The European Commission’s proposals from November last year to cut packaging waste have been voted through by the European Parliament’s environment committee. Not that anything more important is going on at the moment…
Under the draft rules packaging will be steadily standardised to allow for easier reuse. It can be heavier or more intricate than the minimum only if it fulfils certain “performance criteria”, though the commission have deleted “consumer acceptance” and “marketing and product presentation” from the list. Brand identification won’t be a good enough reason to keep a packaging design. Anything that uses glass is at high risk – bottle designs for coke, perfume, and spirits could go out of the window. Kiss that Grey Goose goodbye…
The glass bottle manufacturer trade association FEVE says “creative designs and iconic shapes will gradually disappear, and commercial value will be squandered because brands can no longer stand out from each other on the shelves“. Meanwhile, several packaging formats will also be banned, like single-use packaging in restaurants and hotels. Goodbye ketchup sachets and mini-shampoo bottles…
Guido is not instinctively against the government’s plan to relax the ban on new petrol and diesel car sales – it’s the kind of thing the Conservatives should have been saying for years. Unfortunately for the government, a lot of other people do not agree – and they’re all on the media this morning…
Number 10 is attempting to show there is life in the building by making a significant policy change – yet because Downing Street has made ‘certainty’ and ‘stability’ their calling card, any move is causing greater than usual upset. After a number of leaks, including to the Mail on Sunday and the BBC, officials are now frantically accelerating Sunak’s speech relaxing green policies, possibly to today – not least because of the commercial sensitivity in leaving a vacuum on the details. The problem is that the leaks mean the government has already lost control of the steering wheel…
The motoring lobby – which is usually pretty Conservative – is slamming the move because it is messing with their fine-tuned future balance sheets. Car giant Ford says:
“Our business needs three things from the UK government, ambition, commitment, and consistency… A relaxation of 2030 would undermine all three”
The Society of Motor Manufactures and Traders says:
“[we] continue to invest billions of pounds into these new technologies, electrified vehicles, battery vehicles, both abroad and here in the UK… We don’t quite know what’s going to happen now.”
It is likely industry as a whole will entirely reject the government’s move; businesses have simply been told for too long to pivot to green manufacturing, often at huge capital costs which they now cannot turn their back on overnight. On the Tory benches, there are initial signs of problems, at least from the vocal zealously green MPs. Chris Skidmore, who chaired the government’s own review into Net Zero, has threatened a no confidence letter:
Meanwhile former COP26 president Alok Shama says:
“The UK has been a leader on climate action but we cannot rest on our laurels. For any party to resile from this agenda will not help economically or electorally.”
The initial reaction is enough to make Guido wonder if the policy package will be quietly wound down or changed. So much for the adults restoring stability…
UPDATE:
Boris Johnson has entered the fray, saying:
“The green Industrial Revolution is already generating huge numbers of high quality jobs and helping to drive growth and level up our country. Business and industry – such as motor manufacturing – are rightly making vast investments in these new technologies. It is crucial that we give those businesses confidence that government is still committed to Net Zero and can see the way ahead. We cannot afford to falter now or in any way lose our ambition for this country.”
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.
— Alex Sobel MP 🟣 (@alexsobel) December 8, 2022
It was a real insight for @RuthNewportWest and I pic.twitter.com/8OWBrZNCk8
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.
— Alex Sobel MP 🟣 (@alexsobel) December 9, 2022
Looking forward to a busy and hectic 12 hours of meetings to fully immerse in COP
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…
Despite the reshuffle being formally paused until after the Queen’s funeral, Liz Truss has ploughed on with sacking Tory tree-hugger-in-chief Zac Goldsmith from his DEFRA ministerial post. While the government is still paying lip service to the Net Zero target, they’ve signalled climate and animal welfare issues could be de-prioritised over the coming months. The Guardian speculates that the Animal Welfare Bill could be first up for slaughter. The PM’s next royal audience should be interesting…
The news comes as The Guardian reports Liz is planning to follow through on her leadership election pledge and lift the ban on fracking as soon as possible, with first licences set to be issued as early as next week. This will no doubt come as welcome relief as energy bills continue to rise during winter. The decision comes despite the paper’s ominous quote from a forthcoming report that forecasting fracking-induced earthquakes “remains a significant challenge”. In August 2019 Caudrilla halted work after recording the UK’s “biggest fracking tremor”. The tremor in question was 1.55ML on the Richter scale, “which it likened to ‘a large bag of shopping dropping to the floor'”…
UPDATE: Read Zac’s letter to his former Defra colleagues below:
Yesterday a Paris court found the French state guilty of breaking its commitments to reducing emissions in-line with the international climate change agreement signed in that very city. A complaint submitted by a group of NGOs – including Oxfam and Greenpeace – accused France of failing to act to halt climate change, the court finding the state guilty of “non-respect of its engagements” aimed at combating global warming. The government has had to pay compensation to the NGOs for “moral prejudice”… of €1 each.
The Paris Climate Agreement signed five years ago commits signatories to limit global warming to less than 2℃; France, however, has missed its 2015 national targets and delayed most of its efforts until after 2020. Macron had slammed Trump for withdrawing from the agreement. Now Biden has signed America back up to a foreign agreement which not even France is following…
This weekend the Guardian and Independent both published a whopper of a story sure to set social media and MP’s casework inboxes alight; with claims Boris was to use Brexit to authorise the use of a “bee-killing pesticide banned in the EU” – neonicotinoid thiamethoxam – to treat sugar beet seed this year in an effort to protect the crop from a virus. Greta immediately leapt on the story:
UK government has announced "a bee-killing pesticide so poisonous that it is banned by the EU" may be used in England.
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) January 9, 2021
New coal mines and pesticides... the UK's so called "green industrial revolution" is off to a great start.
Very credible indeed.https://t.co/R4o54ZEyvD
There was just one problem with the screeching Remainer environmental outrage: the pesticide is not banned in the EU and the UK was always entitled to use it pre-Brexit – with 10 EU countries also having issued emergency authorisations for the pesticide since 2018 including Belgium, Denmark and Spain. DEFRA makes it very clear: “The UK’s approach to the use of emergency authorisations has not changed as a result of the UK’s exit from the EU.”
British sugar beet yield in 2020 is expected to be down by 20-25% on previous years due to predation by aphids which have been spreading beet yellow virus:
“The temporary use of this product is strictly limited to a non-flowering crop and will be tightly controlled to minimise any potential risk to pollinators.”
Don’t expect blind, unverifiable Remainer anger to die down just because Brexit’s finally done and dusted…
UPDATE: Reported today in French press France approves three-year use of controversial pesticide
