Last Thursday, while wildfires raged in Greece, Italy, Tunisia, Portugal, Croatia and Algeria and British tourists found themselves being rescued by locals in boats (good boats, not those bringing people fleeing for their lives).
Unfortunately in the UK attention was divided. The Uxbridge seat had a referendum was won by Conservatives (though only by a margin of around 500 votes) and it is thought that this might be as a result of Sadiq Kahns ULEZ Ultra low emissions zone. Of course, not to put a spanner in the works, but this ULEZ zone was proposed by Boris Johnson a conservative, but never mind.
Anyway, the conservatives are using this loss as justification to ditch the net zero by 2050 pledge. It is a very similar pivot to David Cameron hugging a husky in 2006, and demanding the removal of all that “green C**p” in 2013.
Sunak is now stating that the ordinary people should not bare the cost of compulsory green initiatives, and that it must be proportional and pragmatic (I suppose he mean the difference between paying and not, rather than the difference between adapting now or paying hundreds of times more in the future). The problem is that it is not a future issue. Some scientists are predicting the Gulf stream collapsing in just 2 years. I agree that people should not have to pay large amounts to deal with climate change, the government should. Unfortunately until they will, the population will have to do what it can.