Update: What do the Labour leadership candidates think on climate and energy?
Update – 14 September 2015
On Saturday, Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour party, winning 59.5% of the vote.
Today, he appointed Lisa Nandy, MP for Wigan, as shadow secretary of state for energy and climate change. She has previously served as shadow charities minister, and has been tipped to be a possible future leader of the Labour party.
In the past, Nandy has campaigned against profiteering by the Big Six energy companies and said that shale gas is “not the magic bullet the Coalition claims”.
Corbyn has also appointed Kerry McCarthy as shadow secretary of state for environment. McCarthy is MP for Bristol East.
She has written a Fabian essay on climate change campaigning, in which she says: “Securing a global climate deal in Paris in December 2015 will be one of the most pressing and immediate challenges facing the next government.” She has also regularly brought up the subject of climate change in Parliament.
Carbon Brief’s Labour leadership election grid summarises the views of Jeremy Corbyn, and the other candidates, on climate and energy issues.
Corbyn’s views, taken mainly from his detailed “Protecting our Planet” election manifesto, are likely to inform opposition policies over the coming years.
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The UK’s Labour party will soon choose a new leader, following the resignation of Ed Miliband after May’s election.
As former climate and energy secretary, Miliband had long been engaged on issues of emissions reductions, energy efficiency and the UN climate negotiations.
The leadership contest is between four candidates: Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Kendall – none of whom have held a climate-related position in government to date.
Carbon Brief has created a grid, distilling the candidates’ thoughts on key climate policy issues.
Frontrunner Jeremy Corbyn has released a detailed manifesto of his climate and energy policies. Andy Burnham has also released a formal manifesto, which briefly touches on the environment.
We have also collected climate- and energy-related statements from the candidates’ speeches, blogs, newspaper articles, interviews and essays.
The Labour Leadership Grid. Visit our Google doc for the full, interactive version.
What do they think?
Each candidate has acknowledged that climate change is a key threat that must be tackled.
That is not to say they always agree on how the problem should be approached.
Perhaps the most widely reported climate angle of the leadership campaign has been left-winger Jeremy Corbyn’s suggestion that he could reopen coal mines in South Wales. Both Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper have explicitly rejected this, preferring instead to focus on creating jobs in the technology sector – in Cooper’s case, this could include clean coal technology.