'Let us be in no doubt that climate change is here to stay'

MP for Ellesmere Port

I DO hope everyone has been able to cope with this week’s blistering heat levels. Easier said than done, I know.

I checked gauges on Monday which recorded sweltering mid-afternoon temperatures of between 36 and 38 degrees in Chester, Ellesmere Port and Neston. As I write this column, it has been officially confirmed as Cheshire’s hottest day ever – and with suggestions that Tuesday will be even hotter.

I take no pleasure in appearing to decry what we should perhaps welcome as beautiful weather but let me be clear that these are not normal temperatures for our part of the world. They are boiling heat levels that many UK citizens are strangers to, and advice for people to take extra precautions should be heeded at all times.

And let us be in no doubt that climate change is here to stay and we have to be resolute in our determination to do something about it.

We all know that so many people are going through the most difficult of times at the moment because of the devastating cost of living crisis, the ongoing after-effects of the pandemic and the knock-on ramifications of the war in Ukraine. The effects of the heat are putting extra pressure on an already overstretched NHS too.

The challenges we are facing as a nation are very real but the heatwave we have been experiencing this week has indicated all too obviously that we cannot relax our efforts to tackle climate change.

There has been a great deal of talk in some circles about the need to reduce taxes – and it is being suggested in some circles that cutting some of our environmental obligations might be one way of achieving that aim – but that approach would be counter-productive in the extreme.

It is not so very long ago that world leaders got together in Scotland to agree on a net zero stance. The UK was proud to welcome the world's biggest summit on climate change to Glasgow in October and November 2021 – the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) – which brought together heads of state, climate experts and negotiators to agree co-ordinated action to tackle what is acknowledged as the global climate emergency.

They agreed on the ambitious, but achievable, target of net zero emissions by 2050 and the need to keep climate change to less than 1.5 °C. Now to some, 2050 might seem a long way away but in environmental and ecological terms that time span is by no means far into the distance.

Constant weather changes – some of them extreme like those this week – serve to act as wake-up calls to us all that we can by no means skimp on the policy changes we need to introduce to help us to meet the obligations agreed at COP26.

As members of the Opposition in Parliament, my Labour colleagues and I have highlighted the need to ramp up our ability to adopt a few simple solutions such as doubling our onshore wind turbines to produce energy alongside increased offshore wind farms and much greater use of solar energy production.