Ed Miliband has accused the Conservatives of being “anti-science” by abandoning a political consensus on net zero as he gave MPs a stark outline of how the climate crisis and nature depletion are already affecting the UK.
In the first of what is promised to be an annual “state of the climate” report, the energy and net zero secretary set out the findings of a Met Office-led study that detailed how the UK was already hotter and wetter, and faced a greater number of extreme weather events.
Miliband, who told the Guardian before the statement that politicians who rejected net zero policies needed to be accountable for their decisions, called for opposition parties to unite around the need for urgent action.
But speaking after Miliband, Andrew Bowie, a shadow energy minister, criticised what he called the government’s “shrill” language, saying the party was sticking by Kemi Badenoch’s decision to ditch the 2050 target for the UK to reach net zero.
“The leader of the opposition has been very clear – chasing net zero by 2050 is unachievable without making the country worse off,” Bowie said, focusing instead on the need for more nuclear power and easier access to air conditioning.
“That is the truth. Global warming is a global issue which we cannot face alone. A global climate challenge will not be solved by the UK alone, and it cannot be solved on the backs of British workers or British billpayers.”
He added: “We are proud to have been a world leader, but it isn’t a race if nobody else is running.”
Responding to Bowie, Miliband said he felt “incredibly sad”, pointing to the absence of the shadow energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, from the thinly populated Conservative benches.
“The trouble is, we’re in a situation now where the shadow secretary of state goes into hiding when there’s a statement about the climate crisis, because it’s just too embarrassing to try and articulate the opposition’s position,” Miliband said.
“The central chasm at the heart of his response is that he and his colleagues have taken the decision to abandon 20 years of bipartisanship when it comes to climate.
“So what are they? They are anti-science. They are anti-jobs. They are anti-energy security, and they are anti-future generations.”
Miliband quoted the former prime minister Theresa May, who put net zero targets into law in 2019 and had argued that the real climate zealots were “populists who offer only easy answers to complex questions”. He added: “I couldn’t put it better myself.”
Miliband told MPs that the idea of the annual climate and nature statement came from Roz Savage, the Liberal Democrat MP whose climate and nature bill was dropped in exchange for some government concessions.
Talking about how the climate was changing, Miliband said: “The science is unequivocal about why this is happening. As the Met Office said this morning, this is not a natural variation in our climate.”
The effects were already being felt, he said, in rain-affected harvests and nature depletion, arguing that while the UK was a relatively small contributor to emissions it had been a global leader in the response.
“We remain way off track from where we need to be as a world, but we in this country have helped make a difference,” he said.
“The lesson is clear. The choices we make as a country have influenced the cause of global action, and in doing so, reduced the impact of the climate and nature crisis on future generations in Britain. To those who say Britain cannot make a difference. I say: you are wrong. Stop talking our country down. British leadership matters.”
