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Voices: Nobody has done less for the climate than Sunak the saboteur

It is right that Rishi Sunak, as prime minister of the outgoing UN climate conference host country, attends Cop27, being held this week in Egypt. 

COP27 Climate Conference: Opening Ceremony And High-Level Summit© Getty Images

It is also right that Sunak gave in after the widespread condemnation of his proposed boycott of the conference. But that doesn’t stop the unalterable fact that the UK’s presidency of Cop has been an unmitigated disaster from start to finish.

The thread by which any hopes of avoiding a 1.5C rise in global temperatures – which was still hanging in the balance at the end of Cop26, according to the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres – is now well and truly cut. And nobody in the UK government did more to slash that thread than Sunak the saboteur.

As chancellor, he listened to the siren voices in the right-wing press calling on him to refuse to fund Johnson’s modest climate pledges during the six-month lead up to Cop26 in Glasgow. Sunak’s 2021 Budget and his pre-Cop Tory conference speech was devoid of almost all mention or substantive action on the climate crisis.

This sent Alok Sharma into Cop26 as the emperor with no clothes – condemned to appeal to the world to urgently do what the UK was not willing to do itself. Just look at how Sunak has sabotaged UK climate action repeatedly over the last year:

1. He continued the Tory ban on onshore wind.

2. In the leadership election, he backed banning solar farms across much of the UK.

3. He refused to restore the home insulation programme funding that the Tories cut in 2012, leaving millions in fuel poverty.

4. He backed a massive expansion of North Sea oil and gas, giving £bns in new tax breaks, while refusing similar tax breaks for renewables.

5. He slashed international aid despite the global south reeling from climate exacerbated extreme weather events. 

Reference: Independent: Opinion by Donnachadh McCarthy