Political self-interest is the prime minister’s guiding light. No amount of planetary jeopardy is going to change that
Boris Johnson’s recruitment to the global crusade against carbon emissions is, by his own admission, recent. On a visit to New York last month, the prime minister confessed to a back catalogue of newspaper columns that “weren’t entirely supportive of the current struggle”. He was making excuses for Anne-Marie Trevelyan, his trade secretary whose record of climate scepticism tilts into outright denial. (In 2012 she derided “global warming fanatics” for believing that the ice caps were melting.)
Around the same time, Johnson was querying the scientific consensus, dabbling in crackpot theories about sunspots and disparaging windfarms. In his defence, the prime minister has since declared that “the facts change and people change their minds”. At most, half of that statement is true. It was a fact that human activity was heating the planet when Johnson cavilled, and it is still a fact now.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
