Tony Blair has warned the western policies to tackle global climate change are “failing” and demanded that it is time for a radical reset to win over hearts and minds on the issue.
The major intervention by the former prime minister is 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 much criticised policies on pushing headlong towards renewables.
Mr Miliband was already facing an onslaught in the wake of the government having to intervene to save British Steel with critics claiming his policies had almost brought it closure by causing soring energy prices.
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 has 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.
It follows months of attacks on Mr Miliband for closing down Britain’s fossil fuel capacity in coal mines and oil and gas from the North Sea as well as pushing for massive new green energy installations such as solar panel farms and wind farms.
In particular Nigel Farage’s Reform have capitalised in stealing Labour votes with an anti-Net Zero policy platform.
Added to that it coincides with a new assault on Starmer’s policies on workers rights and a flatlining economy coming under attack from the British Retail Consortium, the CBI and think tanks.
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 act.
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.’”
