General Election – 11 good reasons NOT to vote Conservative

Conservatives back-pedalled on net zero policies.

As reported by Sky News the Conservative government has backtracked on limiting CO2 emissions and global warming gases.   

Here are 11 good reasons NOT to vote Conservative in the UK 2024 General Election: 

1. Phasing out of petrol and diesel cars delayed to 2035. 
2. Improvements to privately rented homes to improve energy efficiency are now made optional.
3. The phasing out of polluting gas and boilers was to take place from 2025. This has now been delayed by 10 years to 2035. 
4. More gas and oil wells in the North Sea allowed. 

Also, when the coalition ended in 2015, the Conservatives had a veritable bonfire of environmental policies including:

5. Scrapping support for onshore wind farms.
6. Axing solar subsidies.
7. Killing off the flagship ‘green homes’ scheme.
8. Selling off the green investment bank.
9. Watering down the incentive to buy a greener car.
10. Giving up on zero-carbon homes.
11. Scrapping the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon project.

Under the Conservatives, the UK is not doing anywhere near enough to combat the rise in global warming gases. The Tories seem to be blind to the wealth of evidence on climate change. In early May 2024, the Conservative government’s climate plan was ruled unlawful by the High Court! This is the second time they have been found wanting by the High Court in meeting legally binding commitments on climate change mitigation measures. The campaigning groups that brought the case had argued (successfully) that the government relied too much on risky technologies, such as carbon capture, and glossed over the risk of missing targets.

Background notes: 

• Phasing out petrol and diesel cars In 2020, then prime minister Boris Johnson made a commitment to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in the UK after 2030. Now Rishi Sunak has confirmed the deadline will be pushed back by five years, to 2035.
  
• Energy-efficient homes Another pledge made in 2020 was to ensure all privately rented homes had an energy efficiency rating of C or better (where A is the best and G is the worst) by 2028. But Sunak has now insisted no property owners would be “forced” into making “expensive upgrades”, and will only have to do so “when they can”.
  
• Emissions from domestic heating The government’s target was that all new heating system installations be low-carbon by 2025. Now this ban on gas boilers in new homes won’t be put in place until 2035: a ten-year delay in tackling these emissions.
  
• More gas and oil wells In January 2024 the Conservative government handed out 24 new North Sea oil and gas licences. These are in addition to the initial tranche of 27 licences offered in October 2023. On top of all this, the government is proposing to allow oil and gas exploration at sites intended for offshore wind.

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