Tackle climate to beat populists, says Miliband

Tackling the climate emergency is a key issue that could turn the tide against hard-right populists across the world, the UK’s energy secretary has said.

- Fiona Harvey and Jonathan Watts Belém

Speaking on the eve of the UN’s climate summit, Ed Miliband told the Guardian it was the cause that progressives could rally around, because most people recognised populist parties had got it wrong. “We’re not going to give up, and the progress that we've already made should give us heart,” he said. “Giving up would be a total betrayal. Defeatism never took a single of a fraction of a degree of global warming. It never created a single job. It never did anything.”

Miliband spoke as world leaders were meeting in Belém, Brazil, before the crucial Cop30 summit begins on Monday, when governments of every stripe will try to forge a path that limits temperatures and avoids the ravages of climate breakdown.

The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, struck a note of desperation when he said this week that efforts to limit heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels - the goal of the Paris climate deal, and the last safe point, according to scientists - had failed.

“We've got to be the bearers of hope,” Miliband said. “We can fight back. Climate is a strength [in the battle against the hard right] not a weakness. We’re about giving a better future for people’s kids and grandkids.” He warned that populists wanted people to slip into gloom and defeatism over the prospects of climate breakdown. Progressives must make the climate their core rallying cry, as most people around the world wanted climate action, he said.