Rishi Sunak’s statement that, “our politics must again put the long-term interests of our country before the short-term political needs of the moment” is rather baffling.
Granting oil and gas licences and curbing green policies would appear to be aimed at short-term political needs rather than doing much for the long-term benefit of the country. I would have thought that our long-term interests would be in mitigating the risks of severe droughts, flooding, sea level rise, over 40C heat, mega storms or the potential collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) turning our climate into that of Moscow’s.
Dealing with those possibilities would be orders of magnitude more expensive than moving away from a fossil-fuel-based economy.
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