The curious disappearance of climate change, from Brexit to Berlin | Andrew Simms

The word climate does not appear once in the letter triggering the UK’s departure from Europe. Despite the world experiencing a second, successive, record annual rise in carbon dioxide concentrations, on one level the omission is hardly surprising.

When the environment minister, George Eustice, revealed that the government had commissioned no research at all on the likely impact of Brexit on environmental policy it reflected how low green issues had fallen on the political agenda. Just how far is revealed by the fact that more than 1,100 EU environmental safeguards will need translating into UK law.

Running very fast to stand still on climate change in the UK will be the best we can hope for. Up to 13 various bills need to be passed just to allow Brexit to happen, squeezing almost everything else out of Parliament’s agenda. Closing the vast gap between current climate plans and meeting the new international targets agreed in Paris in December 2015 has as much chance as a snowflake in a Westminster canteen kettle.

Priorities couldn’t have been clearer when the department for Brexit was moved into the old offices of the abolished department for energy and climate change. But the UK, with its particular set of circumstances, is not the only country seeing the curious disappearance of climate change from the political agenda.

The French capital, Paris, put its name on the latest global climate agreement. It was hailed as a diplomatic triumph which France basked in. Yet, at the country’s lengthy first presidential debate between five candidates, just a single passing remark from one candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on climate change was reported. Separately, Emmanuel Macron earlier goaded Donald Trump by offering France as a haven for disaffected scientists, including climate scientists, but that’s as high profile as it got.

It was a similar story in the recent Dutch parliamentary elections where identity politics dominated. The so-called “three ‘I’s” of immigration, integration and Islam proved the principle battle ground, with the low-lying Netherlands seemingly sanguine about the existential threat of long-term sea level rise.

Germany’s federal election is due this autumn with no sign that the story will be different there. Climate did, of course, figure obliquely in the US elections last year, but only in a negative sense, as one of a handful of issues in Donald Trump’s campaign of disenlightenment, of truths to be denied.

Political explanations for the absence of climate change may be easy to construct: the general public aren’t talking about it so neither are politicians. But the very lack of discussion is a logical consequence of the signal from our politicians that it’s not an important issue. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Preserving a habitable climate is a primary responsibility. Without that there is no arena for any other aspiration a society might have, whether in business, science the arts – anything. Elected office is a job like any other which should mean having certain, basic competencies. These are the types of thing that in other trades mean you don’t inadvertently kill people, like safety knowledge in gas fitters.

No such requirements apply in politics. If they did, they would include being able to demonstrate a grasp of the basic, scientific facts of life, such as whether or not your programme is aligned to preventing irreversible climatic upheaval.

Politics focuses on occupation of the vaunted centre ground. The very idea of centrist politics conjures notions of stability, continuity and reassurance. But no large, mainstream political party competing for ‘centrist’ space has policies remotely capable of delivering those things in a climate sense.

Unconsciously, by not grasping the basic environmental facts of life, those who think of themselves inhabiting some political centre are, in fact, extremists. They preside over systems calmly marching us over a climate change cliff. It’s as if at home you know there’s a gas leak somewhere, but rather than sort it out, you opt to nip to the bingo and fritter away your savings instead.

In the UK at least, the media agenda is heavily led by Westminster. The absence of climate change there means it is virtually invisible elsewhere. That’s a leadership failure. The great irony is that in the UK, proper climate action could help solve many other pressing issues, such as job creation, innovation, direction for UK industry, transport, energy independence, security and more.

There is no climate fairy. The problem won’t disappear by leaving it to someone else, or pretending it doesn’t exist. But bring it centre stage and you may find magical solutions to other dilemmas.