Ibrahim added: “We’ve seen our government and previous governments set targets and under-deliver. The climate doesn’t respond to targets. It requires serious action, and the credibility of this target relies on concrete plans and investment to reach it.
“Last month’s budget didn’t signal a government ready to be ambitious about actions needed to meet this pressing moment. It left too little investment on the table. It failed to reduce fossil fuel subsidies. It didn’t create the green jobs necessary for a just transition.”
She explained that while the “ambitious target” was a “signal”, Green New Deal Rising is “calling on the government to provide a plan to get us there, to have a comprehensive sector-by-sector plan to decarbonise our homes, to make sure that we decarbonise our transport, that we come off fossil fuels, that we create the jobs necessary to both grow our economy and give resilience and sustainability to communities.”
“We have a Labour government that isn’t bereft of ideas. It has GB Energy, which is a brilliant idea for the public to have a stake in the green transition and in new green energies,” Ibrahim said. “What we’re missing fundamentally from this government is investment. [Labour] had a £28bn pledge per year to invest in the green economy running up to the election, they dropped it… For us, the thing that we need from the government is for it to not put growth in competition with tackling the climate crisis.”
Ibrahim warned that the consequences of failing to meet these ambitious climate targets could be “disastrous”.
“The future looks bleak if we don’t tackle the climate crisis,” she said. “What we’re going to see is climate impacts become a mainstay, and we are going to see communities under threat… We could face floods like Valencia saw last month.
“There is an alternative, though. The alternative is we act fast and we act at the scale at which the challenge demands, and in the process, we build societies that are much more thriving and much more inclusive and equal.”
The COP29 summit, which delegates from nearly 200 countries are expected to attend – though US president Joe Biden, Xi Jinping of China, Olaf Scholz of Germany and Emmanuel Macron of France are not expected to be there – will reportedly focus on climate finance, including ways of ensuring poorer countries can access the money needed to cut emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
In his opening speech at COP29, UN climate chief Simon Stiell claimed world leaders must show that global cooperation “is not down for the count”.
“Here in Baku, we must agree a new global climate finance goal. If at least two-thirds of the world’s nations cannot afford to cut emissions quickly, then every nation pays a brutal price,” he said.
Ibrahim added: “This is the only forum where those who are least responsible but most impacted by the climate crisis have to legitimately ask for support and for climate finance to make the transition for their communities.
“Global climate leadership is not just getting your own house in order, it’s also taking responsibility for the role that you have played in driving the climate crisis. The UK has an outsized, historic responsibility in our contribution to the climate crisis, and therefore we should be providing the climate finance necessary for those in the global south to protect their communities.”
Reacting to Starmer’s climate goals, Chaitanya Kumar, head of environment and economy at the New Economics Foundation, explained that the PM attending COP29 reflects a “welcome change in climate leadership that the UK seemed to have abandoned”, adding that other “major emitters” like the US and China had been a “no-show”.
“Today’s announcement of a new target, committed to the international community, puts the UK near the front of the pack amongst rich nations. But it’s a target based on a domestic gamble – that technologies like carbon capture and hydrogen, which are nascent today, will scale dramatically,” Kumar added.
“COP29 is being dubbed the finance COP, and the PM also needs to show how the UK will pay for the significant loss and damage that is already wrecking lives in the poorest parts of the globe.”
Juliet Michaelson, co-director of climate charity Possible, added: “It’s great to see the UK raising ambition and showing climate leadership on the world stage at this pivotal moment, but we need to see Labour getting real about the action that’s needed to actually meet these targets.
“Carbon capture and nuclear energy are white elephants rather than silver bullets. We need real investment in greener ways of getting around, warming our homes with clean heat and cutting the carbon of our consumption.”
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