The Rest Is Politics - Will Climate Action Go Backwards Under Burnham?

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Should Andy Burnham deliver a covid style national emergency briefing to inform the public about the climate emergency? How do we foster cross-party consensus on the climate emergency? And, can we balance the need to build data centres and protect the environment?  Join Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart and Caroline Lucas as they discuss all of these questions and more. To watch Caroline’s four part series on climate as a national security threat, sign up at therestispolitcs.com ⁠⁠⁠⁠Read the redacted Joint Intelligence Committee Report here⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Find out more about the National Emergency Briefing here.⁠⁠⁠⁠ Producer: India Dunkley Researcher: Evie Townend Video Editor: Josh Smith, Vasco Andrade Social Producer: Celine Charles Executive Producer: Bella Soames General Manager: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hear that? It's your money calling. It wants a promotion. Elevate your savings with the Scotia high-interest savings account. Always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest. Conditions apply. Visit scotiabank.com slash h-I-SA to learn more. Scotia Bank, you're richer than you think. Welcome to a Restis Politics climate special with me, Alistair Campbell. with me, Rory Stewart. And we are absolutely delighted to have with us somebody that members will

have been hearing a lot of recently. That's Caroline Lucas, former leader of the Green Party, who has done, I think, I know I'm biased, both on the issue and on Caroline, but I think a brilliant series on climate essentially as a national security issue. Rory, why do you just give us a quick rundown for those who aren't members, haven't listened on what Caroline went through episode by episode. Now, we'll maybe talk a bit about that. Let me just start by a huge shout out to Caroline. So people who don't know her, she entered, I think, Parliament with me in 2010 when she was the only Green Member of Parliament. So she was both the leader of the Green Party and their sole member of Parliament. She had been a member of the European Parliament before, which was quite

interesting because she came into Parliament with experience, but also I, maybe Caroline can come back on this, but a slightly skeptical view, which I think, and unless I'm being unfair to, made her think that with some things the European Parliament did a bit better than us. She struggled with a lot of the mechanics. I mean, how on earth do you work at how the votes work

without these huge whipping operations, if you're a one-person party? And she's somebody I really, really came to admire. She was both, I think, a really strong constituency MP, but also, as I think you'll pick up as you listen to the series, an MP who is able to come across in a very natural, uncomplicated, unscripted way. Anyway, that's enough praising maybe Caroline for a second. So so far there have been four episodes, which I'd really recommend on the climate series.

The first one looked at the secret security threat that the government didn't want us to know. This was a joint intelligence report, which named climate and nature collapse as a national security threat. And there she infued a couple of fascinating people, Lieutenant General Richard, But also a friend of mine called Arthur Snell, who's a very, very unusual, bright, thoughtful, former colleague of mine from the foreign office, who's actually written a rather brilliant book where he travelled around the world looking at the unexpected impacts of climate on global security. So big recommendation for that. Then she did the food security crisis with Professor Paul Berens. Then she did, and this is one of the ones where she and I maybe find ourselves in different sides, but data centers or drinking water, what matters most. So big debate. around data centers, which is spilling from the UK into the US. It's actually one of the biggest American political debates at the moment. And then truth about climate migration, which ties in a little bit to a recent episode that we did with Geryl Canals. So really happy to have you with us. And, Alistair, we had a number of listeners questions. Would you like to start

with one of those? Why don't we start? Because I think this is a useful way of getting into some, if not all, of the things that Caroline's series addressed. The issue on which we had by far the most questions when we put out a call for questions relates to the issue of a national emergency briefing. And I'll just read out one. We had over 200 people asking vaguely the same question. What do you think it will take to make Andy Burnham do a COVID-style primetime televised climate emergency briefing to the nation to level with the public about the climate and nature emergency and the huge benefits of taking far bolder action? These heat waves are surely the ideal time, what do you think is stopping him? And maybe before we come to you on that, Caroline,

just worth pointing out that virtually every conversation anybody is having at the moment in the UK is, oh my God, isn't it wet? In some places, isn't it hot, isn't it wet? In China, we just had a million people evacuated because of a typhoon. I'm in France. We've got forest fires, not far away. Canada, United States, forest fires, floods in India. It feels like we're talking about climate more, but maybe we're talking about weather. rather than climate. And what those questions are about, Caroline, is what does it take to get the government to level with people about just how serious things are?

