Rishi Sunak has put the brakes on the UK’s environmental policy and the goal of eliminating its carbon footprint by 2050. But the road to next year’s general election is winding and full of ice floes. Will Britain’s Conservative Prime Minister get the car to stop in time, or will it slide hopelessly and slide off the cliff?
If you look hard enough into the abyss, said Nietzsche, who was never an optimist, the abyss ends up looking at you. And this is the situation of Sunak and the conservatives after thirteen years in power, in which they have plunged the country into a spiral of austerity and chronic lack of investment (in schools, hospitals, roads, infrastructure of all kinds, development, innovation and technology…), have exponentially increased inequality between millionaires and the rest, impoverished the middle classes and made the British economy the least growing in the OECD, ahead of only from the dysfunctional and hyperinflationary Argentina.
The polls consistently give Labor a 20-point lead, and Sunak has decided he has to do something, whatever it is, despite the risk of crashing. Given the exaggerated caution of his rival Keir Starmer, one of the few ways he tried to differentiate himself from Labor was on the environment. And the prime minister, encouraged by the antipathy caused in the London metropolitan area by the extension of the tax to the most polluting vehicles, has pushed for the right. Diesel and combustion engine cars will not stop being sold in 2030 but in 2035, twenty percent of gas boilers (especially in rural areas) will not have to be replaced by heat pumps, and owners will not have the obligation to install them in the apartments they rent.
Sunak says the GPS continues to target decarbonisation by 2050, and that the UK will deliver on its promises. But experts doubt it. The country was already on the way to breaching its commitments for 2037, and now even more so.
Cars are responsible for 23% of carbon emissions, home heating for 17% and agriculture for 11%. The relaxation and dilation in the time of the objectives will further endanger the conquest of the planned objectives, but the prime minister’s fundamental concern is the next elections. Winning seems a remote possibility, but not so much as saving the situation and preventing or limiting an absolute majority for Labour.
Since 1990 the UK has reduced its carbon footprint by 48%, more than any other country, but most of the success took place before the new millennium, by virtue of replacing coal with natural gas as an energy source. The momentum has long since disappeared, and the problems of giving it a new push are numerous. Individuals are reluctant to buy electric cars due to their high cost, short range and lack of battery charging points.
Heat pumps are very expensive (18,000 euros per unit, of which the British Government does not cover even half). In addition, the supply of wind and green energy is insufficient at the moment and significant power outages are likely, which can harm this transition.
Sunak’s argument is that, in the midst of a crisis in living standards, this is not the time to obsess over dates on the road to decarbonisation, and that it is better to go slowly but steadily firm, rather than too quickly and in an uncontrolled manner.
He knows he has lost young voters, but he wants to appeal to traditional conservatives, retirees and those who resist change. In the abstract, almost everyone is a supporter of environmental policies, until it affects their car or the time comes to pay the bill. The prime minister trusts in this, so that the slowdown in his environmental policy avoids a major political undoing.
