The failures of COP30 have been well documented by others. The erasure of the term ‘fossil fuels’ from the final binding agreement, together with a refusal to accept IPCC findings as the “best available science”, are effectively forms of climate denial. Instead, COP 30 concentrates on new forms of finance and adaptation. The reliance on financial instruments to mitigate the effects of climate breakdown simply perpetuates market capitalism – the very system that fuelled the current crisis (as brilliantly argued in Adrienne Buller’s The Value of a Whale, the recent subject of ACAN’s Climate Literacy Book Club). Privileging adaptation is a form of acceptance that little can be done to meaningfully address climate breakdown, because it deals only with effects, not causes. It allows the carbon criminals to continue transgressing whilst asking everyone else to pick up the pieces. In terms of the built environment, adaptation to flooding, heating and fuel poverty is of course necessary. At the same time, however, it allows the sector to bypass the urgent issue of radically reducing carbon emissions at source.
The UK Budget is also dispiriting with the ending of the ECO (Energy Company Obligation), which funded the UK’s main ‘green homes’ initiative. Although, as previous ACAN statements made clear, the execution of this programme was deeply flawed, this no reason for getting rid of the programme. We had feared a complete cut to warm homes initiatives and so welcome the £1.5bn pledge to fund some other (as yet undefined) approach. ACAN urges again that this be deployed with the support of experts in the field and with workplace training. The disaster of the previous warm homes initiative, with nearly all solid wall insulation failing, shows that climate adaptation must not be left to the market.
The two steps sideways (COP30) and one step backwards (UK budget) create an alarming impression that climate breakdown is not as urgent as it truly is. The result is complacency, exactly when we need urgency. All the science points towards far more disturbing scenarios than are presently discussed in the mainstream press. This, together with the rise of climate denial in politics, makes it ever more important that organisations such as ACAN insistently and loudly continue to campaign to address the root causes of the polycrisis.
For this reason, ACAN will launch a campaign in early 2026 calling for a route towards the decarbonisation of the construction industry.
