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UK government accused of trying to ‘stoke culture war on climate issues’

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Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Green MP Caroline Lucas has accused the government of stoking a culture war on climate issues by calling for more investment in new gas-fired power plants ahead of a general election.Lucas used an urgent question in the House of Commons to challenge the energy minister, Graham Stuart, on the plans set out on Wednesday, which could see a string of new plants built in the coming years despite the government’s commitment to phase out fossil fuels.She called on Stuart to admit that “this is the government’s latest attempt to stoke a culture war on climate”. The MP for Brighton Pavilion warned that the plans to encourage more investment in unabated gas power in the 2030s would jeopardise Britain’s climate goals.The shadow climate change minister, Alan Whitehead, echoed the concerns and accused the government of trying to “conjure a culture war” with energy policy. He challenged Stuart to set out how many new gas plants the government was hoping to build, adding: “There is no mention of that in the 1,500 pages of documents that were published yesterday.”The government plans to extend the life of many existing power plants, but it estimates that it will need to have around 5 gigawatts of new gas power capacity in reserve to provide a limited amount of backup power when renewable energy is in short supply.The planned reforms to the UK’s electricity market have angered environmental campaigners but have won favour among Conservative MPs including the former minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg.He suggested during the debate that the UK’s legally binding net-zero targets should be “postponed indefinitely” to level Britain’s economic playing field with the US and China, which have cheaper energy costs.The UK has a legally binding target to reduce its emissions to net zero by 2050. The government’s official advisers at the Committee on Climate Change have forecast that gas-fired power generation can make up only 1-2% of the UK’s power generation in the 2030s if it hopes to keep its climate goals on track. The UK used gas to generate almost 40% of its electricity last year.Rees-Mogg said the government’s plan to call for more investment in gas power projects was “a good first step against the net-zero obsession” but called on the government to go further.“We have become fundamentally uncompetitive because of this green obsession,” he told the Commons. “We want cheap electricity, and we should have gas and we should have coal and we should postpone net zero indefinitely, because we are only 1% of global emissions, we are making no difference and the US economy is growing consistently faster than ours because of cheap energy.”Stuart responded to Rees-Mogg saying “there is a climate challenge and a climate emergency, that’s why we’re looking to reduce our emissions”.

Green MP Caroline Lucas says call for investment in gas-fired power plants is election ploy that will jeopardise UK’s net zero targetGreen MP Caroline Lucas has accused the government of stoking a culture war on climate issues by calling for more investment in new gas-fired power plants ahead of a general election.Lucas used an urgent question in the House of Commons to challenge the energy minister, Graham Stuart, on the plans set out on Wednesday, which could see a string of new plants built in the coming years despite the government’s commitment to phase out fossil fuels. Continue reading...

Green MP Caroline Lucas has accused the government of stoking a culture war on climate issues by calling for more investment in new gas-fired power plants ahead of a general election.

Lucas used an urgent question in the House of Commons to challenge the energy minister, Graham Stuart, on the plans set out on Wednesday, which could see a string of new plants built in the coming years despite the government’s commitment to phase out fossil fuels.

She called on Stuart to admit that “this is the government’s latest attempt to stoke a culture war on climate”. The MP for Brighton Pavilion warned that the plans to encourage more investment in unabated gas power in the 2030s would jeopardise Britain’s climate goals.

The shadow climate change minister, Alan Whitehead, echoed the concerns and accused the government of trying to “conjure a culture war” with energy policy. He challenged Stuart to set out how many new gas plants the government was hoping to build, adding: “There is no mention of that in the 1,500 pages of documents that were published yesterday.”

The government plans to extend the life of many existing power plants, but it estimates that it will need to have around 5 gigawatts of new gas power capacity in reserve to provide a limited amount of backup power when renewable energy is in short supply.

The planned reforms to the UK’s electricity market have angered environmental campaigners but have won favour among Conservative MPs including the former minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg.

He suggested during the debate that the UK’s legally binding net-zero targets should be “postponed indefinitely” to level Britain’s economic playing field with the US and China, which have cheaper energy costs.

The UK has a legally binding target to reduce its emissions to net zero by 2050. The government’s official advisers at the Committee on Climate Change have forecast that gas-fired power generation can make up only 1-2% of the UK’s power generation in the 2030s if it hopes to keep its climate goals on track. The UK used gas to generate almost 40% of its electricity last year.

