UK pledges punchy new climate goal – but these parts of the puzzle are missing

Published

2 months ago

November 12, 2024

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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”.

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.

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.

Politics

‘It’s a smash and grab raid on the constitution’: The last of the hereditary peers

Published

10 hours ago

January 2, 2025

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'It's a smash and grab raid on the constitution': The last of the hereditary peers

For centuries an odd tradition lay dormant in our democracy.

A number of nobleman have had the chance to sit in parliament, simply by birthright – 92 seats in the House of Lords are eligible to male heirs in specific families and 88 men have taken these seats and currently sit in the second chamber to vote on legislation.

It is not known exactly when this quirk in our parliamentary system started but Sir Keir Starmer‘s government is trying to end it.

The prime minister has said that the right to sit in the second chamber bestowed at birth is an “indefensible” principle and his government have started the process to end hereditary peers for good.

It will mean that those with hereditary peerages will have to be part of the process that gets them voted out of a job they had previously been entitled to for the rest of their life.

The last of the hereditaries

We meet the Earl of Devon who has one of the oldest hereditary peerages.

He can trace his family title back to the Saxons, but the right to sit in the House of Lords came much later – he says granted in 1142 for supporting the first female sovereign, Empress Matilda.

He is the 38th Earl of Devon since then and the last to sit in the Lords as a hereditary.

His castle in Devon places him in touch with the community he represents – it is one of the main reasons he feels strongly that he adds value to parliament.

He argues he and his peers bring a certain life experience with them that the political appointees do not.

He says there is a greater regional representation within the UK and he has a deeper understanding of the historical constitutional workings of parliament that comes from passing knowledge from generation to generation.

“I certainly feel that the role that the hereditary peers play in the House of Lords is exemplary,” he says.

He greatly defends the idea of service that he and his peers strive for but he also says there is a social purpose and social value to the hereditary principle as the monarch is the epitome of it.

“I don’t think that Keir Starmer is a republican but it does beg the question of once the hereditaries go is the king next,” he says.

By contrast, Lord Strathclyde has one of the newest hereditary peerages.

He has not only participated fully as a member of the Lords but also served in previous Conservative governments in senior roles.

He believes this latest intervention by the government is a purely political move.

“I think the real reason why the government wants to get rid of them is because most of them are not members of the Labour Party,” he says.

“So it’s a smash and grab raid on the constitution. Get rid of your opponents and allow the prime minister to control who entered the House of Lords.

“I can guarantee you that once this bill is through and becomes law, there will be no further reform of the House of Lords no matter what ministers say.”

It is true that over half of hereditary peers are Conservatives and astonishingly few are Labour – there are only four.

But removing the hereditaries doesn’t change the composition of the Lords all that much.

The Lords is 70% men, which would only drop 3% once these peers are removed, and the percentage of Conservative peers overall in the house only drops by 2% if all the hereditaries leave overnight.

Broader Reform

Reform has been talked about since the 1700s when there was an attempt to cap the size of the swollen chamber now at more than 800 members.

But despite successive governments promising reform, the House has only got larger.

Hereditary peers have long maintained that once the government passes this first stage of reform they will be less motivated by other opportunities to modernise the second chamber.

In 1999, Blair culled the amount of hereditary peerages (having previously promised to get rid of them all).

While 650 departed, a deal was struck for 92 to remain with replacements when these peers died or retired and filled by a bizarre system of byelections, where the only eligible candidates were hereditary peers.

The current leader of the Lords, Baroness Smith, says the elections are a bizarre, almost shameful part of our democracy and compares them to the Dunny-on-the-Wold in Blackadder where there is only one eligible voter in the entire constituency.

While the government’s aim to abolish these peerages has finally stepped up a gear, it is also true that Labour has watered down promises on broader reform in the Lords.

Pre-election, it had floated the idea of abolishing the second chamber altogether.

In the manifesto the party modified that to instead reducing the scale of the Lords through a retirement age, but that was not in the King’s speech and no timeline for those objectives has been given by the government.

Baroness Smith insists these are still commitments and the government is currently looking at how to implement them, though it does seem to be moving at a much slower pace than this first stage of removing the hereditary peers who, it seems, will hang up their ancient robes for good at the end of this parliamentary session.