Scientists: we measured this, calculated that and based upon all our data, knowledge and experience, we recommend this or we all die.
Politician: well, I want more votes so I’ll just say that you don’t know what you’re talking about and that I know better. Want could possibly go wrong?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Reversals and delays to net zero policy announced last week will be just the start of a general election campaign in which the UK’s longstanding cross-party political consensus on climate will be increasingly at stake.
Emails sent to journalists from the Conservative campaign headquarters revealed lines of attack on targets including the independent Climate Change Committee and Labour’s proposed £28bn investment in a low-carbon economy.
Sunak, announcing a five-year delay to the ban on new petrol and diesel cars, and a watering-down of the phase-out of gas boilers, also claimed to scrap nonexistent taxes on meat and flying, the imposition of seven bins and forced car-sharing – and the CCHQ emails encouraged the media to target Labour over these phantom policies.
After the success of signing a global UN treaty to save the ozone layer, the Montreal Protocol in 1987, she moved quickly to attempt the same for greenhouse gases, making a landmark speech at the UN general assembly in 1989, calling for concerted action.
Just hours after the UN secretary general António Guterres warned world leaders that humanity had “opened the gates of hell”, Sunak made his speech watering down UK policy.
One told the Observer the announced changes on electric vehicles and boilers, and scrapping proposals to force landlords to make their tenants’ homes more energy efficient, were “not going to slow the dial that much [on cutting emissions].
The original article contains 815 words, the summary contains 231 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!