Rees-Mogg said the government’s plan to call for more investment in gas power projects was “a good first step against the net-zero obsession” but called on the government to go further.

“We have become fundamentally uncompetitive because of this green obsession,” he told the Commons. “We want cheap electricity, and we should have gas and we should have coal and we should postpone net zero indefinitely, because we are only 1% of global emissions, we are making no difference and the US economy is growing consistently faster than ours because of cheap energy.”

Stuart responded to Rees-Mogg saying “there is a climate challenge and a climate emergency, that’s why we’re looking to reduce our emissions”.

Read the full story here.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Record-setting flooding over three days dumped more than a foot of rain on parts of northern California, a fire left thousands under evacuation orders and warnings in Los Angeles County, forecasters issued the first-ever tornado warning in San Francisco and rough seas tore down part of a wharf in Santa Cruz.All of this extreme weather has hit California in the past several weeks, showcasing the state’s particular vulnerability to major weather disasters. Strong storms Tuesday produced waves that forecasters said could reach 35 feet (10.7 meters) around Santa Cruz. The National Weather Service issued a high surf warning until early evening, cautioning people to stay out of the ocean and away from piers. For Chandler Price, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego, these extreme weather events are both typical and unusual for a La Niña winter, a natural climate cycle that can cause extreme weather across the planet. In California, it means a wetter than average northern region and a drier south. “So far we’ve seen that pattern play out pretty well,” he said, but added, “obviously, you know, the tornado in the Bay Area was atypical. ... We haven’t seen that before, at least not for a very long time.”A storm and wind gusts of up to 60 mph (96 kph) prompted the San Francisco tornado warning that extended to neighboring San Mateo County, which went out to about 1 million people earlier this month. The tornado overturned cars and toppled trees and utility poles near a mall in Scotts Valley, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of San Francisco, injuring several people. Tornadoes do occur in California, but they rarely hit populated areas.In San Francisco, local meteorologists said straight-line winds, not a tornado, felled trees onto cars and streets and damaged roofs. The storm also dumped significant snow across the northern Sierra Nevada. F. Martin Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes, said climate change means that atmospheric rivers, long stretches of wet air that can produce heavy rains, will be responsible for a greater share of California’s yearly precipitation and the periods in between those big events will be drier. These storms are essential for the water supply but can also be dangerous.“When they are too strong and too many in a row, we end up getting floods,” he said, adding that they drive California’s weather extremes.During storms this week around Santa Cruz, one man was trapped under debris and died and another person was pulled into the ocean. The surf also splintered off the end of a Santa Cruz municipal wharf that was under construction, plunging three people into the ocean. One swam to shore and the other two were rescued. A series of atmospheric rivers are expected through the rest of the week. Overall, this pattern is not unusual — these storms regularly produce high winds, heavy snow in the mountains and torrential rain this time of year.“What’s a little unique about this setup is how closely spaced they are, so there’s not much of a break between them,” said David Lawrence, a meteorologist and emergency response specialist with the National Weather Service.But these storms haven’t stretched very far south, creating dry weather in Southern California that increases fire risk.One of the state’s most recent blazes, the Franklin Fire left some 20,000 people under evacuation orders and warnings and forced students at Pepperdine University to shelter in place. The blaze was fueled by the Santa Anas, the notorious seasonal winds that blow dry air from the interior toward the coast, pushing back moist ocean breezes.Most of the destruction occurred in Malibu, a community on the western corner of Los Angeles known for its beautiful bluffs and the Hollywood-famous Zuma Beach. The fire damaged or destroyed 48 structures and is one of nearly 8,000 wildfires that have scorched more than 1 million acres (more than 404,685 hectares) in the Golden State this year. The Santa Ana winds, which peak in December, have also contributed to warmer-than-average temperatures in parts of the southern state, said Price with the National Weather Service. “Eighty-degree (26.7 Celsius) Christmases are not entirely uncommon around here,” he added, but “there was a couple of high temperature record breaks in the mountains, which are usually less affected by the Santa Anas, and so those were a little unusual.” Phillis reported from St. Louis.Associated Press writers Martha Mendoza and Stefanie Dazio contributed to this story.The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

