Voters can now find out a candidate’s climate stance

This post is by Lord Deben.

We caused it and we can overcome it but we’d prefer to ignore it. That’s the real climate change issue in this election. All the major parties are signed up to net zero 2050 but that’s not where the battle is being fought. None of them are really facing up to what it involves. The Conservatives assure us they will achieve it without any real inconvenience; the Labour Party is pretty short on detail once we move away from energy; the Liberal Democrats are coy about how we fund their programme; and the Scottish National Party are mostly otherwise engaged.

Politicians should be warned that concern is growingAs voters this is often our fault. At every one of the many meetings I address, I ask the audience how many have been to see their MP on the climate issue during the last six months. If more than three in a hundred hands go up I’m amazed. And these are all people – from Glastonbury Festival goers to sustainability professionals and development groups – who recognise the threat of climate change. So it’s not surprising that candidates of all parties, when I chide them for the absence of climate concern on their leaflets, respond that it’s a subject that rarely comes up on the doorstep.

Yet, those politicians should be warned that it will come up more and more. Climate change gets worse every year, and people who are flooded and can no longer insure, who see older relatives die from excessive heat or who are faced with food shortage when continuous rain means farmers can neither harvest nor plant, these are voters who won’t forgive the politicians who didn’t act. At the same time, they will conveniently forget that they encouraged that inaction.

Resources are available to inform votersSo, even if the political parties don’t see this as a climate election, we who recognise the threat, must. That’s why, with three cross party colleagues, I have collaborated with the Grantham Institute at LSE to put together the website Climate Election 2024. This details all the candidates in England and Wales from the four parties who have signed up to net zero 2050.

We are assessing each of them for their personal views on climate and their willingness to ensure that the UK meets its targets for emission reductions by 2030 and 2035. We don’t tell people how to vote but we aim to give them the information to help them make their democratic choice. Of course, we were working towards a November election and so, with the snap announcement, we have gaps in our information. We are filling those as quickly as possible but if you have any information about candidates’ views – good or bad – do let us know by following guidance on the website or contacting climate.election2024@lse.ac.uk. 

Getting this fully populated means that we will have the public commitment of every new MP because we send all candidates the assessments for confirmation before we put them up. After the election, it will be for all of us to keep our MPs up to the mark they have set. We have only five years – one parliament – left till the end of the decade in which the world has the best chance to turn the tide. We have dawdled too long. It’s more than 30 years since Margaret Thatcher went to the World Summit at Rio: more than 15 since the Climate Change Act: and nearly ten years since the world signed up to defeating climate change in the Paris Agreement.

No major party is taking it seriously enoughIt is the lack of urgency that so disfigures this election campaign. The planet that sustains our life is under threat and yet no major party suggests that we should be on a war footing to save it. In the end, only action by parliament can put us on the right track.

Whatever our views, if we wait for system change we will run out of time. We have to make the present system work and that means keeping our representatives up to the mark. From now on, they must not be able to hold a surgery or a public meeting without climate issues being raised.

The localised threats that are detailed constituency by constituency by Friends of the Earth on its State of the Environment website is the most useful resource for pressing new MPs. It’s also very helpful in pressing councillors and their officers to ensure we get the local action that is essential if we are to win this battle.

But we have also to act individually. In our own decisions and in those of each organisation to which we belong, we must insist on looking at every choice through the climate lens.  The golf club; the church; the book club; the football team, we can influence them all. We ourselves can shop in a climate friendly way, buying from those who are fighting the fight and refusing ever to buy from those who undermine the effort. None of us should ever buy Esso petrol or any of the products of Exxon Mobil or similar companies who have done so much to stop action to protect the planet.

Above all, we must communicate much more effectively. The world we want to build is a better world; a cleaner, greener and fairer world. There is no place for misery in our campaigning. This is a battle we are going to win.