When it comes to the climate, let Liz Truss be judged by her deeds – not her words

Fairly predictably, one of Labour’s attack lines against the “new” government is that it is “the same old Tories”.

There is a good deal of truth in that, though Liz Truss can counter – as she did at her first Prime Minister’s Questions today – with the jibe that Keir Starmer’s enthusiasm for a windfall tax proves that his party is “the same old Labour”. A nice debating point, and one that helps re-establish an old political dividing line. But it’s not one that will be received by the public.

However, there is one area of policy – and it’s a worrying one – where the Truss government genuinely represents a departure from her Conservative predecessors: the environment and the primacy of the net zero target. It is now a decade since David Cameron described his government as “the greenest in history”, and three years since Boris Johnson promised to make Britain the “cleanest, greenest country on Earth”. Theresa May, in the final days of her premiership, actually placed into law the 2050 net zero greenhouse gas emissions target.

In all fairness, we might also recall Margaret Thatcher’s landmark speech to the UN in 1989, when she declared that “the main threat to our environment is more and more people, and their activities: the land they cultivate ever more intensively; the forests they cut down and burn; the mountainsides they lay bare; the fossil fuels they burn; the rivers and the seas they pollute…That prospect is a new factor in human affairs. It is comparable in its implications to the discovery of how to split the atom. Indeed, its results could be even more far-reaching”.

Everything is relative, but by the usual historic standards of the Conservatives, these were leaders making bold statements and framing ambitious policies, culminating in the Cop26 summit in Glasgow last year. Strangely the (relative) success of that conference isn’t mentioned by Mr Johnson in his litany of achievements; but his stand on net zero, and resistance to fracking, should be recognised.

Ms Truss is different. She pays lip service to the climate crisis, but, to borrow her phrase, we need to judge her by her deeds, not her words. In terms of policy, attitudes and personalities, there is much to fear from what the prime minister has already said and done, and in particular, who she has appointed to key roles. No wonder the independent head of the government’s own independent climate change committee, Lord Deben, has warned Ms Truss not to abandon the UK’s commitment to renewable energy. Lord Deben, the former John Selwyn Gummer, is an ex-Conservative environment secretary, and no one’s idea of a violent radical. His concerns deserve to be listened to by Ms Truss and her ministers.

Prime among the contemporary climate revisionists is Jacob Rees-Mogg, unaccountably elevated to secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy. Apart from the suspicion that he probably doesn’t think his department should even exist – he is something of an archdruid in fundamentalist Conservative free-market circles – it is he who is now responsible for energy policy.

He is ill-suited to the role. He has cast doubt on anthropogenic climate change, believes that the net zero project is too expensive, and said he wants to squeeze “every last cubic inch of gas” from the North Sea, and restart fracking. Mr Rees-Mogg is unlikely to put the climate crisis at the centre of his personal agenda.

Worryingly, in that respect he is not far away from the prime minister herself. She has hedged her bets politically by supporting fracking “where local communities want it”, but she will suspend the green levy on energy bills (a tiny impost and vital to fund home insulation), cut VAT on fuel, and her crude energy price cap will contain no provision for the price mechanism to push wasteful energy consumption down.

Baleful as the presence of Mr Rees-Mogg will be, he is joined by the new environment secretary, Ranil Jayawardena, another climate sceptic promoted purely because of his loyalty to Ms Truss and her leadership campaign. As The Independent reports, Mr Jayawardena “consistently” voted against policies to tackle the climate crisis.

Mr Jayawardena’s voting record shows he has also “consistently voted against financial incentives for low carbon emission electricity generation methods”. Like many Tory MPs with fig-leaf-sized green credentials, he has voted for tokenistic measures such as better recycling facilities and the banning of plastic straws, but he bridles at anything more revolutionary.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

He was among colleagues who voted last year against Defra’s own environmental principles, designed “to guide ministers and policymakers towards opportunities to prevent environmental damage and enhance the environment, where relevant and appropriate”. Like Mr Rees-Mogg he is unlikely to champion the environment around the cabinet table. Quite apart from anything else, any green-tinged dissent would be unwelcome in a cabinet of chums. Mr Jayawardena and Mr Rees-Mogg are the fracking, drilling, polluting Dirty Duo of this government – but they are hardly alone.

For the time being, the task of protecting the Cop26 agenda and what’s left of “the greenest government in history” falls to the Cop26 president Alok Sharma – who hangs on to his cabinet rank at least until the Cop27 conference in Egypt in November – and the climate minister, Graham Stuart. In contrast to his boss, Mr Stuart at least accepts the reality of the climate crisis. He may well have been placed in his new role as a counterweight to Mr Rees-Mogg. If so, he will find himself in an unequal struggle under a prime minister who has clearly downgraded green issues.

So it’s not quite the “same old Tories”, except in the sense that they are reverting to an older, more selfish and short-term outlook towards the Earth that even Mrs Thatcher eventually rejected. It certainly commands less attention than the cost of living crisis, but in the long term the climate crisis will cause far more lasting damage to living standards.