The UK’s only Green MP has spent a lifetime battling the climate emergency. She discusses carbon emissions, personal responsibility, political action – and how to veer off our collision course with catastrophe
If Caroline Lucas has always seemed an optimistic sort of politician, that outlook is being pushed to breaking point. Sitting through the budget last week was, says Lucas, “an unbelievable experience. It was like being in some weird parallel universe where there wasn’t a climate emergency, and we weren’t about to host the world’s nations at this big climate summit.”
It should have been a moment when the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, “was turbocharging the funding for the net zero programme”, says the Green party MP, ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, which opened on Sunday. “It should have been the point where he reversed that unforgivable cut in aid, where we demonstrated some strong climate policies. Instead, the headlines were about cutting the cost of short-haul flights.”
