Keir Starmer’s “Net Zero leadership” at COP29 apparently involves 470 delegates racking up 2.3 million air miles, spending millions of taxpayer cash and leaving a hefty carbon footprint from a 5,000-mile round trip. The Mail has more.
The staggering environmental and financial cost comes despite the summit being deemed “no longer fit for purpose”, with leaders of some of the biggest polluting countries, including U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi, shunning talks.
The British delegation is bigger than that sent by the U.S. and other major European countries including France, Germany and Italy, according to official figures.
Sir Keir has declared that he wants the U.K. to have a “global leadership” role in fighting climate change and used this year’s COP in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, to unveil yet another hugely ambitious green target.
But the Prime Minister’s pledge to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 81% by 2035 triggered warnings that people will have to cut back on meat or replace their gas boilers to meet the target.
Official figures obtained by this newspaper reveal the U.K. registered 470 delegates. This compared with the 405 from the US, 111 from India, 437 from Italy 325 from Germany and 115 from France, whose President Emmanuel Macron also spurned the talks.
With Baku almost 2,500 miles from London, the British delegation is estimated to have collectively racked up 2.3 million air miles for return trips. Each return flight pumps out at least 0.7 tons of CO2 per passenger, making the delegation’s flights’ total carbon footprint at least 338 tons of CO2.
The U.K.’s delegation included 354 Government officials or ministers. The remaining 116 included representatives from Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, business figures, policy experts and journalists.
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