In the 19th century, Britain was the country which gave the world the Industrial Revolution
initiating an era of technological transformation, fossil fuel use and rising climate temperatures.
Now in the 21st century, its politicians and pundits are talking of a very different kind
of leadership in the fight against climate change, Our Cop26 will not be the end of climate change.
It can and it must mark, the beginning of the end, We were the first country to pass legislation for
net zero. We've been fastest to decarbonise our economy, I think we are doing a great job of
getting on with meeting our climate ambitions and demonstrating leadership to the world.
Britain's claims to leadership rest on some impressive numbers both past and present.
government claims that co2 emissions have fallen by 44% Since 1990, more than any other G20 nation
with the ambition for them to fall by 78% come 2035. Then there are impressive objectives on low
emissions vehicles, reforestation and increasing wind power. And of course, the fact that Britain
in 2019 became the first country in the world to enshrine a commitment to net zero in law,
which means its effect question is Britain a leader on climate change? Britain likes to
think of itself as a leader on climate change. And since the days even of Margaret Thatcher
has been promoting itself in the world stage as an environmental leader, and more recently, as a
climate leader, It is mankind and his activities, which are changing the environment of our planet,
in damaging and dangerous ways. They have some evidence, and they have some big claims
to make about their leadership on climate. But the evidence against them is also pretty substantial.
We really have to start by understanding our historic role in terms of empire, the architecture
of the world, financially and economically, is still kind of as we and the Americans designed it
over the last 200 years. And that's still set up to extract resources, often fossil fuel resources
from the global South, in order to power the kind of lifestyles particularly of the wealthiest
in the global North. Starting in the colonial era, the UK extracted something like $45 trillion from
the Indian subcontinent alone during its colonial rule of the subcontinent. And since then,
has promoted a trade regime that extracts and exploits that imposes loan conditions
on countries vulnerable to climate change impacts. In the mid 19th century, the UK was alone,
responsible for 60% of co2 emissions. And it remained by far the largest consumer of coal,
which was the fossil fuel in the world deep into the 19th century. So it's undeniable that Britain
bears substantial historic responsibility for climate change. After all, it was the country
which gave the world the industrial revolution. But isn't that a separate question to whether
or not it's offering leadership now, in the 21st century, perhaps it's a question of whether or not
it's changed its tune? Does allowing the Cambo oil and gas field off Shetland to go ahead, now,
set a good example around the world? When there is a announcement an agreement, of course,
I'm very happy to come back and talk to you.. the UK Government is actually trying to push the
new Cambo oil field through the UK Parliament. And this oil field would be due to extract 170
million barrels of oil, in only its first period of extraction and be in commission until the year
2050. By which point the UK has actually pledged to be net zero. Doesn't matter how many wind
turbines you build or solar panels or anything else. If you still expand oil and gas and coal.
Internationally, the focus has been on coal as the fossil fuel that everybody needs to quickly
relegate to history. But oil and gas I think, is the next frontier for the climate movement,
and for just the discussion around keeping fossil fuels in the ground. In short, the
UK Government is the second largest oil and gas producer in Europe. It currently has a legal duty
under statute to maximise the economic recovery of offshore oil and gas which means that if it is
profitable, if you make one pence out of it, it's coming out of the ground. And at the moment, the
UK Government has absolutely no plans to wind down oil and gas production even though we know that
the burning of oil and gas is responsible together with coal for 80% of carbon emissions,
which is what's driving the climate crisis. The Cambo oilfield is actually just the tip
of the iceberg. And the UK government is trying to open 40 new coal, oil and gas projects just
by the year 2025. To say that they're a climate leader is absolutely ludicrous. So while Britain
has made substantial progress in reducing co2 emissions since the late 20th century,
claims of climate leadership are somewhat misplaced. Unlike China and India, it's not
even doing enough to make up for its own historic share of co2 emissions? Well, I believe that we
have a moral duty to leave this world in a better condition than what we inherited. And that's why
today we're announcing that we will be ending our contribution to climate change by 2050 and
legislating for a net zero emissions target. If you accept the 2050 goal, which of course, climate
scientists tell us, we need to be at zero by 2050. That would mean that rich countries are going to
consume even more what's left of the of the carbon pie. Now imagine this is like going for a pizza,
somebody eats six slices of the pizza, you get to the seventh slice and says, "forget I've eaten the
six slices, we've got the seventh to share. And by the way, you have to pick up the full tab."