Because that's what your series was about. Well, it's a very, very good question. And I just want to give a shout-out for the whole National Emergency Briefing Initiative, in a sense, because this started off with a huge event in Westminster Central Hall in London at the back end of last year, where some of the country's top scientists briefed MPs, people from the House of Lords, journalists and others about the seriousness really of what we're facing right now. And then they turned that into a film, but it's a very accessible film. It's kind of done in a way with Chris Packham introducing it, but then it's almost quite

amusing from time to time when they kind of go back to the audience and talk about what they're seeing. So there's a way of really engaging people. You don't need to be a complete activist to get something from that film. And the importance of showing that film is that it's being done in communities up and down the country. And that means that people are gathering their local councillors, their MP, and having a really important conversation off the back of that film as to what can be done locally. So it's a really engaging process. But the people who are writing and are absolutely

right, it would boost at no end if we properly got a national showing of that emergency briefing if we had it introduced by the prime minister. Now, the questioner is asking, you know, what's stopping that happening. And that's an incredibly good question. I mean, if I was going to be a bit cheeky, I might say, well, get Zach Polanski to ask for it to happen because he was asking for a cobra meeting on the floods and the heat waves. And we've just heard this week that the cobra meeting's happening. But it is a serious point because we need to have a sense shared in the country of the level of risk we face. You know, sometimes people will make comparisons, don't they, with kind of wartime mobilization. The difference in wartime is that there was a shared understanding of the

that we were facing. And that's what's collapsed over the past few years. You know, when you've got a leader of the Conservative Party even, who is saying that you can't be a Tory candidate unless you basically absolutely renounce net zero, then we're in really dangerous territory. So it seems to me that this national briefing is more important than ever to kind of establish that common sense of the risks we face. Maybe it's a chance to bring this into this. If you were up on that stage in Westminster Central Hall, how would you articulate the key risks that we face? for, I don't know, the general kind of Middle England voter, non-Green Party voter. Well, I mean, I think I would lean into those suppressed reports, which put it better

than I possibly could, in terms of, for example, our food security. And I would talk about empty supermarket shelves and I would talk about rising food prices and try to put this in terms that really matter to people who right now are doing a hundred other things. They are worried about a hundred other things. And if we present this in technical terms in the jargon of net zero or biodiversity net gain or all of this remote top-down kind of language, then we can't be surprised if people don't engage with it. So I think we need to start where people are at. And I think where I would start would be by talking about how we can get local communities to come together and build resilience in their villages, in their towns and so on. And talk about the benefits of that.

For example, people who have their football pitch flooding, every single. year. So their kids are going up the wall and they can't get out on play and everyone's getting really cross. Let's talk about practical ways in which you could actually start with that football pitch and then lead out from there, lead out from some of the retrofit that needs to happen, which keeps homes cooler in the summer as well as warmer in the winter. So I think I would make it as practical as possible and really underline the positive benefits that come to people as a result. Carolyn, I had an email last night from a friend of mine who is French and who saw that we were going to be talking about this and reminded me, I'd forgotten, that he and I had watched

the Al Gore film, an inconvenient truth, 20 years ago. Yeah. 20 years ago, the Al Gore, Vice President of the United States, made this extraordinary film. And I can remember it had a massive impact on me. And that felt like a kind of high point. So the question my friend was asking is, is it a failure of the green and environmental movements that the dial has been moved so successfully backwards. Well, I don't think it's our exclusive failure, but yes, I'm afraid I would have to say

partly it is. And I think that is partly because we kind of bought into a narrative that was very easy to weaponise if that was your decision to do that from the parties of the right and the far right. So we did make it sound like a very technical issue. We did make it sound as if you've just got to listen to the experts and trust us and we know best. And we didn't start with where people are at in local communities. And that's why I think, in a sense, this is our last chance to get that right and to really do that. To take it back to the emergency briefing, I think one of the things we also struggle with in this country in particular is a kind of infantilization of the public. It's almost as if, you know, if you're asking why won't they show this briefing and why wouldn't

they publish that suppressed report, I think part of it is that somehow they don't quite trust the public with that information. And this was really brought home to me just recently when I was reading a fantastic book by David Shookman, you know, who used to be the BBC climate correspondent. And his book is called The Response, and he was talking about in Lincolnshire how there's real worries about the repeat of the kind of storm surge that happened in 1953 and killed 300 people. And so a lot of people wanted to put some signs up in Lincolnshire telling people where they should go in the event of such a thing happening again. And do you know what? They actually had to end up with signs. If you go to Lincolnshire, you can see them. There are these signs that say ER. Do you know what that's

stands for? Extinction rebellion? No, it stands for evacuation route, but they wouldn't put evacuation route on it in case it alarmed people. So you can go around Lincolnshire and see signs saying ER and an arrow. And presumably people thinking, WTF, you know what on earth is this going on about here? The idea that we wouldn't spell that out, whereas in Japan, you know, I can promise you, they have a picture of a person fleeing and waves coming. It just seemed to sum up for me this kind of, as I say, this infantilization of the public where we don't trust. them with the real truth of what's happening. Here's a question from Halasi.

