After 14 years of Tory government, Labour has swept to power on a wave of disillusionment and anger at the Conservative Party. This is an opportunity to fix much that has been broken in this country, to build a fairer society, and, crucially, to take urgent action on the existential threat of climate breakdown, which is already causing destruction around the world, hitting those who have done least to cause the crisis hardest. Will that opportunity be taken?

Time to act on climate

Globally, every month since June 2023 has set a new temperature record for that month. This excess heat has resulted not just in heatwaves, drought and wildfires but in supercharged storms able to carry higher rainfall loads, resulting in catastrophic floods in many regions, and here in the UK, farmers suffering from the abnormally wet winter.

But despite these clear signs of climate breakdown, which underline the dangers of making irreversible changes to our climate and potentially triggering tipping points, climate action here in the UK has stalled. Rishi Sunak spent his last months in power attempting to garner popularity by pushing back Net Zero targets alongside a mission to drill 'every last drop' from the North Sea.

The previous government's climate plan was recently found in court (for the second time) to be inadequate to achieve the UK's national and international climate targets. It's time for a new plan.

Time to invest in the future

For decades the level of public investment in the UK has been significantly lower than that of comparable countries. The Labour government has promised to deliver tangible improvements to people’s lives; to repair the damage to public services caused by austerity; and to get the UK back on track to address the climate crisis. These are all essential, but if public spending continues to be constrained to austerity levels, it is hard to see how these aspirations can succeed. The transformation that is needed cannot be left to the market, nor can solutions be limited to those which are acceptable to industry lobbyists. There is widespread support for public ownership in key sectors such as energy and transport. 

Time to get off fossil fuels

The climate crisis demands a rapid transition away from fossil fuels and no new oil and gas exploration or infrastructure. Labour's pledge not to issue any more licenses for North Sea drilling is vital, but on its own won't be enough. Last September, the Rosebank oil field, the largest undeveloped oil field in the North Sea, was given consent for drilling. The resulting CO2 emissions would be more than the annual emissions of all 28 low-income countries. It's essential that this field, and others which have recently been licensed are not developed. Labour will be in a strong position to do this if the forthcoming legal case against Rosebank approval is successful (following the groundbreaking Supreme Court judgement that downstream emissions must be taken into account in planning decisions).

We need a just transition for workers and communities who have depended on fossil fuel jobs which are already in decline. Jobs in North Sea oil extraction have already halved in the past decade, a trend which will inevitably continue as reserves decline. In the shift to renewable energy that can give this country genuine energy security, an industrial strategy for a just transition is essential.

In the narrow window of time remaining to avert dangerous climate tipping points, the next UK government must bring real solutions to move our economy off fossil fuels. It must invest to transform the economy for a cleaner, fairer future, and address the interlocking social crises this country faces.

The election announcement on 22 May was certainly memorable. As Rishi Sunak spoke in the rain, Things Can Only Get Better was played loudly in the background by protesters.

But - 'better' is not enough in a time of climate breakdown. We have had a year of unprecedented global temperatures, with climate disasters around the world, and climate scientists aghast by the world's failure, even now, to step away from fossil fuels.

Time to make your voice heard

It's always worth lobbying MPs - even if they may seem unresponsive, it gives them a sense of what their constituents care about. But it's actually much easier to get them to listen before they've even secured their seat in Parliament. The next government is expected to have a lot of first-time MPs. Before they get in, they need to hear that voters want action on the climate emergency.

There are lots of ways to do this: get on the streets, contact your candidates by email, join together with others in local groups to organise a climate hustings, or attend general hustings and ask a climate question, write to your local paper.

Restore Nature Now march, London, 22 June

Before the election was called, over 150 campaign groups and NGOs had already signed up to support this national demonstration to Restore Nature Now. Demands including no new fossil fuels and investment in climate action. This will be a great opportunity to create a visual statement of the general public demanding a safe future and liveable planet where people and nature can not just survive but thrive.

We'll be marching together with our friends on the climate justice bloc. If you're outside London, some coaches have been organised.

Writing to candidates

You can find out how to contact your election candidates on the Who Can I Vote For website.

Speaking out on the climate emergency, in whatever way, helps break the silence and raise awareness. Remember your ultimate aim is to convince someone who may be your MP for the next five years, not just to vent (totally understandable) frustration and anger at inaction! 

You might like to read this guidance from Hope for the Future about writing a letter that's more likely to be read.

A personal appeal - you can choose an angle that's personal to you, or that you think will resonate with the candidate you're writing to, whether that's climate jobs; fuel poverty and the need for home insulation, the impact of climate change and floods on UK farmers, the failure of our planning system which encourages mass expansion of roads and airports - or even just one of the recent news stories about the impacts of climate breakdown around the world or concerns for your children. 

Local insight - You can find information here about your own constituency - the proportion of people who consider climate change a high priority, who would support renewable energy projects in the local area, who are worried about energy bills or are in fuel poverty.

The big picture - As the planet heats up, the impacts of climate breakdown multiply, and we are running out of time. The UK is not on track to meet its climate commitments. The bottom line is that the next government must stop new fossil fuel extraction and damaging infrastructure like airport expansion and mass road-building. And massive investment in the infrastructure we do need - insulating homes, public transport, renewable energy, creating a workforce for the climate emergency. For example, Friends of the Earth estimates £50 billion a year or 2% of GDP - slightly less than is currently spent on defence to deliver lasting benefits. The UK also needs to pay its fair share of climate finance to countries facing the worst climate impacts to help them adapt and fund their own emissions reductions.

Ask them if they would back these policies:

• No new oil fields in the North Sea, including Rosebank. A just transition plan for workers
• Mass investment in climate jobs, including setting up a National Climate Service
• A comprehensive home insulation programme, publicly funded
• Public ownership of energy and transport
• A planning system that works for the climate, scrapping mass road building and halting airport expansion

A National Climate Service would create and coordinate directly employed public sector jobs to cut emissions across key sectors of the economy, with national planning and coordination of strategy and workforce training, and local delivery. Find out more about climate jobs

In their current form, coral reefs have been around for around 60 million years. A quarter of all marine life, including over 4,000 species of fish, are dependent on coral reefs at some point in their life cycle. But these extraordinary ecosystems cannot survive the regular marine heatwaves caused by global heating.

In the 1980s, the first observed incidents occurred of coral reefs turning white over extended areas. Scientist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg discovered the cause. Corals are animals related to jellyfish and anemones. Their polyps take food from the water but they also depend on symbiotic algae which provide them with an additional food source through photosynthesis. Under heat stress, corals expel these algae, leaving their tissue a ghostly white. Without their algae, corals slowly starve, and may die. By the time of the first global bleaching event in 1998, Hoegh-Guldberg was able to predict that as early as the 2020s some reefs could be bleaching six or more times a decade - far too frequent to give them time to recover. The scientist was branded an ‘alarmist’. But in 2018 a landmark review by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that if the earth warmed by 1.5C above pre-industrial levels this “will result in the further loss of 90% of reef-building corals compared to today”.  

In March 2023, global sea surface temperatures started breaking records, and have stayed that way since. The warming impact of El Niño has further exacerbated the heating caused by fossil fuel burning. These extreme ocean temperatures have led to what is believed to be the worst planet-wide coral bleaching event ever. This is the fourth global bleaching event on record and the second in the last 10 years. A global bleaching event is declared when at least 12% of corals in each of the main ocean basins - Pacific, Atlantic and Indian - experience bleaching-level heat stress within a 12-month period.