Nobody has done less for the climate than Sunak the saboteur

The UK’s presidency of Cop has been an unmitigated disaster from start to finish, writes Donnachadh McCarthy

Sunak has sabotaged UK climate action repeatedly over the last year (Getty Images)

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.

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.

6. His home secretary is passing even more authoritarian anti-protest legislation through parliament, targeting climate protectors and imposing punitive 10-year prison sentences.

7. He changed the remit of the Bank of England to include a duty to promote more UK bank lending to oil and gas corporations, despite banks like Barclays & HSBC being among the world’s largest funders of fossil fuel corporations.

8. Sunak seemingly banned King Charles, a globally respected climate protector, from attending Cop27; despite him being also head of the Commonwealth – many of whose nations are suffering from devastating climate-exacerbated extreme weather crises.

9. He kicked the climate change minister out of the cabinet.

What a message Sunak brings to the many oil dictatorships assembled in Egypt!

Basically, it seems to me that his record says to every country on earth: “Exploit every drop of oil and gas you have got as fast as possible, ban as much onshore renewable energy that you can get away with and ensure you have punitive laws on your books that allow you to imprison peaceful climate protectors who object to this climate criminality to get them out of the way of the oil corporations and the banks that are funding them.”

Even Alok Sharma is now belatedly publicly admitting that the UK should be investing more in renewables than new fossil fuels, just as the climate heroes from Just Stop Oil have been demanding. So, now that Sunak is actually going, what should he do? How can he possibly atone for cutting the 1.5C thread so viciously?

And how can he explain to the world that when our prime minister should have sent British ministers touring the globe, lobbying hard for the Cop26 promises to be implemented before Cop27 (as France’s President Hollande did prior to the Paris Cop in 2015) the UK instead wasted that precious last chance with endless Tory shenanigans at Westminster?

The world now needs the prime minister to carry out the most globally needed political U-turn ever. If Truss could do it to save the UK economy, Sunak can do it for the far more important and existential goal of saving the planet’s teetering climatic stability.

He should have the UK government announce three important first steps at Cop27:

• The UK will immediately ban all new fossil fuel expansion in the UK including the North Sea.
• It will make any new investments globally by UK banks in new fossil fuels illegal.
• Announce that every home in Britain will be properly insulated by 2030.

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Sunak has this one last opportunity to rescue the UK’s disastrous Cop presidency. He could transform himself from Sunak the climate saboteur to Sunak the saviour!

With the 1.5C thread cut forever – and the 2C target now on life-support, dangling on an equally thin thread – humanity needs Sunak to act with courage. Let us pray for the sake of all future generations that he does.