What effect did AI data centers have on the climate in comparison to other factors? This relates to your series on AI identity centers and their use of energy, their use of water, their impact on the environment in general in the race for AI over you. Well, this is probably where we're going to come to blows. I mean, I think the framing of the question is important, you know, because if you ask in very general terms, how does AI compare to other industries when it comes to energy use and water use, then probably it wouldn't necessarily look that scary. I think the point about AI data centers is that they tend to be clustered in areas that are already at risk. So, for example,

we know that the government is planning another 100 data centers by the early 2030s, and 84% are going to be cited in areas that are projected to be water stress by 24. 40. So I think whenever you look at this question in a kind of averaged out way, a nationwide way or a global way, then the true impact of those data centers isn't really realized because you're not looking at the concentration of them, which tends to happen in areas like the southeast of England where the demand is greatest for the benefits of the data centers. And therefore, you're putting them in already very water-stressed areas. And I think that that is a major problem. and at a time when you've got Water UK, which is the trade body that represents water companies,

they themselves are saying that the government's own water forecasts are fatally flawed, not least because they explicitly exclude data centres. You've got data centres now given this special protection. So they're given this critical national infrastructure protection, which means that even in times of drought, the water companies cannot legally disconnect them because they are given that extra priority over and above households and other kinds of of uses. So I think we've got the balance wrong and I think we need far more information from the data centers and from the water companies about how much energy they're going to be

using, how much water they're going to be using, what they're going to be used for. One of the things that I thought came out really well from OLLI in the episode was that talking about AI is a bit like talking about transport in the sense that covers everything from walking and cycling through to private jets. AI is a lot of different things and there's a world of difference between, you know, needing an AI data center to, for example, come up with new health solutions and when it's just to kind of help us get a very quick response to a, you know, a grok type question. So I think it's a more complex answer and a more complex question, perhaps, than it sounds. We did a survey of our listeners. Now, this is probably slanting a little

bit more towards Caroline's side of the debate, because I'm imagining a lot of the people who took part of this, the people who were listed to the series. But it is the moment. the less quite interesting. And Rory, it was really interesting before I give you the figures, how you framed this when you were talking earlier about, which is more important, AI, or drinking water? Now, I don't think anybody is going to say anything other than drinking water, but that is kind of where the debate is. But let me just say what our listeners and viewers said. The question was, which is more important, AI or the environment? Fifty-six point seven percent say the environment is more important. 39.5, say there's somewhere in the middle. 3.2 percent.

saying AI should come first, young people more likely to prioritize the environment over AI than older generations, which, by the way, is not the same outcome when you're asking more generally about whether people think governments should be doing more about climate. It's actually an older generation, the older generation that's more worried. But, Rory, why don't we, as you two have your ding-dong, why don't we say, you're on the wrong side of the argument here, Rory? Yeah. Well, I think the challenge, Caroline, is that, With any national infrastructure that is critical for growth, you can come up with a loss of very, very complicated reasons why ideally it shouldn't be built. And to some extent, that is the story.

That is the story of HS2. That's the story of the Heathrow Third Runway. That's the story of a lot of our electricity generation. I would be tempted to work backwards. That question that Ollie posed about what exactly a data center and ships are used for doesn't really grasp how. large language models operate. The idea that the UK could actually have any kind of sovereignty or independence in relation to AI if it started to distinguish between, oh, this is a good use of AI because this is being used for pharmaceutical discovery, this is a bad use because the data center is being used to generate GROC images, you are essentially stepping out of the entire world which US and China is in. Now, you can

choose to do that, but it is an absolutely enormous risk because what will happen is that our entire economy will be built on US and Chinese models. Our entire defense and security will be built on US and Chinese models. There will be an incredible opportunity for Donald Trump to weaponize that dependency, to turn off models and not allow us to access it, to charges for access to US models, to outsource these things to other countries and continue to to use them, which is what we will inevitably end up doing, is an incredibly dangerous place to be in terms of our national security. The major reason why we have been unable to get any kind of leverage in relation to OpenAI or Anthropic begins with data centers. We can't

host models in the UK or Europe. We can't host weights. We don't have chips. We don't have status. They're not processing anything with us. So we literally have nothing, which would allow us to run these things in the absence of the Americans running them on their own data centers in the United States. And I think we just have to begin with that. If we start getting into a conversation about exactly what an individual data center is used for, you're losing the whole geopolitical balance here. And we're going to end up, I think, in a very, very weak and vulnerable place over the next five to ten years. Can I tell you what I think our starting point should be? Because the question that you put in the poll, I have to say, I do think it's a little bit bonkers.

I mean, saying, do you want the AI or do you want the environment? I mean, the environment is not just a policy option on a menu. As you know, Caroline, polls are often bonkers. Well, they are. But I think in this case... How would you vote in a general election tomorrow? There isn't one. But in this case, I think it reveals an underlying source of tension,

which kind of explains why Rory and I are coming at this from different angles. Because if you treat the environment as just one other policy consideration to be born in mind while you're weighing up other considerations, then you don't see it as the absolute bedrock upon which everything else depends. And the whole point of the miniseries, and a sense was to say that everything that we build, our whole economy and every aspect of it, is intimately and inextricably and inevitably linked to whether or not we have a thriving natural world. Because if we don't, then we don't have any of those other things.

