Climate Change Has Not Gone Away Because a Council Votes to Stop Calling It an Emergency

There can hardly be a worse time for councils to start reversing climate emergency declarations.

The UK is experiencing an exceptionally warm and dry summer. Reservoir levels are under pressure, landscapes across southern England are turning brown, and businesses, farms and households are again being reminded how vulnerable we are to prolonged heat and limited rainfall. Across Europe, the situation is even more severe, with repeated heatwaves, wildfires, evacuations and damage to homes, infrastructure and natural habitats.

Against that background, some councils have decided that this is the moment to step away from climate emergency policies and weaken their commitment to net zero.

The practical impact of removing a declaration may be limited. A climate emergency policy does not usually mean that every decision must be controlled by carbon emissions, nor does it mean councils are required to spend money they do not have on poorly justified schemes. In most cases, it simply means that climate change, carbon emissions and long-term resilience should be considered when decisions are made.

It is one factor among many.

Councils must balance social care, housing, waste collection, roads, schools, public health, economic development and many other responsibilities. Nobody is suggesting that net zero should automatically override all of those priorities. However, removing climate considerations altogether, or publicly signalling that they are no longer important, is a very different matter.

I would be interested to know how many council decisions have genuinely been changed because of a climate emergency declaration. My suspicion is that the number is relatively small. The greater value of the policy is that it encourages officers and elected members to pause and ask whether a proposal will increase energy consumption, create greater dependence on fossil fuels, worsen future climate risks or miss an opportunity to improve efficiency.

That is not extreme environmentalism. It is responsible long-term planning.

The concern is not simply the removal of a few words from a council policy. It is the message that removal sends to businesses, investors and the wider community. It suggests that net zero remains important only while the economy is comfortable, energy prices are stable and public finances are under manageable pressure.

As soon as circumstances become difficult, climate change slips down the agenda.

That is precisely the kind of uncertainty that makes progress harder. Businesses are being encouraged to invest in energy efficiency, renewable generation, electric vehicles, lower-carbon heating, more sustainable products and cleaner supply chains. Many of those investments require long payback periods and confidence that the overall direction of travel will remain consistent.

When political leaders repeatedly reopen the fundamental question of whether net zero is worth pursuing, they weaken that confidence. Businesses begin to wonder whether they should delay investment, customers become less certain about what will be expected of them, and the transition becomes slower and more expensive.

There is, of course, a legitimate debate to be had about targets and timescales.

Some councils and organisations adopted ambitious net-zero targets without fully understanding the financial and technical challenge involved. A 2030 target may now look difficult or, in some cases, impossible. That does not mean the whole objective should be abandoned. It means the plan should be reviewed honestly.

Progress should be measured. The projects that worked should be recognised. Areas where emissions have not fallen should be examined. Difficult sectors should be acknowledged, and a more realistic programme should be established.

Resetting a target is not failure.

Abandoning the direction entirely is.

The argument that councils must focus on basic services rather than climate action also creates a false distinction. Climate change is already becoming a basic-services issue.

Hotter weather increases pressure on health and social care. Poorly designed homes, schools and care facilities become dangerously uncomfortable during heatwaves. Drought affects parks, public spaces, agriculture and water supplies. Flooding damages roads, housing and local infrastructure. Higher energy costs increase the cost of running council buildings, leisure centres, vehicle fleets and street lighting.

Climate action is not separate from maintaining public services. It is part of making those services more resilient and affordable.

A well-designed energy-efficiency project can reduce the cost of operating a building for many years. Solar generation can reduce exposure to electricity price volatility. Better building controls can improve comfort while cutting waste. Electric vehicles can reduce dependence on imported oil. Adaptation measures can reduce the cost of damage caused by heat and flooding.

These are not luxuries. They are investments in future operating costs and service continuity.

The same principle applies at national level.

Whenever an international crisis causes oil and gas prices to rise, the immediate reaction from some politicians is to call for more drilling and greater domestic fossil-fuel production. Yet oil and gas remain internationally traded commodities. A new oil well does not disconnect the UK from global prices, geopolitical conflict or instability in international markets.

The more secure long-term response is to reduce the amount of fossil fuel we need.

That means accelerating the electrification of transport and heating, expanding renewable and nuclear generation, strengthening electricity networks and improving the energy efficiency of buildings and industry. It also means recognising that every home, vehicle and business process moved away from fossil fuels reduces our exposure to the next international energy shock.

The lesson from rising fuel prices should not be that we need to hold on to oil for longer. It should be that our economy remains too dependent on a fuel whose price can be driven upwards by events thousands of miles away.

Unfortunately, net zero has increasingly become part of a political identity debate.

There was previously a broad consensus that climate change was happening, emissions needed to fall and the transition should be managed sensibly. That consensus now appears to be drying up almost as quickly as parts of southern England.

Instead of debating the best technologies, the most effective projects and the fairest transition, we are increasingly debating whether climate action should remain an objective at all.

That is a major step backwards.

There should be robust debate about cost, value and practicality. Bad schemes should be challenged. Unrealistic targets should be reviewed. Public money should not be wasted on projects that deliver little environmental or economic benefit.

However, questioning a particular project is not the same as dismissing the underlying problem.

Climate change will not pause because public finances are difficult. Atmospheric carbon dioxide will not respond to local election results. Heatwaves, droughts, floods and wildfires will not become less likely because a council has decided to remove the word “emergency” from its policies.

Perhaps one reason this retreat is politically possible is that climate change remains difficult to understand within the timescale of an individual human life.

On a planetary scale, the changes are happening extraordinarily quickly. Within everyday life, however, the threat can still feel distant. People are understandably more concerned about next month’s bills, next year’s income or whether local services will continue.

Climate change rarely arrives as one single event that forces everyone to act. It appears through a series of increasingly familiar incidents: another record temperature, another period of drought, another flood, another wildfire, another damaged harvest and another increase in insurance and infrastructure costs.

Each event can be treated as exceptional. Each can be explained away as weather. Each can be pushed behind the next economic or political crisis.

But together, they form a clear pattern.

The uncomfortable truth is that many of the people making decisions today will not experience the most serious consequences. Those consequences will be inherited by future generations.

They will live with the buildings we failed to improve, the infrastructure we failed to protect and the energy systems we failed to modernise. They will pay for the adaptation that we delayed and deal with the damage that could have been reduced.

They may look back at the record-breaking summers, the wildfires and the repeated warnings and ask why their parents and grandparents decided this was the moment to step back.

They may ask why difficult economic conditions were treated as a reason to delay climate action, rather than a reason to invest in greater resilience and energy independence.

Councils cannot solve climate change alone, and nobody should pretend that they can. They do, however, influence planning, transport, housing, procurement, economic development and the operation of thousands of public buildings and vehicles.

At the very least, climate change should remain part of those decisions.

A climate emergency declaration was never a complete solution. It was a statement of intent and an acknowledgement that short-term decisions have long-term consequences.

Removing it will not save the climate, balance a council budget or protect public services.

It simply sends the message that when times become difficult, climate change can wait.

The problem is that climate change will not wait for us.