The United Kingdom is rolling back its net-zero targets on a broad number of fronts even as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the star attraction at the UN climate summit in New York this week..At a press conference at Downing Street in London British PM Rishi Sunak pushed back the ban on the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars in the United Kingdom from 2030 to 2035 and ditched plans to ban natural gas powered water heaters and furnaces indefinitely due to their disproportionate financial impact on lower income households..He also vowed to move ahead with controversial drilling and exploration permits in the UK North Sea and scrapped a series of controversial proposals to tax meat, restrict air travel and even force homeowners to have at least seven separate recycling bins to separate trash..Drivers will also be able to buy and sell second-hand gasoline vehicles after 2035..“We will never impose these heavy handed” measures on the British public, he said..Although he said he still supports a transition to net zero, moving too far too fast risks undermining public support.."I am confident we can adopt a more pragmatic and realistic approach to net zero which eases the burden on British people… if we continue down this path we risk losing the consent of the British people.".Sunak said his country needs "sensible green leadership,” more transparency and a ”more honest” debate around net zero..That’s because the debate is presently stuck between two extremes — those who want to move faster than reasonably practical, regardless of the cost or disruption to people's lives and those who want to abandon net zero altogether..No surprise, he was struck from a list of presenters — along with China, India, the US and Japan — to the UN’s climate conference that runs parallel to the general assembly in New York this week. It comes after tens of thousands of people took part in the ‘march to end fossil fuels’ in New York and other cities on the weekend..Instead, that role will fall to Canada’s own prime minister who used his general assembly spot to criticize the pace of implementing the UN’s so-called sustainable development targets — which include caps on emissions — and reinforce Canada’s commitments to the Paris Accord..Canada has pledged to reduce its economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030..At the climate summit European observers and environmental activists were keen to hear what Trudeau has to say about financing commitments for emissions reduction in the Third World..Wednesday's climate summit comes just weeks ahead of the UN’s COP28 climate talks in the United Arab Emirates, where Canadian Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault will press plans to triple renewable energy by 2030 and ban ‘unabated’ fossil fuels without carbon capture technology by 2050..To that end, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith told the World Petroleum Congress in Calgary this week she will also travel to the COP28 confab in December to press Alberta’s own carbon capture incentives and implementation plans.