So that would be my starting point. And I guess the second point would be simply to say, the conversation that we're having, just now is being repeated in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in in world everyone is being told that if we don't get in there now someone else is going to win the race and yet we know that there are other conversations that are also happening which we could also give some time to which is the fact that in new york state for example they have just introduced a temporary moratorium while they wait for regulation to catch up in a sense that in everywhere

from amsterdam to dublin to seattle they've done the same and many other places and one of the reasons that I think people are doing that is because we just simply do not have the transparency, accountability and regulatory framework that we need to be able to ensure that the data centers that we do need, and I'm not saying we don't need any, of course we do, but to make sure that they are operating within the constraints of a very, very fragile planet. But Karen, let me push back a little bit. Look, yes, there are conversations happening in Seattle and New York. There's a moratorium as well.

And the context of that is what percentage do you think of the data centers and chips in the world currently exist in the United States? What percentage of these chips are there? I have no idea. A huge number. Pretty close to 90%. So you can have a moratorium in New York and Seattle and you're not going to have a remote impact on the basic truth, which is we don't really have any of these things in Britain or Europe. So we're having a fight about a totally different thing. In the US, these things have been built out at huge scale. And there's a fight happening about whether more of them are built in New York while there are these colossus things in Texas and elsewhere. In Europe, we can't build any. I mean, all these projections, when you say the government is saying it's going to build 100 data centers, it can't get planning permission for any of them. On current projections within the next five to 10 years, Europe will simply not be able to participate at all in this AI race.

It will all be happening in the US and China. So a moratorium, a pause, a let's think about it, let's get more analysis, let's get more evidence, is essentially saying we are giving up on the entire industrial revolution, which will be powered from the US and China, and we will find ourselves having to run all our public services, all our defence and security, most of our economy on the back of US and Chinese systems with the consequences. So can I ask you then what you think the solution is, given the level of dissent and concerns, that is exactly the thing that is stopping planning permission in many places, not just in the UK,

but more further afield, if you think that having a moratorium to try and get the regulation in place first is the wrong answer, if you're not terribly bothered about some of the issues around transparency and accountability, then how are you going to build that consent? How are you going to stop there being yet more anger and polarisation in this country, which can scant afford yet more of it? I mean, obviously, I'm not going to say that I'm not bothered by accountability and transparency. I think a lot of these companies are terrible. I think a lot of them have behaved extremely badly, and I think there's a lot of reason to be angry.

I just put a little footnote, though. I mean, I was very, very closely concerned in Cumbria with the campaigns against wind turbines, and it's astonishing how similarly statements about moratoriums, regulations, transparency, accountability were being used against the people building any type of infrastructure that people don't want. You raise the question of water-stressed areas.

One of the biggest fights at the moment is happening in a pretty sparsely populated and well-rain-fed area of Scotland, because people don't want an enormous data centre near their village. And another battle is happening in Slough where people are already feeling the increased heat as a result of that data centre and it's already the centre of them. So logically, you're totally right that if we think about this in terms of national strategy and national planning, we should be building the data centers more in areas like Scotland that have more water, that are cooler, that are less water stress. There are some questions about latency and access to cities. But the reality is we're not building them anywhere. I mean, this story about transparency and accountability and moratoriums adds up in the end to us not building them.

So obviously I'm not going to stand up as the kind of demon and say, I support evil companies who are non-transparent or not accountable. I'm just saying we need to build these data centers. If Britain doesn't have enormous data centers in the next three to five years, we are going to be like a 19th century colonized country facing the industrial waste of Europe. We're going to be in a completely different universe. I mean, if you can just hang on a minute and just go back for a second to some of those conclusions and forecasts and concerns from the Joint Intelligence Report that was also telling us that every single ecosystem, that we depend on is on a pathway to collapse, that life as we know it right now might not continue the way that we think it will and that things could be incredibly dangerous in the times ahead.

And it feels to me that there's a moment here for a much bigger, wider conversation about what kind of economy is going to be compatible with an earth that is being constrained in all kinds of ways, whether that's water or heat, wildfires and so forth. And that, you know, one of the questions for those pushing hardest for AI might indeed be for them to think themselves, well, what happens to AI when the systems it depends on themselves begin to fail? So it just feels to me that trying to assume that next year is going to be the same as last and so on and so forth, that's not the point that we're at right now. It's much more critical. Rui, can I just jump in before you come back with that? Because there's a question from Izzy Cohen,

which I think goes to the heart of this discussion that I don't know if he enjoys the right word, but I'm watching with great interest. Izzy Cohen, how can we create, maybe recreate as a better answer, cross-party consensus on climate change action? I get the feeling at the time when the Al Gore film was doing the rounds and Greta Tunberg was becoming a global household name,

I get the feeling that you two would have been a lot closer in the way you talked about these issues than you are now. And I think it is AI that has sort of push Rory in one direction and probably cemented Caroline in another. So what do we have to do to get you two closer together? Well, I think there's a lot of things going on. And I'd be very interesting, Caroline's point of view. But one of the biggest things that's gone wrong is that we were operating in an environment in which we were assuming that the action that we took in Britain and Europe was driving a global consensus, in particular driving. big change in places like the United States. After all, it was the US vice president who put this together.

