Britain Declares Independence

Brexit Has Significant Implications For Energy and Climate Policies

It’s not for nothing that the U.K. has been a great player on the world stage for centuries. Having declared their independence from the EU, the British people can now show the world what a determined democracy can accomplish. – Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 24 June 2016

“The decision by the British people to leave the European Union will have significant and long-term implications for energy and climate policies,” Dr. Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Forum, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “It is highly unlikely that the party-political green consensus that has existed in Parliament for the last 10 years will survive the seismic changes that are now unfolding after Britain’s Independence Day,” Peiser said. “But perhaps the most important aspect of the EU referendum has been the astonishing self-determination and scepticism of the British people in face of an unprecedented fear campaign,” Peiser said. --Michael Bastasch, The Daily Caller, 24 June 2016

A vote for Brexit in the UK referendum on EU membership would mean that the COP21 agreement would have to be rewritten, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change said today (22 June) in Brussels. Christiana Figueres, one of the architects of the historic deal struck last December to limit warming to no more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels, said the international pact, “would require recalibration”. --James Crisp, EurActiv.com, 22 June 2016

The departure of the EU’s second-largest economy could have unsettling implications for the Paris climate accord. U.K. voters’ decision to exit the European Union sent shock waves through world markets today, including the energy sector. The consensus from policymakers, clean-energy advocates, and analysts was that while “Brexit” will not completely derail the EU’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions under the Paris climate accord, it will certainly throw a spanner in the works. --Richard Martin, MIT Technology Review, 24 June 2016

The UK government won high praise six months ago for taking a leading role in the successful Paris climate change agreement, the first legally binding commitment on curbing carbon emissions by all 195 United Nations countries. With the vote to leave the EU, the UK’s future participation in that landmark accord is now in doubt. More importantly, for the rest of the world, the Leave campaign’s victory provides a fillip globally for groups opposed to climate action, and if it causes delays to the Paris accord coming into effect, it could provide an opening for aspiring right-wing leaders - including Donald Trump - to try to unpick the pact. “There is a risk that this could kick EU ratification of the Paris agreement into the long grass,” Jonathan Grant, director of sustainability at PwC, told the Guardian. --Fiona Harvey, The Guardian, 25 June 2016
   
Leading figures in the Vote Leave referendum campaign to take Britain out of the EU have links to a controversial climate-sceptic think tank and question the science behind global warming. The group’s three leaders Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and figurehead Lord Nigel Lawson have cast doubt over man-made climate change, which is backed by most of the world’s credible experts. Gove – who tried to stop climate change being taught in schools – and in particular Johnson are seen as Conservative leadership frontrunners should a Brexit vote topple UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who backs Remain. There are so many influential politicians and donors that are both euro and climate-sceptic that it has raised fears over the future of UK climate policy if the UK votes for Brexit on 23 June. --James Crisp, EurActiv, 24 May 2016

The role of bloody-minded insurgents willing to do the opposite of what they’re told by the authorities has long been central to great political events in British history, and the 17,410,742 people who voted to leave the European Union can certainly be ranked among their number. Almost every single agency of the international Establishment was deployed to thwart them – the CBI, IMF, Bank of England, OECD, big business, Goldman Sachs, all but one party leader, the World Bank, Presidents Obama, Hollande and Abe, the EU Commission, two-thirds of the cabinet, the Treasury, The Guardian, Davos, The Times, and so on – yet over 17.4 million people told them precisely what they could do with their expert opinion. The popular uprising campaign was not like the Poll Tax riots of 1990 but much more firmly in the mainstream of the long British tradition of legitimate peaceful protest. In this way, too, it was a more impressive achievement than the French Revolution, soaked as that was in blood. This popular uprising has toppled the established order without calling upon the tumbrel, the scaffold and the guillotine. It will secure its place in history as a result. --Andrew Roberts, The Daily Telegraph, 25 June 2016