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Talk is cheap when it comes to climate action. Now the government must deliver | Climate change

The coronavirus pandemic and the jobs crisis it has precipitated are rightly consuming our immediate attention. Meanwhile, the climate and environment emergency has not gone away. These intersecting crises demand urgent and coordinated action.

When it comes to averting catastrophic global heating, the science is unequivocal: bold action is required, and it is required now. As the UN has warned, limiting warming to 1.5C requires “far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” for which “the next few years are probably the most important in our history”.

Viewed in that existential context, both the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target and the government’s new 2030 target are the absolute minimum that we should aim for. Cognisant of the accelerating nature of the climate crisis, the Labour party seeks to go further and faster, and it remains our firm ambition to achieve the substantial majority of the UK’s emissions reductions by the end of this decisive decade.

But while Labour will continue to make the case for the highest possible ambition, we must also hold the government to account on its existing targets. This week’s landmark report by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) highlights just how challenging those targets are. It set out in exhaustive detail both the scale of the task ahead and the sweeping changes necessary in every sector of the economy.

According to the CCC, to reach net zero by 2050, not only will our power system have to be fully decarbonised within the next 15 years, but rapid progress will have to be made in sectors such as transport and housing, where the impact on people will be much more acute with “every new car and van, and every replacement boiler” required to be zero-carbon by the early 2030s.

Yet the report also demonstrates that the transition to a low-carbon economy is both entirely feasible and, if managed correctly, hugely beneficial – not only opening up significant new industrial opportunities but also promising hundreds of thousands of decent jobs in every nation and region, cheaper bills, warmer homes, and a host of other health and environmental benefits. And with the estimated costs of decarbonisation continuing to fall, it makes a convincing case that there are net gains for our economy that will offset upfront investment over the long term.

Of course, these benefits will only materialise if the government delivers on its promises. To judge solely on the basis of Boris Johnson’s rhetoric, one would be forgiven for thinking the government he leads is firmly on track to net zero. Yet as things stand, not only is it way off track to meet the legally binding target, but the government’s own projections indicate that it’s not even on track to meet the less ambitious one that preceded it.

We need a step change in delivery. Achieving net zero is going to require a major nationwide investment programme, one that is government led and frontloaded. That’s precisely why Labour recently challenged the government to bring forward an ambitious stimulus package geared towards decarbonisation, in order to fight the twin crises of unemployment and climate breakdown by supporting the creation of up to 400,000 new low-carbon jobs in every region of the country over the next 18 months.

Yet the government has shown little appetite for acting decisively to close the net-zero investment gap. The prime minister’s recent 10-point climate package contained just £3bn of new money – half the amount the Tories have funnelled into overseas fossil fuel projects in the last decade. With no new green investment whatsoever in the spending review, it is now clear the chancellor has broken his commitment to “a green recovery, with concern for our environment at its heart”.

But as well as investment, delivering net zero also requires the government to urgently bring forward a clear, credible and comprehensive strategy. Given the necessary pace of change, the public will rightly demand to know how ministers are going to help millions of families move from gas boilers to clean heating systems or cover the upfront costs of electric vehicles. They are owed answers to those and many other questions as soon as possible.

The public will also want to know that any strategy for net zero has fairness at its heart. It is imperative that decarbonisation in the decades ahead avoids the mistakes of deindustrialisation in the 1980s. That is why Labour is determined to fight for a green industrial revolution: one that properly supports people and places through the transition, that actively involves individuals and their communities in the process, that ensures that the benefits of green investment are realised here at home and shared across all nations and regions, and that tackles entrenched inequalities. Doing so is not only morally right; it’s the only way to sustain public support as we make the shift to a low-carbon economy.

Announcing targets is easy; achieving them is the hard part. To date the government has been long on aspiration but short on tangible progress. As the host of the critical COP26 UN climate summit next year, the UK had a duty to raise its climate ambition, and at today’s climate ambition summit it needs to persuade others to do the same; but the government now needs to move beyond the talk and demonstrate to the world that it has the policies and the political will to deliver on that ambition.

• Matthew Pennycook is shadow minister for climate change

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