The once-bold UK has begun to look like a climate laggard

Londons leadership on climate action has turned into diffidence

- LARA WILLIAMS

Once upon a time, the UK was a climate champion, setting the pace in tackling the world’s most urgent crisis. But the current administration is squandering that lead and putting Britain’s global standing at risk as others move ahead with bold economy-shaping climate policies. It’ll soon be too late to make up lost ground. There are plenty of past successes to be proud of: The Climate Change Act, passed by parliament in 2008 by a big cross-party majority, was revolutionary— the first legally binding mitigation target set by a country. In 2019, the UK became the first major economy to enshrine a net-zero emissions commitment in law. At the 2021 United Nations Climate Summit in Glasgow, the UK laid out an ambitious intermediary target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 68% by 2030, to align with the Paris temperature goal of no more than 1.5° C of warming.

Those commitments helped: In 2022, the country emitted 46% less than it did in 1990, thanks largely to eliminating coal from most of the UK’s power generation. In 2018, a 10-year review of the Climate Change Act by the Grantham Research Institute found that it had helped to reduce emissions without an economic slump.