Keir Starmer’s delusions of a climate utopia have fallen on deaf ears

Keir Starmer addressing COP29
Keir Starmer addressing COP29

The Government used to have a twin-pronged strategy to help save the world from the climate crisis.

The first was to persuade us all that we must change the way we live, limit our appetites for carbon-emitting forms of transport, food production and domestic heating and be prepared to make the sacrifices in our standards of living that will be necessary in order to limit the amount by which the earth’s temperature will rise in future years.

The second prong of the strategy was to remind us constantly that none of this is working and that despite our efforts we’re all going to die horribly in a fiery Armageddon. That part hasn’t changed. But the first one has.

Most people were able to recognise the fundamental flaw in the strategy and it’s a circle that governments all over the globe had to square if they were to succeed in avoiding turning us all into extras in a Roland Emmerich movie. To get people on their side, to win their support for their own climate ambitions, voters needed to be told that all their sacrifices had to be worth something.

They needed to be assured that it was working, that their reluctant agreement to ditch their old diesel-fuelled banger in favour of an expensive new hybrid or electric car was actually going to help save all those lives that politicians constantly reminded us were at risk.

Swapping your old and much beloved gas boiler in favour of a much larger – and some might suggest less efficient – electric pump might seem less of a worthwhile sacrifice if, as soon as it’s been installed, you switch on the TV news to be told that temperatures are still rising disastrously.

What’s the point, you might be tempted to ask.

That is Keir Starmer’s challenge as he attends COP29 in Azerbaijan this week, and it is the challenge facing every other world leader who is attending.

Some will say that it is unhelpful – crass, in fact – to reduce the fight for the survival of the planet to a mere political problem, especially one of messaging. But that’s what we’re stuck with, especially since most of the measures in most parts of the world will be judged at the ballot box by the very people who are most impacted by the policies aimed at limiting increases in climate temperatures.

The Prime Minister himself helpfully set out the problems he and his world leaders face, although he did so inadvertently. In the last couple of decades, politicians here and elsewhere in the democratic world have consciously decided to change completely the language used to describe the “green transition”. In more realistic times, our leaders might have told us that while it will be tough to meet the targets agreed internationally for limiting carbon emissions, the prize – a sustainable planet – would be worth it.

No longer. Speaking to delegates today, the Prime Minister repeated rhetoric he’s used many times before, rejecting talk of “sacrifices” and instead embracing the “opportunities for tomorrow”. This Reaganesque optimism was ably represented in his opening comments: “This is a huge opportunity, for investment, for UK businesses, for British workers, if we act now to lead the world in the economy of tomorrow.

This is how we move towards better jobs, cheaper bills, high growth, the industries and technology of the future and ensure the prosperity and security of our nation for decades to come. And prosperity and security of our nation are the issues the British people care about.”

Stirring stuff. What’s not to like? This sort of language is so much more comforting than the old language of sacrifice and threats and the doom that awaits our children if we don’t start eating more vegan burgers.

And in an earlier interview, Starmer even went so far as to claim that Britain’s climate change targets – reducing emissions from a 1990 base by 81 per cent by 2035 – was “not about telling people how to live their lives”.

This is wonderful! Just think – according to Keir, we can live how we like, even live like we did in the 1980s and 1990s, presumably, without government interference. And there are no sacrifices being demanded. In fact, the only changes we’ll see are cheaper energy bills, better, cleaner, more highly-paid jobs and a cleaner, more secure, more stable planet. Sign me up!

But perhaps a little cynicism is justified nonetheless. Will it really be this easy, this unalloyed, uninterrupted transition from where we are now to this new, shining utopia of which the PM speaks? Even some of those present at COP29, including the hosts, are sceptical about the ending of reliance on oil that is demanded by UN scientists. And the fact that many of the leaders of the biggest global polluters, including the USA and China, aren’t even present to suffer their traditional talking-down-to by smaller, less wealthy nations suggests that COP29 is less cop than it used to be.

And while the stick has been rebranded as a big, juicy, irresistible carrot, the regular warnings of climate apocalypse are no less frequently broadcast: projected temperatures are still rising, this or that line on the thermometer will be crossed soon, irreparable damage is about to be inflicted on our natural environment. It’s all aimed at motivating our leaders to do something, but so far its chief accomplishment has been to encourage them to use less harsh language or not turn up at all.

The fundamental problem is that this Government, and many others like it, have persuaded us that they, not we as individuals, have the responsibility for saving the planet. Which means that they, not we, have to take the blame when their measures don’t work.

All we have to do is wait for all those bright, shiny promises to come true and wait, even more patiently, for those thermometer readings to come down. Because that’s what we were promised, right? And surely our own leaders wouldn’t lie to us about something that important?