| Water is just one of the vital areas of environmental policy that have seen huge change over the years since David Cameron came to Downing Street in 2010 vowing to lead “the greenest government ever”. He took just three years to change his tune – by November 2013, to appease his fractious right wing, he wanted to “cut the green crap”. There have, it must be said, been advances – Theresa May, responding to new science on the need to limit temperature rises to 1.5C, toughened the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions target to a legally binding goal of net zero by 2050. May also put out the first 25-year environment plan, and Michael Gove – widely regarded as a good environment secretary – made the first steps towards switching farming subsidies to “public money for public goods”. May’s successor, Boris Johnson, made a good impression on world leaders at the broadly successful Cop26 summit in Glasgow in 2021, presided over by Alok Sharma, who won widespread praise for his focus on keeping the 1.5C limit within reach. But Johnson’s promise to “build back greener” after the pandemic went unfulfilled, as the “green homes grant” insulation programme was “botched” and then quickly scrapped. Liz Truss and now Rishi Sunak, despite vowing to uphold the net zero target, each quickly tore up that promise. Truss, in her seven weeks in power in 2022, had too little time to make much impact on green policy, but Sunak embodied the worst fears of campaigners when last September he made a very public U-turn on the climate. As experts noted at the time, the changes in policy were relatively minor – postponing the ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars, some changes to boiler rules, new oil and gas licences in the North Sea whose reserves are mostly depleted anyway – but it was the signal Sunak gave, the contention that net zero was expensive and would raise costs for ordinary families, the effective retention of Cameron’s ban on onshore wind in England, the many snubs to international efforts on the climate, that made a real difference. For the first time, the climate was deliberately turned by the party of government into a “culture war” issue in the UK, a demarcation between left and right politics instead of what was an area of shared ground. Green Tories fell first into despair and then, in many cases, out of the party: Sharma announced he would not stand again, as did May and ministers Chris Grayling, Philip Dunne and Sir Robert Goodwill, while the former net zero tsar Chris Skidmore went one step further and declared he would vote Labour. Meanwhile, the UK has halved emissions since 1990, as the government has repeatedly claimed – but as the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has itself repeatedly pointed out, these cuts were largely the successes of previous policy, for instance in fostering offshore wind. Current Tory policy will not get us anywhere near net zero – and as the CCC also makes clear, that will end up costing us all, because steeper cuts sooner cost much less in the long term than letting things slide. The next government will face a much tougher job than Cameron inherited: to get back on track to net zero, attract green jobs and investment and engineer a just transition for the fossil fuel industry, and clean up the dire state of British nature. All as a result of the actions and inaction of the last 14 years. Read more: | 