Theresa May puts tackling climate change back on Tory agenda

Theresa May has declared that tackling climate change and reducing its effects on poorer countries is a “moral imperative”, as the Conservative party renewed its push to portray itself as environmentally friendly.

The prime minister set out her commitment to dealing with climate change in an article for the Guardian, echoing David Cameron’s 2005 efforts to show the Tories cared about global warming.

Ahead of this week’s climate change summit in Paris, May said: “There is a clear moral imperative for developed economies like the UK to help those around the world who stand to lose most from the consequences of manmade climate change.”

She described coal as “one of the dirtiest and most destructive ways of generating power” and hailed the “enormous commercial opportunity which the shift to cleaner forms of energy represents”.

May’s commitment to the issue of climate change was questioned when she abolished the Department for Energy and Climate Change shortly after taking office last year. Later, her appointee as environment secretary, Andrea Leadsom, had to ask officials whether climate change was real.

However, the prime minister insists “tackling climate change and mitigating its effects for the world’s poorest are amongst the most critical challenges the world faces”.

At the summit she will announce a £140m boost to funding for poorer communities affected by climate change through deforestation or vulnerability to natural disasters and extreme weather, plus £15m of additional support for reconstruction on Dominica in the Caribbean, which was devastated by Hurricane Maria in September.

It comes at a time when Conservative MPs are being asked by party officials to show off their green credentials after internal polling showed the level of concern among younger voters about environmental issues.

The party has been alarmed by the backlash against May’s support for a free vote on foxhunting, the omission of a ban on the ivory trade from the manifesto and its lack of support for an amendment that would have recognised in UK law that animals feel pain. They have since backtracked on all three issues.

The environment secretary, Michael Gove, will publish a draft bill on Tuesday that explicitly enshrines animal sentience in domestic law. It will also increase the maximum prison sentence in England and Wales for animal cruelty from six months to five years.

“Animals are sentient beings who feel pain and suffering, so we are writing that principle into law and ensuring that we protect their welfare,” Gove said. “We are a nation of animal lovers so we will make Brexit work not just for citizens but for the animals we love and cherish too.”

Gove is also said to be pressing for more of the UK’s overseas aid budget to be spent on cutting plastic pollution after it emerged that 90% of the waste in the ocean came from 10 rivers in Africa and Asia, according to a report in the Times.

The Guardian revealed this month that Conservative MPs had been hauled in by No 10 to be briefed on seven new policy principles underpinned by a focus on the environment in an attempt to turn the situation around.

As the final episode of the BBC’s Blue Planet II finished on Sunday evening, many Tory MPs published messages on Twitter to push the government’s environmental policies, accompanied by Conservative-branded graphics.

The change in strategy comes a decade after Cameron tried to make the party focus on green issues, changing the Conservative logo to a tree, installing a wind turbine on his roof and visiting the Arctic to learn about global warming – where he was mocked for metaphorically trying to “hug a husky”.

However, he moved away from this agenda over the course of his premiership and reportedly ordered officials to “cut the green crap” from energy bills and ban the expansion of onshore windfarms as he came under pressure from rightwingers in the party.

May still has a number of senior MPs in the Conservative ranks who have expressed scepticism about green policies, including the Brexit secretary, David Davis, who once argued against the “ferocious determination to impose hairshirt policies on the public – taxes on holiday flights, or covering our beautiful countryside with wind turbines that look like props from War of the Worlds”.