S climate envoy John Kerry has warned the next prime minister not to jeopardize the commitment to stop emitting greenhouse gases by 2050.
while both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunakthe two candidates vying for replacement Boris Johnsonare committed to the net-zero goal that some government climate policies were polled among the Tory candidates in the early stages of the contest.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs has said she will end green taxes on domestic energy bills, while Mr Sunak has pledged to enforce the ban on building new onshore wind farms, but wants to introduce a legal target to make Britain self-sufficient by 2045 through a huge expansion in offshore turbines.
Kerry told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend program that he did not want to get involved in the leadership contest.
“But I will say very emphatically and adamantly: we are lagging behind.
“We don’t have the luxury of messing around with the 2050 right now.
“We are currently on our way to global warming between 2.5 and 3.5 degrees Celsius. The world has already warmed to 1.1, now almost 1.2 degrees. We have the pillow between 1.5 and that is of course small.
“And we see what happens to the damage on the planet at 1.1 degrees. Imagine if you get to 1.5, every tenth of a degree we heat up is going to cost us trillions of dollars more.”