In the space of one momentous week, the UK has acquired a new king and a new prime minister. One of them is known for staunch and unstinting devotion to environmental causes, the other immediately promised to open new gas and oil fields and to start fracking. There is now an ideological schism at the very top of society around the UK’s response to climate change.
It is not the elected representative who better reflects the British public. Liz Truss’s policies may play well to the 140,000 Conservative Party members who voted, but among the broader population they are out of step. More than eight in 10 people in the UK (84 per cent) are concerned about climate change, according to recent Ipsos Mori polling. A similar proportion think that the recent heatwaves in the UK were mostly or partly caused by human activity. The number of people saying they are “worried” or “very worried” about climate
