Channel Islands politicians vow not to follow the UK as Rishi Sunak ditches climate pledge
Emma Volney reports...
Politicians in the Channel Islands have stood firm in their support of the islands' net-zero policies despite British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak delaying measures in the UK to address the climate change emergency.
Rishi Sunak has pushed a ban on petrol and diesel cars in the UK back until 2035 as he is concerned about the financial impact of doing so on members of the public who are having to foot the bill for the government's green agenda amid a cost of living crisis.
However, despite Jersey also needing to raise additional revenues and facing similar pressure to bring down the cost of living, and Guernsey States struggling to balance its own books, neither island is planning to water down its own proposals to achieve carbon neutrality.
Jersey's Climate Change Minister, Deputy Hilary Jeune, told ITV News: "We are absolutely still committed to meeting our target of net zero by 2050. For Jersey we are very much on track and we would like to continue pushing our Carbon Neutral Roadmap through."
However, the Government still needs to find an extra £10m a year for the next 30 years to fund the policies that will allow them to reach net zero on time.
In the Government Plan, they explain that "further policy work will take place in 2024 to establish a suitable set of polluter-pays measures that could deliver the additional funding required".
The Government this week announced plans to increase tax on fuel by 10.9%, with 7p added per litre. They also revealed proposals to raise Vehicle Emissions Duty and reduce the cost of biofuel, which is more environmentally friendly.
However, environmental campaigner Nigel Jones is critical of their approach to the climate crisis, and feels ministers are turning some tax payers against them by "getting the strategy wrong".
He said: "There is a tendency to increase the tax burden on the middle income and the low income sections of society and yet we have an extremely rich end of our society who can easily afford to pay a bit more and they're not ever being asked to do so.
"In fact, they get all kinds of freebies, like hangars for their private jets."
St Helier Central Deputy Rob Ward originally lodged the propositions calling on Jersey to declare a climate emergency and become carbon neutral by 2030.
He said: "I think there are real concerns that's what's happening in the UK - which is a nonsense [reneging] on any commitment, and its responsibility to world - might spread here like some form of contagion. I really hope that doesn't happen.
"We need to make brave decisions, but we need to do so with equity and fairness so some of the things we need to do to persuade people to change their habits like access to public transport has simply not been taken on."
Deputy Lindsay de Sausmarez, of Guernsey's Environment Committee, was keen to stress that Guernsey remains fully committed to fulfilling its carbon neutral and net zero targets.
She said: "Irrespective of what the UK is doing, we have to make sense for Guernsey and we know that grasping some of those opportunities is going to make more economic and environmental sense for the island.
"There is no no cost option. Climate change is having a material effect on economies around the world. We can see that most obviously in some of the supply chain pressures in terms of energy markets and the like, so there's no no cost option, but all the economic analysis tends to show that the earlier you can act to become more carbon neutral, the better you will be from a financial perspective.
"In other words, it's the more affordable option to act and to act early."
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