Rising to the Climate Change challenge

Bobby Dean sets out his view on what to do about the changes in the climate that we have all been experiencing.

The extreme weather we have experienced this year has focused everyone’s attention on climate change and what we should do about it.

Some people still deny that it is happening and say that efforts to combat it are a waste of time and money. I disagree with them strongly.

Climate change presents a catastrophic threat. Successive Governments have comprehensively failed to take climate adaptation measures seriously, guaranteeing misery for people and communities affected by flooding, wildfires and heat stress.

Renewables are key to energy production of the low-carbon future; to make homes healthy and cheap to heat; to support green jobs and economic growth. Liberal Democrats are champions of renewable energy which is clean, cheap and popular. We have a strong record on renewable energy from our time in Government running the Department for Energy and Climate Change; we nearly quadrupled the amount of energy generated from renewables and made the UK the world leader in offshore wind.

At our Autumn Conference 2025, we passed an ambitious policy paper which explains how Liberal Democrats want this generation to be the first to leave the UK, and the world, in a better condition than we found it, including committing to achieving 95% decarbonisation of power by 2030, and support further growth to enable electricity to replace fossil fuel use in other sectors.

I don’t know how anyone who has been in the Houses of Parliament in a heatwave can fail to believe in global warming! I can promise you that climate action remains an important issue for me. 

– Bobby Dean