Introducing Political Heat
A newsletter and podcast to make sense of climate politics
It’s June 2019, and the contest to find a new leader for the Conservative Party - and the UK - is in full swing. 13 candidates have thrown their hats into the ring, after a series of backbench rebellions on Brexit created a parliamentary stalemate. Theresa May will be Prime Minister until the leadership race ends - and she’s hurrying to create a more edifying legacy.
On the streets of Westminster, new voices and slogans have been taking over from the Leavers and Remainers. School children striking for the climate. Extinction Rebellion banners and blockades. And public concern about the climate crisis is surging.
Two days after the Conservative leadership nominations close, May announces the UK will “eradicate its net contribution to climate change by 2050”.
Missing: The heat of debate
Enshrining net zero into law was straightforward. All it required was an amendment to the 2050 target on the 2008 Climate Change Act. This was done via a statutory instrument - a type of legislation that could be nodded through with minimal debate.
Opponents of net zero like to point at this and argue the target is illegitimate. But the Climate Change Act itself had passed with overwhelming cross-party support, only five MPs voting against. Mere weeks before the net zero legislation, the Scottish, Welsh and Westminster parliaments had each declared climate emergencies.
Arguably the important thing back then was to get net zero onto the statute books. The UK was the first G7 country to do so and it was significant in building momentum internationally to ratchet ambition in line with the Paris Agreement.
But in all the rush, did the UK miss an important moment for debate? Not about whether net zero was the right target - the independent Committee on Climate Change had been clear on that. But to discuss the choices about how it should be achieved.
Bringing net greenhouse gas emissions to zero implies an economy-wide transformation. It’s rightly radical. And it raises questions that are not at all straightforward: about fairness, risk and reward; nature, and the fabric of the landscape; infrastructure and technology; vested interests, jobs, geopolitics... Ultimately, about what kind of country we want this to be, and what kind of role we want it to play in the wider world.
The climate needs better politics
Fast forward to the present day. Last year, 2023, was the hottest on record. It’s not only planetary temperatures that are rising: net zero is provoking heated debates - from the corridors of power, to family dinner tables. The political nature of climate action is becoming more and more evident.
It’s general election year, and in recent months the leaders of the two largest parties have performed high profile u-turns. They’ve weakened their climate credentials in misguided bids to shore up their votes. Both have done so while assuring us they’re fully committed to net zero. Climate is getting caught in the crossfire of political sniping about economic credibility.
When wildfires are raging and sea levels rising, politics can feel like the last thing our planet needs. Politics can be stressful. It can get personal. It can be achingly slow.
What’s needed is to do climate politics… better.
This newsletter - and its partner project, a podcast of the same name - will puzzle out how to do that.
In each episode of the Political Heat podcast, I talk with people who are shaping UK climate politics in a variety of ways. Some get a buzz from the Westminster bubble. Others support members of the public to make their voices heard, or represent business interests. We’ll hear from people of different political parties and others who are deliberately non-partisan. Some who spend their evenings in focus groups; some who’ve stayed up all night as international negotiations stretch over their deadlines; and others who’d rather just wake up and hear the dawn chorus. Together we work out how climate progress might be possible.
After recording each episode, I’ll write my reflections in a newsletter like this one.
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