Opinion UK’s backtracking on fossil fuel shows developed nations’ hypocrisy
Express View: The contradiction between the UK prime minister’s stance at the UN meet and his domestic policies indicates a disturbing tendency: Developed country representatives often make the right noises at global summits but they fail to match their words with action at home
In response, the then Boris Johnson government decided to advance the ban on new petrol and diesel cars to 2030 – a decade earlier than the UK’s previous commitment. 
In 2019, the UK became the first major economy to pass a law that committed the country to end its carbon emissions by 2050. However, several experts reasoned that this carbon neutrality, or net zero, project was a subterfuge, a way of delaying immediate climate action, especially because the country was not on track to meet its previous less ambitious targets.
In response, the then Boris Johnson government decided to advance the ban on new petrol and diesel cars to 2030 – a decade earlier than the UK’s previous commitment. But now, Johnson’s successor, Rishi Sunak, has gone against the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee, the statutory body responsible for monitoring progress on attaining the net zero target, by pushing back the ban on new fossil fuel-driven cars to 2035.
Sunak has maintained that the measure will not stall UK’s progress towards net zero. However, the dilution has drawn criticism from not just environmentalists but also a large section of the car industry, which reckons that the respite to the fossil fuel sector will slow down the UK’s transition to electric vehicles.
At the last UNFCCC CoP, Sunak said that the rising energy prices because of the war in Ukraine are not a reason to go slow on climate change mitigation. He had urged countries to invest more heavily in renewable energy.
The contradiction between the UK prime minister’s stance at the UN meet and his domestic policies indicates a disturbing tendency: Developed country representatives often make the right noises at global summits but they fail to match their words with action at home.
On paper, for instance, the US seems better positioned to meet its Paris Pact targets compared to the four years of climate denial under Donald Trump.
Yet, independent assessments show nearly two years after Joe Biden signed an order to make America carbon neutral by 2050, the country’s emissions trajectory remains uncertain. And now, days after it was party to a landmark G20 declaration that affirmed the bloc’s commitment to renewables, the UK has watered down its climate plans.
The technical synthesis report of the Paris Agreement’s Global Stocktake process — it evaluates the progress on attaining the pact’s targets — released a day before the G20 summit, points to the challenges ahead. It notes that at current ambition levels, the world will emit nearly 20 billion tonnes more carbon dioxide than what is required to keep global temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius – the Paris Pact’s goal. After the UK’s backtracking, the task of initiating course correction at the UNFCCC CoP, which begins in Dubai in about two months, has become even more difficult.
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