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“It’s going to get hot and everything’s going to be on fire and the oceans will rise,” says a year 11 student, Josh Dorian. “That’s just like the worst of the worst. 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This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. I was 11 years old the year my older stepsister brought her high school boyfriend home for the first time. It was Thanksgiving 2006, and his Southern manners fit right in as we bantered between mouthfuls of cornbread stuffing, fried okra, and marshmallow-topped sweet potato casserole. Then, in the overstuffed lull before the desserts were served, my dad plunked his laptop in the center of the table. He opened it up and began clicking through a PowerPoint presentation chock full of data on ice sheet melt and global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. My stepsister’s eyes grew wide with embarrassment. In an effort to welcome her sweetheart to the family, my dad had rolled out his version of a red carpet: one of his many family lectures on the horrors of climate change. 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My dad hammed it up, interrupting his own lamentations by hooting out, “We’re all gonna die!” in a cartoonish falsetto. More than anything, it was a term of endearment. After all, we knew other households that spent their holidays arguing over whether climate change was even real. Many of us know a Dr. Doom in our lives, or at the very least, a pessimist with a particular fixation. We each have our own ways of responding to it, such as my brother’s pragmatism, my stepmom’s knee-jerk optimism, my stepsister’s exasperation. Or, perhaps you are the doomer yourself. I’m usually tempted to respond with, “I see hope in the next generation.” But doomerism—a label often used to describe climate defeatists—doesn’t typically leave room to talk about a better future. It’s a contagious kind of despair, often too credible to dismiss. Nowadays, my brother and I both work in climate-related fields, undeniably thanks to Dr. Doom’s influence. But growing up, it only took a few days of dad’s soapboxing before I’d tune out of anything climate-related until the New Year. This Christmas, as we once again prepare to pass around the cranberry sauce and discuss the end of the world, I can’t help but wonder how my dad became Dr. Doom. And in a world of rising doomerism, what influence do such tidings have on others? My dad’s journey to becoming “Dr. Doom” started with his formal training as a tropical ecologist. Until the early 2000s, his work meant trudging through rainforests, studying photosynthesis while battling mosquitoes. Then, the wear of human activity on his surroundings became too much to bear. He switched gears and has since spent his career leap-frogging between climate education jobs—from director of an environmental science program at the University of Idaho to president of a small school in Maine, which, in 2012, he led to become the first college to divest fully from fossil fuels. Those entrenched in science, like my dad, seem to be especially susceptible to climate despair. That’s according to experts like Rebecca Weston, the co-executive director of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America, a community of mental health professionals trained to address the emotional and psychological challenges emerging in our warming world. Many in scientific fields, Weston says, are first to document and review the data behind irreversible loss. The facts of the crisis are so dire that despair seems to be a hazard for many—scientists or not. After all, a study by researchers at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that some 7 percent of US adults report potentially serious levels of psychological distress about climate change. Gale Sinatra, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education who studies how people learn about climate change, put it more simply: “Your dad’s problem is that he knows too much.” The issue only gets worse when the climate-informed try to share what they know. In a short-lived position in 2007 as science advisor to the Florida state government (back when then-Governor Charlie Crist would actually acknowledge “climate change”) my dad was silenced during a presentation to the legislature. A report later said that the “awkward” situation arose when a Republican senator took issue with a discussion topic that “had not yet been accepted as fact.” According to my dad, the controversy stemmed from his decision to share the famous “hockey stick” graph, a data visual that shows that global average temperatures began spiking after human societies industrialized. “We’re starting to understand it as moral injury,” said Kristan Childs, co-chair of a committee to support climate scientists with the Climate Psychology Alliance, referring to a psychological phenomenon that happens when people witness actions that violate their beliefs or damage their conscience. “They’ve been informing people for so long, and there’s just such a betrayal because people are not believing them, or are not doing enough to act on it.” Like many, my dad’s response to this was to get louder—and darker. There’s conflicting research on how different kinds of messaging can affect people’s behavior. Some studies show that those experiencing distress are also more active, while others say that emphasizing worst-case scenarios, like so-called climate “tipping points,” is an ineffective strategy that can overwhelm and