Labour’s shadow environment team spaffed 3.7 tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere on a round trip to the COP15 summit in Canada. While even in normal circumstances, environmentally-showboating politicians should be using Zoom for these meetings, Alex Sobel and Ruth Jones’ jolly over the Atlantic is even more ironic as they used the opportunity to meet with… the RSPB. A British charity with headquarters a mere 80-minute train ride from Westminster…

The @LabourDefra team at #COP15 had a crucial briefing on the state of play of negotiations with @Natures_Voice and where the UK where in terms of both negotiations and international commitments.

It was a real insight for @RuthNewportWest and I pic.twitter.com/8OWBrZNCk8

— Alex Sobel MP 🟣 (@alexsobel) December 8, 2022

He also received a briefing from Climate Policy Radar, a “Data-sci & machine learning to unlock global climate law & policy data”. A group of boffins from… LSE, based in London.

Its crucial that our approach to nature and biodiversity is science-led. So I’m very grateful to @NachmanyMichal of @climatepolradar for a comprehensive brief at #COP15 about how we can use Climate Radar to create and interrogate @uklabour nature and biodiversity policy. pic.twitter.com/c1VNzlvd0c

— Alex Sobel MP 🟣 (@alexsobel) December 9, 2022

Third on Sobel’s agenda was a briefing “on the latest state of play on #COP15 negotiations”. By… DEFRA civil servants.

Up early in Montreal to be briefed on the latest state of play on #COP15 negotiations from @DefraGovUK officials before going into back to back meetings in the venue and on the conference fringes.

Looking forward to a busy and hectic 12 hours of meetings to fully immerse in COP

— Alex Sobel MP 🟣 (@alexsobel) December 9, 2022

All in all an excellent trip, and very helpful to the environment. No doubt Londoners being shafted by the ULEZ expansion won’t see any hypocrisy at all…