And most of the problems that we're talking about, particularly the problems of climate, are global. And Britain's impact on it is quite minimal. So there is a real risk that we've seen over the last 20 to 30 years, which we're still trying to digest, which is that we essentially export our problems to other countries. AI is just another example. It's what we've done with our steel industry. It's what we've done with almost all our manufacturing. we still consume more carbon than we've ever done. We just have the t-shirts manufactured in China, the coal-fired stations operate in China. It's the same with AI. We're going to try to run our whole economy off models which will be run in other people's countries. And I had the same in the Lake District. We don't want to keep sheep on Lake District Hills because sheep are damaging to the environment, so we import them from New Zealand. So the sheep can damage the New Zealand environment instead.

So a loss of Caroline's arguments were much more powerful when there was a big global consensus and where we were not simply offshoring our problems to other people. The problem with offshoring, though, has become even worse now because of sovereignty. That's the second problem. Offshoring felt hypocritical, but in a world of globalization, it still felt safe. Now we realize that offshoring all our industrial manufacturing, offshoring all our AI and being dependent on US China of these things, create choke points, allow us to be blackmailed. I think one of the reasons that some of the consensus has begun to come apart is because

sometimes there have been green measures that have been introduced in ways that are not wise or intelligent. And I'm thinking of the famous example of the Gilles-June, for example, in France, but there are similar things where people fear that people on the lowest incomes are going to be the ones who are going to be asked to pay the most for the transition. And it feels to me that one of the things we absolutely need to make 110% sure of is that that is not the case, both because of the morality of that position, but also because if you do that, then you certainly don't bring people with you. So I think in order to get us closer together, I think we could listen to more citizens' assemblies and to make sure that citizens' assemblies on climate are

genuinely representative of the communities that they're in. So it's not just people who think like me, but a genuine cross-section of the public who, by and large, when they're asked these questions actually do come together with quite bold policies, much bolder than most governments, and do kind of point the way forward. But if I could just come back on one thing, though, because I get so frustrated when it's kind of said, well, you know, the UK only accounts for 1% of emissions. So why are we kind of so bothered? I mean, first of all, I would agree with worry, actually, that offshoring, if that means also that, for example, China is the country that then has to put the emissions associated with the products that it's making for us,

on their account sheet, that is fundamentally wrong. And so we should take account of our consumption emissions, the emissions that are associated with what we import, as well as our production emissions. But secondly, we're also responsible for historic emissions, and they matter. You know, the UK was the first into the Industrial Revolution. I think we've got a responsibility to be one of the first out of it

into something better, because those emissions that we emitted many years ago are still part of the problem. They have heated the environment. They didn't go away. And if you look at this issue about the number of countries who could say, well, we're only responsible for about 1% of total emissions, around 194 countries can claim to be less than 5% of the problem. But together, if you add them together, they're responsible for just under half of the world's yearly emissions. In other words, we have a responsibility that goes far beyond that 1%. Okay, Caroline Rory, quick break, and then back for more. Hear that? It's your money calling.

It wants a promotion. Elevate your savings with the Scotia high-interest savings account. Always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest. Conditions apply. Visit scotiabank.com slash h-I-SA to learn more. Scotia Bank. You're richer than you think. There's a question here from Liam Green.

If other countries have no intention of achieving net zero, aren't our efforts futile, which goes to the heart of what you two have just been describing. Caroline, I know you certainly don't think that they're futile, and also there is a role for leadership in any international debate that requires international solutions. But how do we break down the cynicism that that breeds that we think, well, there's no point me doing anything because nobody else is going to do it? How do we do that? Because it feels to me that's what we've lost. Well, I think we need to make it so much clearer and so much more evident that the measures that we need, by and large, to address the climate crisis, are ones the,

that will benefit people's lives. And by that, I mean, more affordable public transport, for example, better air quality. Well, we can probably have an argument I can foresee about costs, but right now renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels. There are more jobs in a green economy than in the fossil fuel economy that it replaces. So if we can talk about some of the benefits, the kind of code benefits, if you like, that come from moving in a greener direction rather than the framing that still crops up again and again in terms of sacrifice and why are we kind of doing this.

then I think we've got a hope of kind of positioning that better, but also just reminding people that even in a place like the US with Trump in the president's office, you know, there are states even like Texas who are now massively going for renewables, not because they've suddenly had a damascene conversion to the green economy, but because renewables make more sense economically. So in many ways, the economics is doing the hardlifting for us. Can I just come in on that? If the economics does the hard lifting, if the market itself does it, if the renewables don't need to be subsidized, we're in the sort of position that Texas is in, Spain's in. Why do we need all these complicated subsidy structures, incentive structures? Why don't we just step back and let the market do it? Presumably, because actually these things aren't cheaper. I don't think there are that many subsidies that are left for those kinds of technologies. In the early days, so when I first put solar panels on my roof, I was very lucky. I got it. extremely generous tariffs in the feed-in tariff because that was at a time when what was needed was to build confidence in the market, to get more and more people into the market so that it would be a sector that could grow and stand on its own feet. But it pretty much is standing on its own feet now. And if anything, if you're looking at where the subsidies are going, far more of them are still going to fossil fuels than are going to renewables.

