Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, has the following response to the launch of the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change report, out today:
“This report confirms that the devastating future towards which we are hurtling can still be avoided if Governments make the right choices right now. The heart-stopping consequences of yet more failed climate leadership are unimaginable for every single individual and species with whom we share this planet. It’s time to pick a side – the fossil fuel polluters and those who bankroll them, or the future of humanity. We already have the solutions we need, and we know that action is far cheaper than delay.
Yet our reckless Government, which talks up new North Sea oil & gas drilling, while rumours abound over reviewing the moratorium on fracking, is fiddling while the world burns. It's failing in its first duty – to keep its citizens safe. If Global Britain is to mean anything, then Ministers must rise to the challenge of the COP Presidency and demonstrate real leadership now.
Locking us into new oil & gas for decades means we’ll have to rely on expensive, unproven and as yet unscalable carbon dioxide removal technologies. While some extraction for past emissions will be unavoidable, the impact of the giant hosepipe of carbon emissions currently gushing into the atmosphere won’t be stopped by sucking it back out with a paper straw. This ‘burn now, pay later’ approach simply gives fossil fuel companies licence to wilfully continue with business as usual, when this emergency demands the opposite.
There’s no silver bullet to tackling the climate emergency. But we do have an array of effective, realistic and genuine solutions at our fingertips – from rapidly winding down fossil fuels, to reversing the depletion of our natural world’s carbon sinks, and developing long-lasting energy efficiency for our leaky homes. The only thing we lack is the political will to deliver them.
The goals of energy security, tackling the cost of living crisis, and cutting climate-wrecking emissions all point in the same direction: an energy system based on renewables and energy efficiency which will deliver a safer and fairer world for all, with bountiful energy supplies, warm homes, clean air, and a thriving natural world. This report shows there’s no time left to delay.”