We face multiple crises: cost-of-living; energy prices and independence, exacerbated by the war in Iran and our dependence on fossil fuel imports; the rise in mental health problems, for which the overstretched NHS can provide too little treatment; shortages of skilled workers; and, most critically, severe damage from climate breakdown, as seen in this summer’s drought and wildfires. These challenges are not separate from the climate crisis; in fact, it is increasingly intensifying them.
The following are some suggestions for Andy Burnham’s government on how to invest in climate protection. This not only reduces the massive death and destruction we would otherwise suffer, but also tackles many of these wider crises, while saving vast amounts of public money.
Smart cost-of-living cuts
One of Andy Burnham’s first cost-of-living measures was the welcome £2 bus fare cap. However, the average worker spends £50 per week on commuting. Much greater train and bus fare cuts could encourage many workers to leave their car at home. This would ease congestion, which was estimated last year to cost the country £30.8 bn annually, partly due to the road wear it causes. It also contributes significantly to air pollution, which was a major factor in an estimated 30,000 deaths in the UK in 2025, costing another £27 billion.
To cut electricity prices, the government should reform the regulated market, which artificially makes renewable electricity much more expensive than it would otherwise be, as its price is currently linked to gas. As a result, British businesses have to pay much more for electricity than their international competitors. Greenpeace has proposed a detailed mechanism to end this link, which would achieve huge savings for households and businesses. It would also encourage switching from gas to electricity, thus reducing carbon emissions. The government has a plan to address the electricity/gas price link, but it would take until 2030 to make only a modest improvement.
The government’s current policy to cut energy bills via the price cap is effectively an untargeted fossil fuel subsidy. It should take into account the research showing that families in the highest income decile use, on average, well over twice the amount of electricity and gas as families in the lowest decile. Wealthy people’s fuel should not be subsidised. They need an incentive to use less, thus cutting their emissions.
The government should note the poll showing that, after the recent heatwaves, over 48% of Britons feel more anxious about climate change. 58% of Labour voters feel more anxious. Only 13% of Britons think the government has done a good job on climate change. When asked which party would do a better job, the Greens received the most support, meaning they could foreseeably win votes from Labour as a result of rising climate anxiety.
Overall, 78% of Britons are concerned about climate change – they understand the huge risks it threatens. Extreme weather disasters have become five times more frequent globally over the past 50 years. Their frequency in 2024 was twice that of the annual average from 2003 to 2020. From 1995 to 2024, they caused more than 832,000 deaths and direct economic losses of nearly $4.5 trillion.
Unless the world cuts emissions urgently to slow the temperature rise, these disasters will continue becoming more frequent.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan recently called for “renewed focus, funding and resolve” to tackle the climate emergency. The government needs to speed up the decarbonisation of homes, thus helping lower bills to reduce fuel poverty, which damages health. It’s promising that the Warm Homes Plan includes air-to-air heat pumps, which can cool as well as heat, and would thus prevent the stress many people have suffered during the heatwaves. These heat pumps would be a much better alternative to separate air conditioning, which would seriously increase emissions. However, the government also needs to act on the Climate Change Committee’s recent assessment, which stated that it “is not moving fast enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to protect households and businesses from volatile fossil fuel prices.”
Invest or die
Climate is not the only major crisis we face: an ageing population, pressure on public services, skills shortages, and food insecurity all demand urgent investment.
The budget this October needs to invest in tackling these many challenges, which will only increase in cost as they worsen, ultimately consuming massive amounts of public money. They include:
- training the additional skilled workers we need (a particular challenge in light of the huge rise in the numbers of NEETs);
- boosting the ability of the NHS to cope with the rise in demands linked to the ageing population, increased mental health problems, and obesity, to get people back to work;
- cutting climate-wrecking emissions before tipping points emerge, which accelerate the rate of temperature increase. Global emissions are rising, partly due to wars and the increasing frequency of wildfires;
- adapting our environment to reduce the harm of extreme weather and securing water supplies for droughts, particularly to help farmers grow crops.
Suggested tax schemes to fund these investments
There is sufficient money circulating in our economy to fund this investment.
Equalising the rate of capital gains tax to that of income tax, as recommended by Lord Kinnock, would raise £11 bn annually. Increasing the bank surcharge to 35%, the same level as the windfall tax the Conservatives imposed on energy companies, would raise £60bn over four years. The big four banks made profits of £13.8 billion in the first quarter of 2026, and £45.7bn in 2025. A 2% tax on wealth above £10m, supported by 2/3 of adults, would raise £24bn a year. A frequent flyer tax, targeting the 15% of people who take 70% of flights, could raise £9bn per year, and substantially cut emissions (Table 3).
These increased taxes can cover the additional expenditure, including the extra defence spending John Healey advocated when he resigned as Defence Secretary. The Institute for Public Policy Research has explained how this defence spending could be implemented more cost-effectively through co-operation with allies.
These taxes would also enable the government to negate the far right’s anti-net-zero propaganda by showing that the price of climate protection does not fall on ordinary people. These amounts dwarf the £1.4bn in tax revenues that the company hoping to open the Rosebank and Jackdaw North Sea fossil fuel plants claims they would provide in the nearly three years before the end of this parliament. Just increasing tobacco duty by 10% would bring in much more, an additional £750m every year. The government has plenty of options which, unlike permitting Rosebank and Jackdaw, would not detract from us exercising strong international leadership to accelerate climate protection.
Gordon Brown has explained how the UK has an influential role by working with key allies.
Good protective growth
Burnham is aiming for “good growth in every postcode”. Growth should be described as good only if it significantly reduces the costly problems outlined above. Professor Nicholas Stern, who undertook a landmark study for the Brown government on the economics of climate change, pointed out that growth fuelled by fossil fuels is “futile” because of the severe damage it causes.
