Cop31: ‘The crisis is upon us now’, Burnham tells climate summit
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham opened the Cop31 climate summit by emphasizing the urgency of the climate crisis and the necessity of transitioning to clean energy. He highlighted the UK's commitment to net zero by 2050 while acknowledging that global targets like the 1.5C limit are likely to be breached.
Why it matters
The speech signals a shift in UK climate policy toward energy security and affordability, while reflecting a sobering international consensus on the difficulty of meeting climate goals.
“Britain is back and ready to play its full part,” Andy Burnham has said at the opening of today’s summit.
The UK prime minister celebrated domestic clean energy projects including windfarms and electrified steel factories, stressed the need to make the transition affordable, and announced the UK’s first special representative for climate security, Madeleine Alessandri .
“The climate crisis is not a distant threat, it is upon us now, devastating lives and livelihoods everywhere,” he said. Pointing to the effects of two global wars on energy prices, he added that the “common thread running through all of this is fossil fuels.”
Burnham repeated the UK’s commitment to meeting its 2050 net zero emissions target and said he would work with all of partners to reach theirs.
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