Andy Burnham Has No Plans to Publish Report on Climate Crisis
Britain’s prime minister named the official behind a warning on collapsing ecosystems as his climate security adviser, yet her report is still being kept from the public. Campaigners say the government’s oil and gas plans clash with its promises at COP31.
ANTALYA, Turkey, Nov 13 – British ministers have no plans to publish a report on climate crisis risks to national security, even after Prime Minister Andy Burnham named the official behind it as his new adviser at the COP31 climate summit. The climate crisis is not a distant threat; it is upon us all now,” Burnham said.
He said it is ruining lives and livelihoods around the world.
Burnham was the only leader from the Group of Seven major economies to attend the talks in Antalya. It was his first climate summit as prime minister.
He said the world has changed, and that the agreement countries once shared on science and climate action has broken down. He said Britain will not stand by, and that he has promised a new era of British leadership over the next decade.
He backed the summit’s push to shift more of the world’s energy use to electricity. If a country depends on energy it does not control, he said, it depends on prices it cannot control. He called clean energy the only route to energy security.
He also pointed to progress at home. He said a new electric car in Britain now costs less to drive than a petrol one, and that a heat pump on the right tariff can be cheaper to run than a gas boiler. But he said industry must do its part to help people make the switch.
At the summit, Burnham named Madeleine Alessandri as his adviser on climate security.
She is a long-serving civil servant and a former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which brings together the heads of Britain’s spy agencies. The government called the role the world’s first special representative for climate security.
Alessandri led work on a report that the collapse of key ecosystems, such as the Amazon rainforest, could lead to food shortages, rising food prices, mass migration and even nuclear conflict abroad.
The report was intended to be published at last year’s climate summit, but the government of then Prime Minister Keir Starmer withheld it.
The Guardian reported its key findings after a leak, and a version with parts blacked out was released this year. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has briefed other governments on its findings.
But the full report on climate crisis risks remains unpublished. The government has no plans to release it.
Burnham’s speech drew a warm response at the summit. Still, campaigners, green businesses and investors say they are concerned about his government’s direction.
His chancellor, John Healey, is known to prioritize economic growth, even if it means tying Britain to costly fossil fuels, the Guardian reported. Senior insiders told the newspaper that major decisions affecting the climate are being made one by one, without assessing their combined impact.
Burnham also has no dedicated climate adviser in Downing Street.
While he spoke in Antalya, ministers were said to be finalizing plans to weaken rules requiring carmakers to sell a rising share of electric vehicles. Burnham has also approved the Jackdaw gas field, cut funding for heat pumps and is considering whether to back the new Rosebank oil field. Healey has told lawmakers that the government supports a third runway at Heathrow Airport.
Ami McCarthy, head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said the speech struck the right notes, but that talk of a major new oil field and looser rules on electric cars nearly overshadowed it. She welcomed the new climate security role, but said approving Rosebank would increase the climate threat to communities in Britain and around the world.
“There are so many elephants in the room, you’d think it’s a zoo,” McCarthy said.
Burnham also has supporters who say he understands the crisis.
He met Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, at the summit. The two discussed football and how cheaper renewable power and greater use of electricity could reduce the cost of living. Birol said Burnham fully supports moving Britain’s energy system to electricity.
“I can put my name behind it,” Birol said.
Burnham did not get a one-on-one meeting with Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during the summit.
The government was asked to comment on the report and on its climate plans.
