UK’s Climate Change Act Threatened By “Immensely Scary” Brexit, Says Policy Guru

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com

Professor Tim Jackson – author of the acclaimed Prosperity Without Growth – and a policy advisor to the Labour Party and Whitehall, tells ARTHUR NESLEN the big question in the final countdown to the General Election on Thursday is whether the UK’s groundbreaking Climate Change Act can survive Brexit.

Brexit has shifted UK climate policy in an “immensely scary” direction and put a question mark over the survival of Britain’s pioneering climate change act, according to Professor Tim Jackson, a sustainable development expert and adviser to British governments and political parties.

The 2008 act was among the first global laws to rein back runaway emissions and helped cement the UK’s claim to climate leadership. Since last year’s Brexit vote though, Theresa May’s administration has pushed to water down core EU energy saving laws and told civil servants to scale down climate action, as leaked documents show.

Jackson said that provisions in May’s planned ‘great repeal bill’ allowing EU law to be changed without parliamentary consultation, left the UK in “an immensely scary place to be”.

“The key question is whether the UK Climate Change Act can survive,” he said. “The act was groundbreaking and all administrations up to now have stood behind it, but when the going gets tough will they continue to do so? We just don’t know.”