de-motivate audiences instead. It can also backfire on a personal level: Listeners of the podcast “This American Life” may be familiar with a story about a climate activist dad whose zeal led to his children cutting him out of their lives. As a journalist on the climate beat, I’ve interviewed dozens of self-described “doomers,” and yet I’ve found the term is a bit of a misnomer. While many fixate on the worst possible climate scenarios, they’re generally not quitters. As Childs put it, “I don’t know anyone who’s just given up on it all.” Instead, nearly all have dedicated their lives to addressing climate change. And they can’t help but evangelize, warning everybody within earshot of the ways the coming century could change their lives. Throughout these interviews, I’m tacitly looking for any insight that might help my own Dr. Doom. (Recently, I accompanied my dad to a physical therapy appointment where, upon seeing a disposable blood pressure cuff, he attempted to regale his doctor with facts about the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the US health care system.) Childs might just have some. She offers a 10-step program for professionals who work in science-oriented fields, affiliated with a larger collection of support groups offered by the Good Grief Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to processing emotions on climate change. “The group work is powerful because it really, really helps dissolve the sense of isolation,” Childs said. As she spoke, I shifted uncomfortably, wondering how many times my teenage tendency to tune out or respond flippantly made my dad feel I was invalidating his concerns. The best place to start is often the hardest: acknowledging how bad the problem is. “It’s actually helpful to give people a place to share their biggest fears,” she said, adding that the typical workplace culture in scientific fields discourages expressing emotions. “Somehow some acceptance of how bad it is, and the fact that we can then still stay engaged, shifts the question to who we can be in these times.” Weston agrees that entirely erasing climate anxiety isn’t realistic, especially as the effects of Earth’s changing atmosphere become more apparent and frightening. Instead, her group suggests reframing ideas of what having a meaningful impact looks like. “It depends on breaking through a kind of individualist understanding of achievement. It’s about facing something that will be resolved past our own lifetimes,” she said. My dad has spent his career chasing that elusive sense of fulfillment—never quite satisfied with the work he’s doing. But lately, he’s found a reason to stay put. In 2019, he returned to my hometown to teach climate change to undergraduates at the University of Florida. Now and again, I’ve wondered how these 18- to 22-year-olds, many of whom grew up in the increasingly red state, respond to his doomsaying. This year, while home around Thanksgiving, I sat in on his last lecture of the semester—a doozy on how economic systems can destroy natural resources. His students seemed completely at ease—chatting with him at the beginning of class, easily participating when he asked questions. I was already surprised. “He’s just sharing the facts,” one of his students told me, when I asked a group of them about his teaching style after the class. Another quickly interjected: “He’s too dogmatic. It’s super depressing, it’s super doom.” Others nodded. A third chimed in: “It helps me feel motivated.” Later that week, while I was reporting a different story at a local climate event, both his former students and local activists flagged me down to say how much they appreciated my dad’s courses and op-eds in local newspapers. “We need all sorts of climate communication. People are responsive to different messages,” said Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, the markedly anti-doomer author of What If We Get It Right?, a recent book that puts possibility at the center of climate action. In 2019, a Yale study on how people respond to different messaging tactics underscored this point—finding that “hope is not always good, and doubt is not always bad.” For Johnson, getting through the climate crisis starts with who you surround yourself with. “This is not solitary work. Individual changemakers are not really a thing,” she said. “We never know the ripples that we’re going to have.” The Christmas stockings on the mantle at my dad’s house haven’t changed in years, but the dinner conversations have. Now, instead of trying to brush aside Dr. Doom’s digressions, we lean in. Our evenings are spent butting heads over the recent climate optimism book, Not the End of the World, by data scientist Hannah Ritchie; swapping notes on heat pumps; and debating how to make the most of used-EV tax credits. My baby nephew, Auggie, of the latest generation to be saddled with our hopes and fears, brightens the room with his cooing at all manner of round fruits and toy trucks. Between sips from warm mugs, my dad leans back in his chair and frowns at some news on his phone’s screen. “The wheels are really coming off the wagon, kids. Humanity faces an existential threat,” he says, to no one in particular. 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Capturing The Fire

TripleF***

Reboot

Inside The Grand Canyon

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Suggested Viewing

Uncovering the Permian Climate Bomb

Capturing The Fire

TripleF***

Reboot

Inside The Grand Canyon

Join us to forgea sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future