Now this is both immoral. And it's illegal in international law, because it's written
that rich countries in the convention that rich countries would do their fair share of effort,
If we were going to fairly allocate emissions to keep in line with Paris Agreement targets.
The UK has emitted something like 200% of its fair share. And that requires drastic reductions now
within the UK, and it requires helping countries within the global south that are on the frontline
of climate change impacts to make the transition themselves. Can there be peace and prosperity,
if 1/3 of the world literally, prospers. And the other two thirds of the world,
live under siege, and face calamitous threats to our well being. The reason why there's a
vulnerability in the world, the reason why half the world is locked in poverty, the reason why 2
billion people go hungry, billions of people don't have access to health and education is because
we are stealing money from the global South, each and every dollar that the global North
sends to the global safe $24 flows the other way, the idea that the North is giving charity
to the global South, no, the global South has built the global North. And it's now time for
reparations it's now time for redistributing wealth and technology, we have to the only
way to solve these crises is cooperation and solidarity, not profit, and competition. Today,
I'm announcing that the UK will go further and become the first ever net zero aligned
financial centre. I think the main role the British state really has and that Britain has
in climate politics is as the main protector of the wealth of these kind of carbon billionaires.
And without understanding that role, you can't really get your head around
why it is that Britain I think is still one of the most responsible countries in the world
for climate change. Britain's climate leadership, I would say is pretty strongly undermined by the
fact that they don't really want to talk about the dirty secret, which is the role that the
financial system plays in perpetuating you know, the fossil fuel industry. But other industries
like steel and cement and basically kind of having a stranglehold over the real economy.
There's that remarkable statistic that if the City of London were a country, it would be
the world's ninth largest emitter, I think just based on, you know, one year of carbon emissions
from banks and asset managers. And that doesn't even include the insurance sector, without which,
you know, none of these fossil fuel projects will go ahead. And so we can talk all we want
about decarbonising our own energy system, but the reality is that we're you know, propping up
carbon emissions throughout the world. And we're not really willing to do anything about that. The
UK is rigging the rules through its involvement in the IMF and the World Bank and restricting the
space that developing countries have to invest in the systems that are going to help them transition
and improve their resilience to climate change impacts that they did very little to cause. Given
that most countries in the global South have contributed minimally to this crisis, they have
also been restricted in what they can do due to loan conditions that UK banks, UK Governments,
UK funded multilateral institutions like the IMF and the World Bank have imposed on them. The money
that is on the table 80% of it is in debt creating loans. So the rich countries are basically saying,
normally we burning down your house, when we give you a loan to fix your house you pay
us back for it. There have been 25 Cops before this one. And every year leaders come to these
climate negotiations with an array of new pledges, commitments and promises. And as each Cop comes
and goes, emissions continue to rise. If the UK was to be a leader, it would take responsibility
for the fact that it's outsized emissions, are contributing to climate change impacts today and
pay for repairing the consequences. It's estimated that half a million children under the age of five
are experiencing a climate induced famine in Madagascar. 300,000 people are being impacted by
floods in the DRC. The average person in the UK emits something like 65 More times co2 than the
average person in the DRC 45 times more than the average person in Madagascar so real leadership
would look like reducing emissions here, but paying for the consequences of accelerating
climate change impacts in the global South. Britain has a long and imperial history stretching
hundreds of years of expansion and exploitation of both resources and people and that wealth
has given Britain both its economic power, but it's positioned at the centre of both the global
financial economy, the fossil fuel industry, and the multinationals that are based here many of
them domiciled, who are responsible for most of the pollution and injustices around the world.
Britain's own story is actually a story of being a climate laggard, rather than a Climate Champion.
So is Britain a leader on climate change? Well, despite what the politicians and media pundits
might say, not really. While it's true that it's made substantial progress in reducing
co2 emissions since 1990. The idea that it's a leader on climate because it's virtually
eliminated coal from it's energy mix, is rather strange when one considers it continues to drill
for both oil and gas domestically, Britain gave the world the Industrial Revolution,
and thus helped birth manmade climate change. And while it may no longer be
a leading climate culprit, is it offering leadership on what matters most namely,
creating a world beyond fossil fuels? Well the answer to that is crystal clear, Absolutely not.