Five years ago, on this day, November 18th, 2020,
The Johnson government (if you can call it that) launches a “Ten Point Plan for Green Industrial Revolution”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 414ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that Boris Johnson had become Prime Minister in July 2019, prorogued parliament illegally and then won the General Election. After shaking hands enthusiastically with people at hospitals, he’d ended up briefly in an ICU. Johnson’s wife-beating father, Stanley, had been aware of the problem of carbon dioxide build-up from the late 1960s, as the Spectator’s environment correspondent
The specific context was that the UK was going to be hosting a COP (first time) and so there had to be SOMETHING to make it look like the green show was still on the road.
What I think we can learn from this is that there can be a nice round-numbered policy document, and some nice graphics, all produced by a department of state. That doesn’t mean it is a strategy, but academics have to pretend that it is.
What happened next – Johnson was undone by a) himself and b) a scandal people could understand. Sunak basically binned “the energy transition” and “Red Ed” is beavering away, but nobody really believes in any of this stuff, do they?
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
References
Also on this day:
November 18, 1953 – Macmillan tells the truth about committees
November 18, 1998 – coal guy becomes Australian environment ambassador