The Guardian view on climate policy: Britain needs clean power, not culture wars | Editorial

LThe reduction in the climate law of the British so that we can burn more gas, lose investments and have higher invoices. As crazy as it may seem, this is the message of the new energy strategy of Kemi Badenoch. The conservative chief proposes to repeal the 2008 climate change law in favor of a plan to “maximize the extraction of oil and gas”, and eliminate all the carbon carbon targets legally. It is presented as pragmatism. But it is an obstacle in ideological autumutilation.

The energy problem of Great Britain is not its climate legislation, which is admired worldwide, supported by industry and supported by the public. This is that this country remains too dependent on volatile fossil fuels. The emission objectives are not the reason for high invoices. It was the prices of gas, which skyrocketed after Russia has invaded Ukraine. They set electricity prices in the United Kingdom. In Europe, they don’t – that’s why the bills are lower there. On the contrary, Ms. Badenoch chooses to follow Donald Trump by causing the objectives of the climate and seeing the prices of electricity in the United States, and not in fall.

In Great Britain, she imitates the reform of the United Kingdom in a race to the populist background. It is a stroke of the cultural war – transforming climate doubt into a tribal identity. And it’s pathetic: a retirement of 17 years of conservative climate leadership. Former Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May rightly sentenced him. It is not pragmatism – it is the abandonment of a successful industrial strategy, a gift for polluters and a confidence. He breaks a rare cross consensus which has made Great Britain a world leader.

Compare this with the speech of the Edre Miliband’s Labor Party Conference, said the day before Ms. Badenoch’s announcement. The Energy Secretary offered a fully throat defense of the Green Transition as an economic necessity and a moral mission. He argued that clean energy is the basis of a new economy – that built in the interest of workers, with unionized jobs, lower bills and public property. He named the right -wing billionaires who stood on the way – notably Elon Musk – and put the Green Labor program as a battle for the future against disinformation and oligarchic wealth.

The most important part of his speech was not at all on energy. It was his rejection of the economy and the austerity of the benefits, the twin failures behind decades of stagnation. In doing so, he used clean energy not only as a climate policy, but as a Trojan horse for a deeper transformation – a plan for a greener and more equitable social democracy. Mr. Miliband’s field went far beyond the prudent technocracy. It was a story about the interests of the economy and a subtle excavation to the current orthodoxy of work on growth.

Transition policy is difficult. Mr. Miliband did not explain in his speech on the way in which work would assume the costs of structural change, although in margins of the conference, he worked hard to transform tensions with unions in partnership. He always faces the pressure of high invoices in a cost of living crisis. The construction of an affordable clean energy system must be the government’s objective – not just Mr. Miliband. The absurd plan of Mrs. Badenoch is anti-science and an imprudent attempt to load Net Zero as an ellistist. In a time of cynicism, prudent technocracy will not win hearts.

Mr. Miliband offered a conviction and a hope. Speeches can inspire, but it is delivery that keeps people next to it. This is Mr. Miliband’s test – and Great Britain cannot afford to fail.

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