'Terrible' Tories are 'outsourcing' UK carbon emissions, Green Party peer claims
21 August 2021, 18:50
Green Party peer fumes at government inaction on climate
Baroness Jenny Jones tells LBC that the Government are doing 'creative accounting' on the UK's carbon emissions.
"For anybody listening who voted conservative, I would really urge you not to vote conservative again," Green party peer Baroness Jenny Jones told Ben Kentish.
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"They're a terrible government" she claimed, off the back of remarks by environmental activist Greta Thunberg that the UK isn't doing enough to fight climate change.
Baroness Jones said that the Government are "doing some creative accounting on how many more carbon emissions we've saved.
"For a start, they didn't include aviation and they didn't include shipping, massive emitters of carbon dioxide."
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She went on to explain that "all the stuff we buy from, China let's say, the carbon deficit goes on their emissions, it doesn't come to us. We're outsourcing our emissions."
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The Green Party peer went further to criticise government rhetoric on climate change: "Every time I head the phrase 'world leading' I think a lie is coming up – a distortion is about to be spoken because we're not world leading on really anything."
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"When you say they're not doing enough, what should they be doing?" Ben wondered.
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Baroness Jones argued that the government have dropped the ball on countless occasions already.
"Millions of homes still to be built that are not net zero, which need to be retrofitted which of course costs a lot more. It's much cheaper to invest in those things at the beginning."
She told Ben that a "carbon tax" should be rolled out to the biggest polluters to incentivise industry change, and for greater investment in public transport.
"The government needs to make it easy for people and at the moment they're not."
