This is a big week for Britain’s new Labour Government: PM Starmer is hoping to win back some of the electorate he has so swiftly lost by relaunching the Government’s ruling five missions, by which they wish to be judged. Specifically, by introducing ‘measurable milestones’ which his government aims to achieve over the coming years. He hopes that doing so will give solidity to Labour’s vision for the future in a way that resonates with voters.
My argument here will be that, without including a further mission, of climate adaptation and resilience-building, Starmer’s vision will fail. Because it will not be a vision. I mean: it will not see what is coming, of which we have had a clear premonition in the terrible worldwide autumn of flooding we have all just experienced.
One is not offering a vision of the future nor engaging with its challenges if one fails to engage with the primary growing threat to the UK (as, increasingly, to every country), which will become more damaging and blatant, brutal, as climate breakdown deepens. Indeed, and this is the crucial point of logic I am making: without adaptation-action, these other 5 missions are moot; climate impacts will increasingly render the other 5 unachievable.
Labour currently has 5 ‘missions’:
- Growing the economy
- Making the NHS Fit for the Future
- Safer streets
- Secure power through clean energy
- Opportunities for all
These missions themselves can be brought into question. Most notably, the first and avowedly most fundamental one. Economic growth tends to track with higher emissions/pollution and often fails to correlate with improvements in wellbeing. Even if one still believes in growthism, growth is plainly less important than happiness and security, economic and otherwise.
So it is welcome that relaunched Labour is going to emphasise something closer to wellbeing-improvements as a milestone; Starmer’s speech undertaking the relaunch will stress that improvements must be felt by working people, not merely claimed the basis of increase in a numerical measure (GDP) that has no direct relationship with anything good.
But that can only be the beginning. The opportunity is there for Labour to break new ground by endorsing strategic and transformative adaptation- and education- policies that will build its future support while keeping the nation safe. So why isn’t Labour more willing to embrace this and become a climate leader? God knows international politics is in desperate need of a leader from somewhere, so why not the UK? Labour don’t want to risk their lead over the Conservatives; perhaps they worry that ramping up climate action could impact their voter share. But: Labour’s refusal to risk a massive majority, after the election, for the sake of the nation’s safety is a mark that Labour’s risk aversion is dangerous for Britain.
Moreover, if Labour is calculating that taking climate adaptation seriously risks their political support because climate adaptation is climate action, then they are failing to consider what I believe to be a fundamental point about the new reality: leading on climate adaptation is exactly what could appeal to key tranches of Labour’s supporters.
Labour has a mission on decarbonisation. A mission which if it is not climate-proofed, will be vulnerable: power lines can be blown down in ever deepening storms; or may be directly vulnerable to higher summer temperatures (as our railways famously are); or can be destroyed by ice- or snow-storms (…Part of the vast adaptation challenge is that in the U.K. we don’t even know whether our future will be hotter or colder, because of the vast Arctic ice melt experiment now underway.). But my point is this: it doesn’t have a mission on climate adaptation, and such a mission is exactly what could appeal to many of Labour’s Red Wall etc voters who are unmoved by decarbonisation-alone versions of climate action.
The bottom line is this. Labour is faced with a choice. It can risk leading on climate now, and risk the impact this may or may not have on their popularity, or it can accept the risk that the country will face from food insecurity, heatwaves, and flooding and much more from not leading. The world we are moving into is riskier and riskier. If Labour really wants to earn the name “leader” on the climate issue, the mother of all such risks, then it must embed adaptation to climate impacts into its central missions.
Over the last month we have witnessed horrific scenes come out of Spain, where torrential rain caused extreme flooding to devastate the region. Over half a million people were affected, and the cost of damage is estimated at over €20 billion. It was probably not the case that one sub-region that was particularly ill-prepared was hit particularly badly; 78 municipalities registered at least one fatality. At least 229 people lost their lives. The Spanish floods have been one of the most severe ‘natural’ (sic) disasters to ever hit Spain and a key reason why it was so devastating is that they were not prepared for it.
Climate breakdown has arrived in Europe.
Just a couple of weeks later, the UK suffered a severe storm. Storm Bert was not as devastating as the Spanish floods, with most of the storm hitting low-populated areas. Nevertheless, between £250-350 million worth of insured goods have been damaged, and the storm cut off communities, left tens of thousands without power, and caused water treatment plants to flood sewage into the surrounding area (yet again). Yet, it must be said, that this was merely a taste of the devastating climate impacts that will be faced by the UK. It will not be long before Spain’s suffering will be our own.
In fact, in some localities, such suffering is already starting in earnest. Consider this news story: of a British town centre that might now be flooded out of existence: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/01/could-tenbury-wells-be-the-first-uk-town-centre-abandoned-due-to-climate-change?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other .
Climate breakdown is becoming more and more evident to a greater number of people in the UK. They want to know what their government is going to do to protect them against the coming devastation. They see the protests in Valencia where people are angry that they were not more prepared, and wonder whether their government will let them down too. Adaptation to the inevitable climate impacts is thus a very serious omission from Starmer’s 5 ‘measurable milestones.’
The UK is more vulnerable than ever to climate impacts of all kinds. 2 years ago, record heatwaves hit the country in June, July, and August, with temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius. The searing heat contributed to 2,985 excess deaths. Heat exposure is estimated to cost the UK between 250-300 £million every year, and rising. 2022 was the hottest year on record for the UK, and the second hottest was 2023. Now, 2024 is set to be the hottest year on record globally. Can anyone really believe those heatwaves won’t happen again, and be far worse? Does anyone think Storm Bert is anything but a precursor for the greater, more violent, more destructive storms in our future?
The only sensible response is to transformatively and strategically adapt our society to be better prepared for the now inevitable climate impacts. Labour must take this seriously. Local authorities and business should be supported to create adaptation plans. The process of reckoning, preparing for, and adapting to climate consequences makes their severity felt and thereby builds support for wider system change including carbon-pollution reduction. Clean energy would be wonderful, we all want a better NHS, but without taking adaptation seriously, our government is helping guarantee that the inevitable climate impacts will be as devastating as possible, making their 5 missions increasingly impossible to achieve anyway.
Without taking our vulnerability seriously, and protective adaptation as the essential response to that, our government is letting us down.
Just like Valencia.
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(Thanks to Joe Eastoe for invaluable editorial assistance, and to Liam Kavanagh for ongoing writing and conversation that directly informs this piece.)
Dr. Rupert Read is leading for the Climate Majority Project on their new campaign, Strategic Adaptation For Emergency Resilience: www.ClimateMajorityProject.com/SAFER .
