Commons Sense

This week has seen the COP26 climate conference kick off in Glasgow.

This is a crucial meeting of countries and world leader and one of the largest of its kind.

It sounds somewhat like an episode of Star Trek when it is the future of life on our planet under discussion.

It is, for me, reassuring that

Britain is leading the way and lighting the fire under all countries to make some meaningful commitments over the next week.

The UK can do it’s bit to help with energy efficiency and remove pollutants from the atmosphere, but we represent 1 per cent of the world’s population and we cannot do it all.

The Prime Minister is an avid supporter of policies that seek to address the challenge of climate change, and this has been reflected in our recent domestic policies.

Already the UK has one of, what is considered to be, the greenest energy mixes in the world.

We have minimal reliance on coal and for much of the last couple of years not a single coal-fired power station was needed to generate the nation’s demands for electricity.

The Government also has ambitious targets to cut carbon emissions by 70 per cent and to ban sales of new fossil fuelled cars by 2030. This is in addition to being the first major economy to commit to producing net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Already we are seeing the conference bear fruit with an international commitment to reduce methane emissions by 30 per cent, and a commitment to stop deforestation and start to reverse it, both pledges by 2030 and over 100 countries have signed up to both.

Over the course of the next week I am hopefully that, under our leadership, we will see more commitments from many more countries.