentary on Channel 4 about rape gangs,” he started, in relation to the recent programme Groomed: A National Scandal, which centred around five girls who were sexually abused by rape gangs.

Ms Powell, who is MP for Manchester Central, responded: “Oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now, do we? Yeah, OK, let’s get that dog whistle out.”

Sir Keir Starmer and the government have been under sustained pressure from political opponents over the handling of historical sex abuse cases in the UK.

ConservativeHome founder Mr Montgomerie, who will be appearing on Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips, continued: “There is a real issue where… There were so many people in local government, in the authorities, who, for good reason, were worried about upsetting community tensions, that those girls went undefended.”

The conversation moved on, but politicians criticised Ms Powell’s comment, with some calling for her to resign.

More on Labour

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said in a statement: “This shocking outburst from a Labour cabinet minister belittles the thousands of girls and women who were raped by grooming gangs over decades.

“We have consistently called for a national enquiry in parliament, which has been blocked by Labour ministers who don’t seem to know or care about the disgusting crimes which have been perpetrated.

“Anyone who has seen the shocking Channel 4 documentary will know that it is clearer than ever that this is not a ‘dog whistle’.

“To dismiss thousands of victims who were raped and the cover up that followed is sickening. She should resign.”

šŸ‘‰ Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app šŸ‘ˆ

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said: “Labour’s Lucy Powell thinks it’s a ‘dog whistle’ to demand arrests and accountability for the rape gangs. What a disgusting betrayal of the victims. They are part of the cover-up.”

Ousted Reform MP Rupert Lowe, now an independent, shared a letter he wrote to Ms Powell demanding she apologise, calling her comments “deeply, deeply offensive”.

On X on Saturday night, Ms Powell said: “In the heat of a discussion on AQ, I would like to clarify that I regard issues of child exploitation and grooming with the utmost seriousness. I’m sorry if this was unclear.

“I was challenging the political point scoring around it, not the issue itself. As a constituency MP I’ve dealt with horrendous cases. This Gvt is acting to get to the truth, and deliver justice.”

Read more:
Grooming gangs scandal timeline
PM says government will fund further local grooming gangs inquiries if ‘needed’

Sky News has contacted the office for the Leader of the House of Commons for comment.

The long-running row over grooming cases has continued after Labour promised five local inquiries into grooming gangs in January.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk had accused Sir Keir of being “complicit” in the failure of authorities to protect victims and prosecute abusers while the PM was director of public prosecutions from 2008-2013.

The prime minister has repeatedly defended his record, saying it shows he tackled the issue head-on.

Continue Reading

Politics

Reform’s mission to ‘remoralise’ young people, says party chairman

Published

on

By

Reform's mission to 'remoralise' young people, says party chairman

Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf says his party’s mission is to “remoralise” young people.

Speaking off the back of his party’s massive gains in the local elections, Mr Yusuf said young people were being taught to “hate their country” and that Reform’s mission was to change their morals.

“There has been an industrial-scale demoralisation, particularly of young people in this country, who are basically being taught quite deliberately that they should hate their country; they should be deeply ashamed of their country’s history; that the United Kingdom had a brutal empire,” he told The Times.

šŸ‘‰ Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app šŸ‘ˆ

“Look, of course, you know, the British Empire was not perfect, but I actually think overall the British Empire did much more good for the world than it did bad.”

He said the party’s mission was to “remoralise” the youth and that within a couple of months of gaining power, Reform would erect statues of great British figures and end “all this woke nonsense”.

He continued: “How many young people know who Isambard Kingdom Brunel is? Look at the character assassination that has occurred on the legacy of Sir Winston Churchill.

More on Reform Uk

“The fact that they have to cover up his statue because they don’t want to provoke protesters. I mean that’s the sort of utterly indefensible so-called leadership that we’ve had and young people feel that in their bones.”

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Inside Reform’s election success

Read more:
Tory leader apologises to councillors as Reform makes big gains
‘I get it’: Starmer responds after losing Runcorn by-election to Reform UK

He said he believes Reform leader Nigel Farage’s message is “resonating” with young people and added: “I think that a lot of young people we speak to feel very smothered by a finger-wagging sort of teaching class.

“They feel very restricted, they feel a huge lack of opportunity … You’re going to hear from us over the next couple of years more and more of a policy platform for young people, for Gen Z and for millennials.”

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Voters turn to Reform UK

Mr Farage has been more focused on what his party’s trajectory is doing to the Conservatives, saying in his column for The Telegraph that Kemi Badenoch’s party had been “hollowed out” and is experiencing a “strange death” due to the rising popularity of Reform.

He said the UK had reached a “new political age”, reiterating earlier claims that two-party politics “is finished”.

Reform chairman Zia Yusuf will be appearing on Sky News’ Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips from 8.30am this morning.

Continue Reading

Politics

OKX fires back at Tron’s Justin Sun over mysterious ‘freeze notice’

Published

on

By

<div>OKX fires back at Tron's Justin Sun over mysterious 'freeze notice'</div>

<div>OKX fires back at Tron's Justin Sun over mysterious 'freeze notice'</div>

OKX founder and CEO Star Xu has publicly defended the crypto exchange after Tron founder Justin Sun accused it of failing to act on a law enforcement request to freeze stolen funds following a recent hack of Tron’s official X account.

ā€œOKX also has consumers protection policy according to law, we can’t freeze a customer’s funds according to your personal X post or an oral communication. I think you should understand it as the CEO of HTX,ā€ Xu said in an X post.

OKX says there is no communication in the spam box, either

Xu said that the crypto exchange had not received any related correspondence through OKX’s official channels. ā€œOur LE cooperation team just checked the email, including the spam box; we haven’t received any request related with this case,ā€ Xu said.

Cryptocurrencies, Tron, OKX
Source: Star Xu

In what is now an unavailable X post, but was screenshotted by Xu, Sun had earlier claimed that OKX has not responded to a ā€œfreeze noticeā€ sent to its official email address from a ā€œrelevant law enforcement agency.ā€ Sun said that he had no other way to contact OKX’s compliance department.

ā€œThese stolen funds do not belong to me; I’m acting to protect the community,ā€ Sun said. On May 3, Tron DAO told its 1.7 million X followers that its account had been compromised. Tron explained that during the breach, an unauthorized party posted a malicious contract address, sent direct messages, and followed unfamiliar accounts.

ā€œIf you received a DM from our account on May 2, please delete it and consider it the work of the attacker.ā€

In response to Sun’s claims of inaction, Xu publicly called on him to provide a screenshot showing when and where the law enforcement request was made.

The Tron incident is one of several recent security breaches involving high-profile crypto accounts on X.

Related: Over 14,500 Tron addresses at risk of silent hijacking

Kaito AI, an artificial intelligence-powered platform that aggregates crypto data to provide market analysis for users, and its founder, Yu Hu, were the victims of an X social media hack on March 15. The hackers opened up a short position on KAITO tokens before posting that the Kaito wallets were compromised and advised users that their funds were not safe.

The Pump.fun X account was compromised on Feb. 26 to promote a fake governance token called ā€œPUMPā€ and other fraudulent coins.

Meanwhile, the X account of UK member of Parliament and Leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell, was hacked to promote a scam crypto token.

Magazine: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight

Continue Reading

Trending