Security as the new sustainability: How the UK General Election is about managing, not tackling, the climate crisis

The 2024 General Election will take place against the background of dire and urgent scientific research on climate change and biodiversity loss, with the window for meaningful action fast closing and the risk of tipping points approaching. The UN warned in 2019 that the world had 11 years left to prevent catastrophic climate change. Five years closer to ‘climate hell’, with our foot still firmly on the accelerator, we find ourselves in a decisive election year, with ominous results already emerging from diverse geographical areas, including India and Europe. Thus far, the ongoing UK election campaign is offering little more hope. In the recently released Conservative and Labour manifestos, sustainability has been reframed as security, which prepares for, rather than prevents, the worst of climate change.  

In the summer of 2023, it appeared that sustainability would be a key area around which battle lines would be drawn. There was growing contestation around environmental policy, for example the recent call for investment in gas-fired power plants, the granting of new North Sea Oil and Gas licenses and the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) expansion. Since then, the Conservative Party have backtracked on their promises for green policies, such as pushing back bans on car combustion engines and regulations on energy efficient houses. Sensitive to criticism of their “radical” commitment to net zero targets as “religion”, Labour too has adjusted its position in a widely-reported U-turn on its £28 billion Green Investment pledge.

In the manifestos of the two main parties, the term ‘sustainability’ appears infrequently and in the very limited guise of financial sustainability. This is sought primarily for institutions which, at least in their currently form, perpetuate social inequalities (e.g. the welfare system) and environmental degradation (e.g. the aviation industry). In fact, ‘sustainability’ refers to anything but climate change which is overlooked as a whole; referenced four times in Labours 132-page manifesto (appearing first on page 49) and eight times in the Conservatives 76-page manifesto (appearing first on page 32). 

This narrow framing of sustainability shields both parties from having to seriously engage with the gravity and urgency of the approaching climate disaster. Net zero – which already a limited technocratic framing reliant on mitigating rather than cutting emissions – can be reasonably ‘postponed’ in Conservative Policy. Rishi Sunak is insistent that any shift towards net zero must be ‘affordable and pragmatic’, done at the behest of other economic indicators. Researchers have argued that this politics of delay is in fact the new denial.

Meanwhile the eco-modernist perspective of Keir Starmer’s Labour party accepts Net Zero as a fantastic business ‘opportunity.’ This position does justify greater climate action, but only as long as that action supports economic development.  Starmer launched his manifesto with a statement of ‘wealth creation’ which echoes the Thatcherite dream that if you ‘work hard, you can achieve anything’. He further asserted that ‘strong fiscal rules’ come first, which indicates the green industrial strategy is to be seen as a sole solution for the climate crisis, and one constrained by the same logics that have caused it. 

This framing entirely fails to engage with the contradictions of addressing environmental destruction (and its imbrication with societal inequalities) without rethinking our current economic system and its obsession with GDP growth. Yet whilst the manifestos silence the realities of climate change, it nonetheless hovers silently in the background. The premise of both is that we find ourselves in an increasingly dangerous world, but the role of climate change (and its causes) in creating insecurity and suffering, now and in the future, is ignored. 

As such, while both parties implicitly accept the threat climate change poses, sustainability is reframed in terms of security. The term ‘security’ appears 60 times in the Labour manifesto and 51 times in the Conservative manifesto. In fact, security seems to be the defining feature of the discourse in this election, with little between the two parties beyond disagreements about tax rises. At closer inspection, the emphasis on security is indicative of what both parties see on the horizon, as well as how they intend to deal with climate change. 

Crucially, both parties argue security can be achieved at the national, not international level. In this way, climate change and other socio-ecological crises are re-scaled from global challenges requiring international resolution, to strategic issues for national governments in a competitive, hostile environment. On this logic, only the security of national citizens matters, and even then, it is dependent on their economic contributions. This overlooks the question of whose security can be maintained in the face of ongoing suffering and insecurity elsewhere.  

Depending on other ideological commitments, this can justify both the Tories’ proposed slowing of action (‘it is unfair and economically unwise to expect us to move faster than others’) and Labour’s speeding up of certain actions (‘to gain competitive advantage’). Ultimately both are offered in the service of business-as-usual economics which are the root cause of the problem and follow a path of eventual insecurity and instability. 

In short, there is a populist emphasis underpinning the dominating discourses of the election, one which highlights the need to strengthen the UK nation state, via its borders and internal markets, in the face of growing insecurity around the globe. However, in doing so, there is very little being covered in terms of how to actively or creatively address such issues in any meaningful way, beyond the hope that the UK will be able to weather the incoming storm better than most.

We conclude that these positions indicate a worrying acceptance of climate disaster to come. It also indicates the way it will be managed, through border controls, domestic markets, defence spending and, where necessary, geopolitical confrontation. If we cared about ensuring a secure future for all, we should be insisting on far stronger action while there may be still time to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Instead, politicians are retreating into a national fortress, drawing up the hatches against the oncoming climate storm.