We now ‘need a new process’ that scales global solutions

David Maddox, The Independent

Tony Blair has warned Western policies to tackle global climate change are “failing”, demanding a radical reset to win over hearts and minds on the issue. The major intervention by the former prime minister torpedoes current net zero policies and calls for the COP process to be torn down and replaced. It is a shot across the bows of the current Labour government and energy secretary Ed Miliband’s plans to push headlong towards renewables. Writing the foreword for his own think tank’s new paper, The Climate Paradox: Why We Need to Reset Action on Climate Change, Sir Tony warned that there is a widening credibility gap with voters who are “being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal.” The intervention could not come at a more sensitive time for Sir Keir Starmer’s government which is facing local elections in 48 hours, a first serious electoral test since the general election.

Sir Tony endorses the paper, authored by the Tony Blair Institute (TBI)’s director of climate and energy policy Lindy Fursman, which calls for the COP international series of conferences to be dismantled, while a “new coalition” must be built to tackle the climate crisis. It claims that COP is struggling to “deliver change at the speed required” and must evolve to match ambition with delivery. In his foreword, Sir Tony argues that while climate activism has succeeded in raising awareness, today’s policy strategies have become disconnected from political, public, and economic reality, and the debate is “riven with irrationality”. The result is a widening credibility gap between climate policy and climate delivery.

“Activists have shifted the political centre of gravity on climate,” he said, but “the movement now needs a public mandate - attainable only through a shift from protest to pragmatic policy.” Highlighting a cycle that pushes proposals but delivers little real progress on global emissions, he wrote that “political leaders by and large know that the debate has become irrational” but are “terrified of saying so, for fear of being accused of being ‘climate deniers.’” Meanwhile, voters “feel they’re being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal.”

Sir Tony pointed to global trends that undermine today’s climate approach: fossil fuel use is set to rise further up to 2030, airline travel is to double over the next 20 years, and by 2030, almost two-thirds of emissions will come from China, India, and Southeast Asia. These are “inconvenient facts” he says, that mean that “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.”

While acknowledging COP’s role in scaling ambition, Sir Tony said that “the process will not deliver change at the speed required”: “The great gathering of all the nations has its place — though probably not every year. But the reality is it is the decisions of the large countries, and the policy direction they give towards the technology and the financial flows, which can in truth solve the climate issue.” He proposes a new model which must evolve to match ambition with delivery: “We now need a new process that scales global solutions. A new cooperative approach to technological Instead of eliminating emissions with green energy and electric cars, the papers urges governments to prioritise global investment in carbon capture — investing in solutions that capture emissions at source before they reach the atmosphere, together with breakthrough technologies like direct air capture that permanently remove carbon.