Sorry, I mean, not to overdo this, but I just, a loss of the additional money. that is on people's bills, and some of this moving on to taxation, is to do with the distribution and transmission networks and facilities being built to deal with moments where sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. So one of the problems in the accounting is it's absolutely true. If you simply take a panel and compare it to a gas boiler, a solar panel is cheaper in terms of generating electricity. But when you look at where those turbines are located, where the panels are located, and the kind of networks and transmission infrastructure that the UK needs to build, it turns out that it is costing us an enormous amount of money, partly because we're not Texas,

partly because we don't have the type of hydropower that they have in the Nordic countries. And this is one of the reasons why Andy Burnham has got anxious about where Ed Miliband was going. I just don't think that's true, Rory. I think that, yes, at the moment, the energy market is completely skewed and it is not fit for purpose and certainly not fit for an economy that is more and more being powered by renewables. But one of the reasons that our energy bills are so high is because electricity prices are dictated to as a result of gas prices because gas comes onto the grid last. It's most expensive and that sets the price for all of the energy on the grid.

That is bonkers. That should not happen. And there are people who are going away coming up with ways of working out how we could get rid of that. The whole point of so many of the kinds of policy costs being put on electricity bills, again, is incredibly regressive. In other words, it doesn't take into account how much people can afford to pay. If you took those costs off our electricity bills and put them onto general taxation, that would be a far more progressive way of tackling this. Roy, can I just jump in with a, you mentioned Andy Bowen's position. And again, to give you the

results of this survey that we did, I think neither Andy, nor Zach Polanski should be very happy about these findings. 66.8% say they are not sure what to make of Andy Burnham's position on climate. Now, that I imagine is because they've not heard him say much about it since he became Prime Minister or as he was becoming Prime Minister, which in itself is a signal, I guess. And then 14.9 disagree with his position, assuming they know what it is. 14.8% agree. So they're very, very close.

52%. And I don't think this would have been the case. when you were leading the Green Party, Caroline, are unsure about the Green Party's policies on these issues under Zach Polanski. Of those who have a view, 28.7 agree with the Greens policies, 15.3% disagree. Both of those findings, to me,

speak to what we've already been discussing. This has just gone far too low down the political agenda. What's your sense, both of you really, what's your sense of what Andy Burnham's climate position is? He's the Prime Minister. We ought to know what is your sense of it? I mean, my sense so far, if I look at Manchester, is that, you know, he gets it.

I mean, I think he does understand that climate change is a real and present danger. I worry that he's now coming under enormous pressure to be pragmatic. That is the new word of choice, it seems, that's coming out of number 10. So he has to be pragmatic. And so that's what we're told. That's the approach he's going to take to, for example, the decision on Rosebank and Jackdall, these two as yet unexplored. oil and gas fields off the North Sea. Now, if he were to give the green light to either of those, I think it would just be the most damaging, the most unforgivable thing to do, partly because it would just send such a terrible message to the rest of the world,

that all of that climate leadership that we used to feel so proud of that we used to be well known for is now not something we're going to pursue. And if we as, what are we, I don't know, the sixth or seventh richest country in the world are not going to stick our necks out and do that, then it feels very difficult for us to have any moral authority to say anything to the rest of the world about what they should be doing. I think, and most listeners, I think, will be on Caroline's side. So I'm speaking in that awareness. But let me try to play devil's advocate.

In a way that I think neither Caroline nor Alistair are comfortable with, many, many people in government and many people in the Treasury thought that, Ed Miliband had gone too far. He'd become too rigid. Some of the signs of that were on the drilling. Alistair and Caroline tend to focus on the question of emissions or cost, but people are also interested in the question of sovereignty and pointing out that we find ourselves in the straightforward moves and in relation to Russia in a terrible situation, simply how we actually access this stuff in the first place. We're now increasingly dependent on the United States, And so I think there would be people in the National Security Council saying it's a bit odd that we have this stuff sitting in our own waters and we're continuing.

I know this is part of my general story. It's not that we're not using it. We're just bringing it in from other people. We're just not prepared to use our own resources, which is a sovereignty problem. I think the other stuff, this is both the targets on electrical vehicles, some of the pushes on net zero, some of the climate direction, Dev Miliband's gone in on. we can clearly see the beginnings of Andy Burnham reversing it. Why? Well, I'm afraid notwithstanding what we're told, the Treasury calculations think that Ed Miliband's vision was going to be damaging to the British economy, that our industrial energy prices are too high. And two final things, just to come back on Carolyn, we've heard for many, many years that the problem is that the electricity price has set off the gas price, and somebody's going to fix that. It never gets fixed. It never gets fixed because actually there are very good reasons why the electricity price is fixed off the gas price to do with the fact that you still need the gas when the electricity is powered by gas and the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.

