Budget to signal UK’s intent on climate crisis

Rebecca Long-Bailey, The Independent

Is the government serious about tackling the climate emergency? We’ll have the answer on Wednesday when the chancellor sets out the Tories’ priorities for the UK economy over the next half decade.

But with the big polluters on course to blow the world’s carbon budget by 2030, if not before, we don’t have many years left to waste. That’s why at this point, warm words and incremental steps towards distant targets won’t cut it.  

What we need is a climate Budget that is adequate, aspirational and fair. Whether the 2020 Budget meets these three criteria will determine whether it is a grown-up response to the crisis of our time, or just more greenwashing.

An adequate climate Budget is one that puts the UK on a path to reducing its emissions at the rate scientists tell us is needed to avoid dangerous climate change.

Reporting out last week indicated that the UK’s carbon emissions fell by almost 3 per cent in 2019. That sounds okay, until you realise the UK needs to go at double that pace just to cut our emissions in half by 2030.

Added to that, the UK’s progress reducing emissions since 1990 has largely been achieved by taking coal out of the nation’s energy mix, and reducing energy consumption in industry, partly driven by the offshoring of production (and hence emissions) elsewhere, something that comes with a huge social cost with no obvious environmental benefit. But even setting aside the obvious problems with counting offshoring as a success, it’s clear that the UK’s progress up to now has come from relatively easy interventions.

There are far greater challenges to decarbonise our transport, our heating, our land use and our food systems. If the government ducks these issues, then it’s simply not serious.

An aspirational climate Budget is one that captures the biggest opportunity for national renewal since postwar reconstruction. A nationwide programme to insulate our homes could create 250,000 skilled jobs in the construction industry and knock more than £400 off household bills.

Investing in our ports, in low carbon steel, in designing and manufacturing wind turbines here, could position the UK as world leader in the green revolution, bringing huge wealth to all regions and nations, rather than relying on imports as is currently the case.

And a trade union-led industrial strategy, extended collective bargaining rights and modern, democratic public ownership in our energy system would ensure that new jobs are good jobs. We cannot expect to bring communities with us without a credible plan for transition, particularly in those areas that still bear the scars of catastrophic deindustrialisation of the 1980s when the UK economy last underwent major structural change.

And finally, a fair climate Budget is one that spreads the costs of dealing with the climate emergency in a way that is progressive and just. Loading the cost of decarbonisation onto higher energy bills, or onto higher prices of basic goods in a way that hits the poorest hardest, is a guaranteed way to alienate public support for climate action.

Meeting the Paris Agreement’s goals will require what has been described as “the most capital-intensive transition in human history”, and it is right that costs should be met through a fair taxation system, and a combination of public and private investment that goes beyond the current approach of socialising risk and privatising gain.

And this test also applies to meeting the costs of loss and damage from climate change already baked into the system. For example, the cost of flooding damage could rise ten-fold by the middle of the century. Beyond the UK’s borders, climate finance for countries in the global south, those least responsible for the climate crisis, is at pitiful levels, with some of the most vulnerable countries receiving less than $2 (£1.50) per person per year. As the host of this year’s COP, the UK has the chance to spearhead efforts to compensate the world’s poorest countries for loss and damage from climate-induced extreme weather.  

Given the Tories’ recent abysmal record on renewable energy, the temptation might be to celebrate even the smallest step in the right direction, for example, reversing some of the more harmful elements of Tory policy over the last decade, like the party’s ban on new onshore wind. But in the words of American environmentalist Bill McKibben, winning slowly on climate change is the same as losing. Or, as Greta Thunberg recently told the EU Commission, you can’t make deals with physics.

That’s why we need a Budget that is adequate, aspirational and fair. Anything less than that would be a betrayal of current and future generations.