The huge risk of AI
One short-term source of growth which on balance is definitely not good is AI data centres. The International Energy Agency found that “data centre electricity consumption is set to more than double by 2030, … to a level slightly above Japan’s total electricity consumption today”. The government recently admitted that over the next ten years UK data centres could emit as much CO₂ as generated by 2.7 million Britons. This is entirely counterproductive when the public and government agree that we need to cut emissions as soon as possible. Furthermore, data centres use vast amounts of scarce water to cool their equipment. Yet analysis shows that three of the current top four uses of AI, “technical assistance and troubleshooting”, “fun and nonsense”, and “fan fiction and storytelling”, are not nearly beneficial or important enough to justify this environmental cost, and could, for the most part, be obtained via an ordinary search, which uses one-tenth of the electricity. In addition the Bank of England governor expressed concerns about AI potentially facilitating a) serious cyber attacks, and b) causing a major economic downturn, partly due to the high level of debt in the sector.
In addition, there are huge concerns about AI potentially causing massive errors, such as “a deadly software update for self-driving cars”. Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and others warned that AI “can pose profound risks to society and humanity”. Schoolteachers report that students’ use of AI reduces their capacity for critical thinking. There are a few known uses of AI that may have an overall positive impact on society (I mention one about wildfire prevention below). Nevertheless, AI expansion should be limited strictly to purposes which science shows are important and beneficial.
Retraining workers in the fossil fuel industry:
To maintain support for climate policies, it is vital to invest the relatively small amounts needed to support and retrain workers in fossil fuel industries. Failure to do so would lead to the loss of more elections like Aberdeen South, which the Conservatives won in June. The Scottish government has a ten-year £500m Just Transition Fund for this purpose. However, the independent Just Transition Commission criticised the government, saying “rather than planning for success, we are increasingly falling into patterns of delaying delivery and then reacting to crises. … this reactive approach harms business and investor confidence.” To enable the Just Transition Fund to operate effectively, the government must increase its budget. Increasing alcohol duty by just 5% would bring in an additional £622m every year, while providing substantial health and social benefits. Proactive just transition policies are affordable and necessary to secure future prosperity.
Investing in our ability to produce food sustainably:
Due to the heatwaves and drought, this year’s UK harvest will be the smallest on record. Many countries from which we import food have had even worse harvests, so prices will rise.
The recent heatwaves and drought underline the necessity of prompt action to protect the UK’s ability to grow food.
One third of British farmers are either making a loss or just breaking even. The government’s independent expert advisers, the Climate Change Committee, state that without appropriate adaptation, rising temperatures and other effects of climate change threaten to reduce our area of productive farmland enormously. The government’s recent National Security Assessment warns that “it is unlikely the UK would be able to maintain food security if ecosystem collapse drives geopolitical competition for food.”
Current agricultural practices have contributed to the serious decline in soil quality in many areas. Research quoted by the Climate Change Committee estimates that soil degradation costs around £1.6 billion a year, and that £440 million needs to be invested annually to rectify this. The citizens’ panel convened by the committee generally were in favour of investment in climate adaptation.
As water will continue to be scarce most years, farmers need incentives to produce food that needs less water. It takes 15,415 litres of water to produce one kilogram of beef, compared to 1,608 litres for one kilo of bread. Foods which consume significant water in their production should be made more expensive to decrease their demand. Beef and dairy production should be reduced, as cattle emit large amounts of methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas.
State-of-the-art fire prevention:
There have been many deadly wildfires in Europe this year, some of which destroyed homes in the West Midlands. So far this year, the UK has had over 1,000 wildfires, compared to just 716 for 2021, 2023, and 2024 combined. This underlines how important it is to invest in state-of-the-art fire prevention. This involves satellite surveillance linked to AI image interpretation. These systems are in use in the United States, Australia, Greece, and Galicia. They enable fires to be spotted promptly and allow for the prediction of their likely direction of spread. The European Parliament estimates that €1 spent on prevention in this area saves between €4 to €7. This is to say nothing of the long-term damage to physical and emotional health caused by these fires, including trauma to those affected and respiratory issues caused by exposure to smoke, which can travel very long distances. It is also vital to recruit more firefighters. Their numbers have steadily fallen by 14% since 2015 despite the number of incidents they attended increasing by 8.2% from 2020 to 2025.
In 2025, Andy Burnham signed an international treaty calling for phasing out of fossil fuels, describing it as “a lifeline”. He needs to remember that a recent CBI report found the net zero economy was worth about £100bn a year to the UK, growing faster than the rest of the economy, and producing higher-paid jobs. The Starmer government’s plans to severely reduce climate finance for developing countries were a serious error. A recent report calculated that catastrophic climate shocks could cause a 50% loss in GDP globally between 2070 and 2090, and that the current economic models widely used by governments seriously underestimate the disastrous economic and environmental consequences. The government cannot expect developing countries to take the vital action required to decarbonise and protect the natural world if the amount of climate finance they receive is so grossly inadequate. Many developing countries are already suffering terrible disasters which severely strain their economic capacity. For example, last autumn Hurricane Melissa caused damage in Jamaica valued at nearly a quarter of its GDP. Forty-five people were killed. The hurricane destroyed the roof of at least 120,000 buildings. Andy Burnham needs to go down in history as a leader who pushed the world to invest in climate protection. Otherwise, we will all suffer dreadfully, particularly our children and grandchildren.
Tim Root is joint co-ordinator of Haringey Friends of the Earth, and author of various works including https://fabians.org.uk/silent-
very interesting!