So if it was actually the case that Ed Miliband or Caroline or anyone had actually reset the way that energy was priced at any time, this would be a more sensible argument. My guess is that in three years' time, it's still going to be set in the same way and we're still going to be raising our eyebrows when people say, well, this is just an accounting problem to do the way it's set, whereas in fact, I think the Treasury would say it's very difficult to come up with another way of pricing it that reflects the real price. Final thing, I'm absolutely with Caroline on the idea that we should be paying for our consumption, not our production, right? But nobody's doing it. There's absolutely no attempt for us to be honest about the fact that we pat ourselves on the back for de-industrialising, for getting rid of all our own manufacturing and we're still consuming just as many goods and China's doing the

emissions. It's a ridiculous thing to boast about our emissions if we're still consuming all those emissions from other countries. Yeah, I want to hear more from Caroline this, but just to say to listeners and viewers that when we interviewed Dan Juergenson, the European Union, the Commissioner on Climate and Energy, he answered some of those points, not to Rory's total satisfaction at the time. I think first of all on the issue of sovereignty. I mean, if you take Rosebank as an example, percent of the oil at Rosebank is exported because it's not appropriate for the kind of oil refiners that we have. So the idea that that's going to help us with sovereignty, I think, is just misguided. At the end of the day, these are resources that get sold on global markets at

international prices. And just because it gets extracted from the North Sea doesn't mean to say it gets used in the North Sea unless and until we're talking about, you know, some kind of state-owned oil and gas companies, which I suspect Rory is not talking about. So I think the sovereignty argument actually leans exactly in the opposite direction. It leans into more renewables. And what we need to do to be able to change the way the electricity market works is to have yet more renewables and more battery powers. So we don't need gas in the same way as the kind of the supplier of last resort.

We need to be able to have smart grids. We need to be able to balance electricity needs across things like the cars that are parked outside our homes that have electric batteries. There are all kinds of ways we can do this without extracting yet more oil and gas. So the first point I think is around really saying that sovereignty is not on the side of people who want more fossil fuels. You know, in terms of the decoupling of gas and electricity prices, I think the reason it's not happened is because under many models for making it happen, it does require the government to step in. It does require the government, for example, to be quite a player in the market.

And that has run counter to the kind of neoliberal consensus that we've had, you know, across Western world for the last several decades. But I don't think that means it's not possible. And I think I just want to come back to my point that in a way, the point of the miniseries was to say we are at a critical inflection point. And I don't think the future is going to be the same as the past in terms of the kinds of threats that we face. And if we don't get this right, then precisely, those warnings that those security forces, the MI5, the MI6, the GCHQ, who are now kind of

shouting at us to take notice of this stuff, are simply going to get ignored. We've got a moment here where we can make decisions that could make sure that we have a livable future going into the future. Rory, you know what thing I really do find strange at the moment is that despite most days, the weather, is kind of leading the news around the world at the moment. but it doesn't seem to be moving the debate. And I just, I wonder, maybe this is a question to ask both of you, how much do you think Trump is the driver of this?

I mean, drill baby drill, and here we have Richard Tice with his net stupid zero. And the politics of this have become much, much more difficult for people like Caroline, I think, to navigate. I mean, I would come back to, well, two things really. I think the media, I know it's easy to blame the media, But even now, when the world is burning and when we look outside our own windows and we can just see the parched earth, again and again, the stories about the fifth heat wave this year, where around 3,000 people, I think, in the UK alone, have died from the last couple of months as a result of the heat. We're still having images that go alongside that story of people having a lovely time on the beach or dancing in front of fountains or something. You know, we're not getting consistent, serious narrative, which comes back in some senses too, to the need for this national emergency briefing.

But the second thing I would say is I would come back to all of the work around adaptation and resilience. And I'm doing some work with an organisation called the Climate Majority Project. And what they are doing is trying to work with communities at the grassroots level to make a difference, a positive difference to the resilience that they have, whether that's in terms of having more local food growing or what. whether it's in terms of addressing flooding through nature-based solutions and local solutions. You know, this debate is not the one that Richard Tice would have you believe. It's all not being driven by elites. It is actually about improving people's quality of life right now on the ground. I'm really with Caroline on that.

I think focusing on people's lives on the ground, focusing on nature is very, very powerful. Focusing on air quality is very powerful. And I think part of it is that nature is hugely beneficial in terms of climate. I mean, trees, as we know, absorb a lot of carbon dioxide. But we also know that nature has huge other benefits in terms of the same tree also in a city, keeps the temperature down, absorbs air pollution. It is a beautiful place to visit. I mean, one of the things that Caroline's written about quite well is the way in which we need to talk about

beauty and human experience and communities engaging with these things. At the same time, there is a bigger problem that we talk about a lot, Alistair, on the show, which I'd like to come back to you on, which is that it's a very, very big world. And national governments and countries like Britain have less and less control about what happens globally. Climate change is just one example. AI is another. Global supply change is another. Defense and security is another. Where we do feel a bit powerless.

