Britain’s Conservative Party has been on quite the eco journey: from then-wannabe Prime Minister David Cameron buffing his green credentials in 2006 by hugging Huskies, to today’s declaration that, should it form the next government-which, on current polling, is extremely unlikely-the Tories would scrap the Climate Change Act.
The Act-steered through parliament in 2008 by Labor’s Ed Miliband, the current Secretary of State for Energy Security and net Zero-set strict carbon budgets and enabled the U.K. to make the greatest progress on carbon emissions in the developed world. At the time of the Act’s passing into law, there was little opposition: it was passed by parliament by an overwhelming cross-party majority, with only five MPs out of 646 voting against it.The Conservative Party, then the main opposition, even urged the Labour government to set tougher carbon reduction targets.
Earlier, in 1989, Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called for a global convention on climate change during a speech to the United nations, and three years later the then Conservative government signed up-along with almost all other countries-to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.For many years, the Conservatives professed to be in favor of conserving the planet. Climate change was “one of