Worried voters want action on air conditioning and more clean power, polling shows.
Abby Wallace
Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives have been pressing the government to make it easier for homes to install air conditioning, while the Green Party has been pushing for ministers to consider maximum workplace temperatures.
A recent report from the CCC also urged the government to plan for cooling policies such as AC due to the “intensity and duration of future heatwaves.”
When it’s hot people “expect that similar type of immediate action,” Norman said. “So, right now they are thinking: ‘How do I keep cool? How do we keep services running? How do we stop the country from coming to a standstill?’”
Former Climate Minister Kerry McCarthy told POLITICO that adapting public buildings and other workplaces to higher summer temperatures now needed “urgent” attention from government.
Heat waves pose “a real and present danger; lives are being lost,” she said.
As well as work handling the impact of future heat waves, she said, “we need urgent action at Cabinet Office level to co-ordinate a cross-departmental emergency response, so that our schools stay open, and patients in our hospitals and residents in our care homes are kept safe; so that our food supply chain is protected; so that workers aren’t forced to work in unendurable conditions; and so the country doesn’t grind to a halt as temperatures continue to rise.”
POLITICO has contacted the Cabinet Office for comment.
The policy challenge for the government, said Norman from Public First, is planning for a “duality of needing immediate action” — which means helping the country keep cool and cope with the heat right now, as well as long-term moves to cut the emissions that are warming the Earth in the first place.
