Sunak Opts Out of COP27 Due to ‘Depressing’ Economic Tasks

(Bloomberg) -- UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak demoted two climate ministers and decided not to attend the annual United Nations climate change summit next month, raising questions about his commitment to fight global warming. 

Sunak, whose predecessor Liz Truss had planned to go to the so-called COP27 UN meeting in Egypt, won’t attend in order to focus “on depressing domestic challenges we have with the economy,” he said Friday. He and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt are set to unveil an economic plan on Nov. 17, which could entail tax rises and spending cuts totaling as much as £50 billion ($58 billion).

King Charles III, who was advised not to attend the summit by Truss’s government, will also opt out despite having given a speech at COP26 last year. The advice to the monarch, an outspoken advocate for tackling climate change, has not changed, Sunak’s spokeswoman, Camilla Marshall, told reporters on Friday. 

Questions have been asked in the past about Sunak’s commitment to tackling climate change, not least when he cut taxes on fuel and flying just days before the UK hosted last year’s UN summit in Glasgow. Adding to the sense that he’s downgrading the importance of climate in the government agenda, the premier also decided this week that COP26 President Alok Sharma and Climate Change Minister Graham Stuart will no longer attend Cabinet meetings. Both remain in post and Sharma and Environment Secretary Therese Coffey will attend the summit.

“It’s important to me that, as prime minister, we leave behind an environment that is better for our children and grandchildren,” Sunak said in a pooled broadcast clip Friday. “I’m very passionate about that.”

‘Failure of Leadership’

It’s not unusual for a head of government to miss the UN summit. Though Truss had planned to attend COP, world leaders tend only to attend the UN conference every few years when bigger agreements are being negotiated. Last year’s gathering in Glasgow was the biggest since one in Paris in 2015 that produced a global agreement to limit temperature rises. Truss’s predecessor, Boris Johnson attended the Glasgow meeting, while then Prime Minister David Cameron went to the French capital.

Sunak’s approach to climate issues has been mixed. He restored a ban on fracking this week, but told Conservative Party members over his summer leadership campaign that he’ll halt efforts to bring back onshore wind. His new Energy Secretary, Grant Shapps, previously called onshore wind turbines an “eyesore.” Sunak also privately lobbied to impose a green levy on petrol and diesel when he was Chancellor, but it was rejected by then-leader Johnson. 

The opposition Labour Party’s spokesman on climate, Ed Miliband, called Sunak’s failure to attend COP27 a “massive failure of leadership,” while Greenpeace UK’s head of politics, Rebecca Newsom, said in a statement that Sunak’s non-attendance suggests he “neither takes the climate crisis seriously enough, nor recognizes the opportunities for Britain to take a leadership role in helping to solve it.” 

--With assistance from .

(Updates with King Charles III advice, Sunak comment starting in second paragraph.)

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