Where we slightly do feel horrible things are coming our way. But almost whatever we do alone in Britain is not likely to shift that very much. And that's a terrible, terrible feeling. And I think the way to address it in Britain is to focus on nature, not to pretend that what Britain does is going to stop global climate change, that we can save ourselves from heat waves when we're 1% of the problem. Yeah. I mean, you remember when Tony Blair wrote his long essay about the future of the Labour Party,

and I took issue on a couple of things. But one of the things I took issue on was him making that point because it ran totally contrary to the point that he used to make, for example, about overseas aid and development. And he said that, you know, just because we're not as big as China and just because we're not as bigger donor as America doesn't mean we can't lead the world. And that's kind of where I think we should be on climate. I think there's a sort of hysteria about Ed Miliband's tenure as energy secretary. where you're right is a big world

and lots of these issues interconnect I wonder for example whether one of the reasons Andy Burnham hasn't yet addressed the climate issue even as parts of the country literally burn

and we all walk through Hyde Park and think my God it's just yellow now, it's not even green is because he probably is thinking well even though I don't want to get as close to Trump as Gier's Starma tried to I've just got to kind of be a bit careful so therefore we might be just parking

the North CSU for the time being. That's Realpolitik. And that does get in the way sometimes of, I guess, what we might all call idealism. Where I think Caroline's series has been most powerful, and I think this is coming through and what she's saying today as well, is that we have to embed this debate

in kind of every aspect of our national, strategic security life. So here's one for your way. Let's try and get you a bit closer on this one. If there were to be this national emergency briefing, and if you had beaten Boris Johnson and you'd become Prime Minister, how would you frame it to the public? How would you say to the public, listen, we've got to get serious about this,

and it's going to mean this cost for this bit and this cost, but these opportunities. How would you frame it? In the last few days, Roy, you've been the spin doctor for Gianni Infantino, you'd be the spid doctor for Pete Hexert. Now be the spid doctor for the planet. Okay, Spinbock, Planet. I'd probably begin by making a lot of the speech about nature, about how we make Britain a green and pleasant land, and talk about quality of life, talk about our trees, talk about our children, talk about our water quality, our air quality. And then I would lean very, very heavily into the international, the geopolitical. I would come straight out and say, we are only going to solve this problem if we stop behaving as though. we're a little island floating in the sea and we actually lead a global movement. So here is a

massive increase in the international development budget. Here is a massive increase in our foreign service. And this is exactly the plan for how we work with Europe and use our relationship with Europe and others in the middle powers to lead this change. So I imagine a world in which there are a US, there's a China and there's a middle power world. And that middle power world is going to be green. It's also going to have some sovereign control over AI and it's also going to have some independence of US and China so we don't get screwed over by them. But we're going to be about democracy.

We're going to be about rights. We're going to be about nature. We're going to be about the environment. We're going to be about the climate. And we're going to lead outwards. We're not going to bankrupt ourselves at home, pretending that by wearing a hair shirt, that's going to change the activities of people.

Oh, Roy, you were doing so. You were doing it. Rory, you had his both at the palm of your hand. You really did. And you came with this nonsense about hair shirts. I mean, that's such a shame. I was with you. I was with you till right at the end.

I was going to give you the job. But no, I'm not. There was a lot in there you did agree with. I could see you nodding furiously. Yeah. And I really agree with, I mean, I agree with that idea that, you know, we've had a leadership role before and we can again. And I love what Rory was saying about the natural world. And I think, you know, just looking back over the past.

hour, I think we haven't spoken enough about that in a way. It's been very much framed about climate. But in fact, in terms of these two reports, they're actually talking more about ecosystem collapse than they are even around climate change. But nature is what really speaks to people's hearts. It moves their souls. It engenders love. I love that phrase from, I think it was Richard Louvre, who said, we won't protect what we don't love, and we don't know, and we won't love what we don't touch and smell and taste and feel and hear. And so giving people the access to nature, which is still very unequally spread out across the country, making sure more people have got that access to nature, making sure more people can take the wonderful GCSE in natural history that I think is now going

to happen. You know, that is what connects people to the world. That's what makes them love the natural world. And it speaks as well to, I think, those people who are minded to vote for Nigel Farage or Restore Britain. I mean, it's something that can go across parties. maybe not to their leadership, but it goes across parties. It's something that speaks to us, I think, in a very, very elemental way. Yeah, well, I think you've both got the job. You could maybe do it together. And I think who we'd put in charge of the overall campaign might be Rory's friend, the King.

Because I think he's pretty sound on a lot of these issues. Well, anyway, look, with apologies to the thousands of listeners to whose questions we did not get, we got to quite a few. But I think that was a very, well, I enjoyed. watching the two of you go at hammer and tongs. I think you agree a lot. You agreed, agreeably, you disagreed, agreeably where you disagreed. But Caroline, I really hope this is not the last time we have you on the rest is whatever, the rest is climate, rest is nature, rest is trees. Yes, please. Thank you. Rest is water. And I think we've one thing, we're recording this

the day before the Clacton by-election. It's going out the day after the Clacton by-election, the result in Clacton, we can all agree that water company executives should be forced to swim in the rivers for which they have responsibility. Yeah, yeah. Caroline, thank you very much. That was wonderful. Thank you. Thank you.