Zero
Climate Apathy Cost Conservatives in the UK a Longtime Cheerleader
“Historians will recognize this was the moment the Conservative Party lost the country,” former UK energy minister Chris Skidmore says on this week’s Zero.
Chris Skidmore in 2019.
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
When Chris Skidmore became a UK government minister in 2018, the burning political question of the moment was whether then-Prime Minister Theresa May would be able to achieve a Brexit agreement her party could sign off on.
But even as Brexit negotiations dragged on, a coalition of senior government officials pushed the UK to embrace a separate high-profile goal: pledging to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. They succeeded, and in 2019 Skidmore — by then minister for energy and clean growth — watched May sign the commitment into law.