2023-09-20 17:10:48
The United Kingdom plans to cancel or postpone projects aimed at achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, the executive of Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced quietly on Tuesday September 19.
When the planet bears the brunt of inflation. In the United Kingdom, the government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is preparing to slow down its environmental policy. The country’s carbon neutrality, so far promised for 2050, must be achieved by adopting a “more pragmatic, proportionate and realistic” approach, the Prime Minister announced this Wednesday, September 20. Words which confirm those of his Minister of the Interior Suella Braverman, who estimated earlier in the day that she had to “prioritize economic growth, […] to household budgets, […] to the cost of living.
According to BBC, Sunak plans a whole series of setbacks: delaying the ban on the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035. The project to gradually eliminate gas boilers from 2035 is also revised downwards, in reducing the target to 80% phase-out by that same year. The desire to impose fines on owners who have not brought their homes up to energy efficiency standards has also been abandoned. Finally, the ban on certain oil boilers, initially planned for 2026, would be postponed to 2035.
The British Prime Minister defended himself by criticizing politicians of “all sides [qui] have not been honest regarding the costs and trade-offs of environmental measures. Sunak added that he would “put the long-term interests of our country ahead of the short-term political needs of the moment”.
In this context of ecological turnaround, the United Kingdom will not be invited to the UN summit this Wednesday, which aimed to bring together the most ambitious countries in the fight once morest global warming. The nation of Rishi Sunak will therefore be shunned from this assembly intended to tackle the gap between the climate crisis and government policies, in the same way as China and the United States.
Gas and oil operations
This is not the first ecological turnaround in the United Kingdom. Already this summer, the two main British parties have revised their environmental program downwards in the face of reactions once morest the expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone set up at the end of July, which attacked the most polluting vehicles. At the same time, the British government approved “hundreds” of new oil and gas operations in the North Sea.
The climate is a rising subject, as the Conservatives and the Labor opposition sharpen their weapons for the legislative elections expected next year. After 12 years in power, the Conservatives are at their lowest in the polls.
Updated 6:52 p.m.: Adding statements from Rishi Sunak.
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