Rishi Sunak defends U.K. climate policy changes amid criticism

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak visits Writtle University College, an agricultural college in Writtle, United Kingdom, a day after making his announcement about changes to Britain’s climate policies.

ALASTAIR GRANT/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

LONDON — Amid growing international criticism, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has defended watering down key U.K. climate policies.

In a press conference Wednesday, Sunak announced a series of major U-turns on climate policies, including delaying by five years the target to ban sales of new gas and diesel cars — which will now come into force in 2035 rather than 2030 — and a nine-year delay on phasing out gas boilers, which will now come into force in 2035.

Sunak insisted he was not slowing down efforts to combat climate change. But his government’s own climate adviser called the prime minister’s assertion that the U.K. would still succeed in meeting its 2050 net-zero target “wishful thinking.”

Sunak said the changes were about being “pragmatic” and sparing the British public the “unacceptable cost” of net-zero commitments.

His home secretary, Suella Braverman, told the BBC that the Conservative government was “not going to save the planet by bankrupting British people.”

The government’s Climate Change Committee — independent advisers on cutting carbon emissions — estimates that meeting Britain’s legally binding goal of reaching net zero by 2050 will require an extra $61 billion of investment every year by 2030.

But the committee has said that once the savings from reduced use of fossil fuels are factored in, the overall resource cost of the transition to net zero will be less than 1% of GDP over the next 30 years. By 2044, the committee has…