The United Kingdom’s Labour Party opposition leader Ed Miliband has made a bold intervention in the long-running debate over the UK’s climate policy.
Mr Miliband also warned that floods have highlighted how the UK risks “sleepwalking into a national security crisis on climate change”.
In an interview with Britain’s Observer newspaper, conducted while he toured flood hit areas, Mr Miliband argued that the country’s political class urgently needs to rebuild the political consensus on climate policy.
That consensus held sway in the run up to the 2010 election but is widely seen to have fragmented in recent years.
“The science is clear,” he told the paper.
“The public know there is a problem, but, because of political division in Westminster, we are sleepwalking into a national security crisis on climate change.”
He added that he wanted to see “decent people” in the governing Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats work together with Labour “to come forward and say, we can’t have this ambivalence any more because it will be disastrous for this country”.
“The problem is that either denial or dither on climate change will damage the country,” Mr Miliband said.
“Denial is damaging because it means you won’t take the steps necessary, but dither is damaging, too, because it means you are half-hearted about taking the necessary measures.”
The comments follow a similar attack on the influence of climate sceptics within parts of the Conservative Party from Liberal Democrat Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey.
Mr Davey blamed a “wilfully ignorant, head in the sand, nimbyist conservatism” for undermining the political consensus on climate action.
Prime Minister David Cameron also last week reasserted his commitment to tackling climate change and improving the UK’s resilience, but notably refused to criticise those who wish to shelve decarbonisation efforts.
“I think the point I would make is, whatever your view, clearly we have had and are having some pretty extreme weather,” Mr Cameron said.
“So whatever your view about climate change, it makes sense to mitigate it and act to deal with that weather.”
However, Mr Miliband questioned this stance, arguing that it made it harder for the government to deliver more ambitious action on climate change.
“The reality is that the action we take as a country depends on whether you believe in climate change,” Mr Miliband told the Observer.
“So when the government downgrades flood protection, cuts the floods budgets, cuts the adaptation budget, all of those things, that has an impact.”
Mr Miliband reasserted that a Labour government would increase spending on flood defences, although he failed to provide details on how such a move would be financed.
The latest intervention comes ahead of the imminent publication of Labour’s next green paper on energy efficiency policy.
