The Conservative party’s energy spokesperson has attacked leading climate scientists as biased and claimed Kemi Badenoch could take the UK out of the Paris climate agreement.
Andrew Bowie, the acting shadow secretary for energy, told the Guardian that the target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – passed into law by Theresa May – was “arbitrary” and “not based on science”.
He also indicated that the UK’s participation in the 2015 Paris climate agreement was up for reconsideration in the party’s ongoing review of key policies. The only other country to have withdrawn from the agreement is the US, twice, under Donald Trump.
Bowie said: “We are not climate deniers and while we believe in getting to net zero, what we shouldn’t do is be hamstrung by arbitrary targets such as a date of 2050, which was concocted simply because it was a good end point as a date. There’s no scientific rationale for choosing 2050 as the point to which we should reach net zero.”
However, the reason May, as prime minister, set 2050 as a date – along with the world’s other developed countries – was that it is in line with scientific advice on meeting the Paris agreement target of limiting temperature rises preferably to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, or certainly well below 2C, by 2050.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the body of leading climate scientists, set out in its landmark assessments of the world’s knowledge of climate science – regarded as the gold standard for research, though seen as too conservative by some scientists – the need for global emissions to reach net zero by mid-century in order to have a greater than even chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C.
Friederike Otto, a climatologist and senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, said: “From a scientific point of view, net zero is absolutely crucial. We cannot stabilise temperatures without reaching zero new emissions in the atmosphere. The only IPCC emissions scenarios that stabilise temperatures at below 2C, as agreed on in the Paris agreement, need net zero by 2050 globally, so if anything a country like the UK should reach it earlier, not later.”
Bowie said of the IPCC: “They’re biased towards their worldview, which is that we need to reduce climate emissions by a certain arbitrary date. That is not conducive to the overall economic wellbeing of this country.”
He added: “There’s quite a few scientists that say we don’t need to get to net zero by 2050.” Bowie and his office were unable to name such scientists when pressed.
In 2021, the last Tory government led a global effort to get developed countries to sign up to net zero by 2050 while hosting the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow.
Bowie said: “[There is] no way of reaching that [net zero by 2050 target] without making ourselves poorer or without being more reliant on foreign interests for our energy needs. So what we need to do is go away and develop an energy strategy that allows us to decarbonise absolutely but to do it in a way which is conducive to the country’s prosperity and to our energy and national security, and that’s the position we find ourselves in.”
Recent research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has shown that tackling the climate crisis will improve rather than hamper economic growth. Other studies, going back to the 2006 Stern review commissioned by the UK government, have also found a strong economic rationale for tackling global heating, which is on track for catastrophic levels unless global emissions are reduced.
The Tories are conducting a review of policy, which will encompass net zero and energy policy. Bowie is the acting shadow energy secretary while Claire Coutinho, who was energy security and net zero secretary under Rishi Sunak, is on maternity leave.
Bowie said the review was not complete but Badenoch had “been sceptical about the net zero by 2050 commitment for some time”, so that although a net zero target of some kind could be kept, it would not be for 2050.
Mike Childs, the head of science, policy and research at Friends of the Earth, said: “The IPCC is made up of the world’s most eminent climate scientists from 195 member states. In compiling its assessments on the health of our planet, a process that takes years of in-depth research and analysis, the IPCC’s findings are subject to extensive scrutiny and scientific rigour before being published. It’s incredible for the shadow energy minister to suggest he has greater authority on our climate than the world’s top minds.”
