Tories left on ice in TV debate as leaders vie for climate credentials

Opposition leaders attempted to outbid each other on Thursday night with their climate credentials in the first ever election debate focusing on the environmental emergency, in which the absent Boris Johnson was replaced by a melting ice sculpture.

In place of the prime minister, Channel 4 placed an ice sculpture, representing, they said, the emergency on planet Earth. A second ice sculpture took the place of Brexit party leader Nigel Farage, who also refused to take part.

The Conservatives accused the broadcaster of bias for not allowing Michael Gove to take Johnson’s place, accusing them of “conspiring” with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to block the party from making their case.

Gove had turned up to the studios but was turned away by Channel 4 who said the debate was for party leaders only. In a response designed to overshadow the programme, the Conservatives immediately complained to broadcasting regulator Ofcom and threatened to review its broadcasting licence.

The opposition leaders met as the EU declared a global climate and environmental emergency and urged all EU countries to commit to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, Siân Berry from the Green party, Jo Swinson, leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price participated in the televised debate.

Johnson’s officials had told the campaigners behind the debate, We are Possible, when he was first invited that he would not take part because he did not want climate change to be “siloed”.

The leaders were challenged on what they would to do reduce carbon emissions from food, transport, domestic heating and the biodiversity crisis. All pushed manifesto commitments to cut carbon emissions to zero by dates from 2030 to 2045, a few years before the Conservatives’ pledge for net zero by 2050.

The expansion of Heathrow airport – passed by MPs last year – and the HS2 rail link were all discussed.

Siân Berry, the Green party leader said they were the only party who wanted to cancel HS2. She said more than half of Labour MPs voted for Heathrow Expansion while the SNP abstained. She said a minority of people took most flights and should be targeted.

“The question now is how we share out the flights that we can take more fairly. It means targeting those 15% of people who took 70% of the flights,” said Berry.

Challenged on whether people should stop flying, Sturgeon said: “Do people have to fly less? Yes where we can, half of fall international flights are taken by 10% of population.”

“Where flights are necessary we have set a target to decarbonise all flights within Scotland by 2040,” said Sturgeon.

The Labour leader said he voted against Heathrow expansion. Rather than stopping people from flying, he said there had to be investment in rail services to reduce number of short-haul flights to Europe and the expansion of railways all over the country, and train travel had to become cheaper.

“I think we do it better by offering a sensible alternative which is also about improving bus and rail services all over the country,” he said.

More than half of UK emissions are from buildings and domestic homes, reducing this is one of the biggest challenges to meeting any net-zero targets.

Corbyn said tackling emissions from domestic heating could be done: “We can and do retrofit homes, we can generate electricity from solar energy and wind, but it does require a determination which is why our manifesto sets out a very large green investment fund.”

Hundreds of thousands of people, including Johnson’s father Stanley Johnson and climate expert Lord Nicholas Stern, had signed a petition urging the prime minister to take part. But on Thursday night, Stanley Johnson – who was present at the studio – said Channel 4 should have let Gove debate, saying he “would have made a big, big contribution”.

He insisted that Gove’s appearance at the studios had not been a stunt, saying that the Conservatives had been given the impression that he could appear. Johnson showed journalists a text message from the prime minister saying: “Gove on!”

On leaving, Gove was confronted by a 15-year-old climate activist, Izzy Warren, about Johnson’s failure to attend and the Tories’ green policies.

Speaking to the Guardian, Izzy said: “I asked Gove why, if the Conservatives think this is a priority, the prime minister wasn’t here today.”

He told her that it shouldn’t matter who was there to speak and that they had the most ambitious manifesto ever on climate change. “This is a party that has been in power for 10 years and we haven’t seen climate action,” she said.

Asked if he looked surprised, she added: “I think older men, quite frankly, aren’t used to being challenged by teenage girls. Which makes it all the more fun when you get to do it.”

The scale of the task facing any new government was made clear this week when scientists warned that the world may have already crossed a series of climate tipping points, resulting in “a state of planetary emergency”.

To meet net-zero targets by 2050, analysts say, would need as much as £20bn a year in investment to remove up to 130m tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Sturgeon was challenged on her failure to support the Green party call for the decommissioning of oil rigs in fossil fuel rich Scotland.

“If we were to stop tomorrow in terms of oil production, we would make ourselves more reliant on imports so that transition has got to be done in a way which decreases our emissions,” Sturgeon said.

Swinson, who is promising an emergency 10-year programme to reduce energy consumption from all buildings, linked the fight to tackle climate change to Brexit. “Brexit is a climate crime, it is morally wrong to leave our seat at the table and give away our influence to create change,” she said.

Price said there was no choice but to cut to net zero by 2030: “We have the technology now to reach carbon neutrality by 2030 what is lacking is the political will.”