Politicians now talk of climate ‘pragmatism’ to delay action—new study

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has described her plan to “maximize extraction” of the UK’s oil and gas from the North Sea as a “common sense” energy policy.

Politicians are using language like this increasingly often—calling themselves “pragmatic” on climate change and invoking “common sense.” It sounds reasonable, reassuring, and grownup—the opposite of “hysterical” campaigners or “unrealistic” targets.

But new research my colleagues and I conducted, calling on a decade of interviews with UK MPs, shows that political “pragmatism” is fast becoming a dangerous form of climate delay. By framing urgent action as “extreme” and steady-as-she-goes policies as “pragmatic,” leaders across the political spectrum are protecting the fossil-fuel status quo at the very moment scientists warn we need rapid, transformative change.

Badenoch’s latest intervention is a perfect example. She said “common sense” dictates that every drop of oil must be extracted from the North Sea, and that net zero by 2050 was a policy pushed by “bullies.” This came just a day after the UK Met Office declared summer 2025 as the hottest on record.

We found that members of parliament deploy the same language of pragmatism to defend fossil fuel companies and to insist to their constituents that nothing needs to change too fast. The paradox, of course, is that more urgent social and economic change is precisely what the world’s climate scientists say is necessary to avert climate breakdown.

In our recent interviews with politicians, MPs from across the political spectrum tended towards gradual change in order to maintain political and public support. One said,

“First and foremost be pragmatic. Accept incremental change, because incremental change often accelerates, but you take people with you. If you didn’t take people with you, you’ll start getting resistance.”

Another MP contrasted a pragmatic approach with the calls from some campaign groups for more rapid action:

“There are campaigns that say we’ve got to be net zero by 2025, or 2030. [laughing incredulously] … do you realize what the consequences of that will be … you’d have a revolution in Britain if you tried to do that, in terms of destroying people’s quality of life.”

Interestingly, despite rejecting more ambitious targets, later in the interview the same MP acknowledged that faster change was needed:

“We need to do more, we could do more, we are, you know, I’m sure the government will do more. I’m certainly pushing it to do more. But fundamentally we’ve halved our emissions since 1990.”

Here we see the nuance, and the danger, of the language of pragmatism. It allows politicians to hold two positions at once. They can acknowledge the need for rapid change, while promoting a “pragmatic” position against it.

The calls for pragmatism appeared to stem from MPs’ desire to present a reasoned and rational case for climate action that does not impinge on constituents’ lives. They also used pragmatism to distance themselves from arguments they portrayed as “extreme” or “shrill.”

The flawed assumption underlying these calls to pragmatism is that the public will not support ambitious, transformative climate policies. We concluded that whereas a few years ago MPs promoted climate policies “by stealth,” meaning they did it on the quiet, now they turn to ideas of pragmatism in an attempt to maintain a fragile political consensus in favor of net zero—a consensus that is already fracturing.

Top-down pragmatism

This turn to pragmatism can now be seen at the very top of British politics, threatening the UK’s steady ratcheting up of climate ambition to date.

Former Labor prime minister Tony Blair recently wrote in the Blair Institute’s report on climate change: “People know that the current state of debate over climate change is riven with irrationality.”

Blair then asserted: “Any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.” This is despite the widespread consensus among scientists that both phasing out fossil fuels and reducing consumption of at least some products are essential.

The report goes on to say, “A realistic voice in the climate debate is required, neither ideological nor alarmist but pragmatic.” This language is intended to sound rational, reasonable and even scientific. The problem is that it can be used to justify actions that appear to ignore what the science is telling us.

Former Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak warned against treating climate change as an “ideology.” Notably, Sunak referred to “pragmatic, proportionate, and realistic” climate action shortly after his government announced hundreds of new licenses for oil and gas fields in the North Sea.

His message coincided with ongoing road-building programs, plans for airport expansion, and insufficient action to insulate the UK’s housing stock, all of which could jeopardize the UK’s climate targets. Again we see the language of pragmatism working against the rapid societal changes that are necessary.

The pragmatic road ahead

In general, the MPs we spoke to were not using pragmatism in bad faith. Rather it was a way of navigating the complexities of climate politics where the huge changes demanded by climate mitigation are deemed too challenging to sell to constituents. But this political strategy is a very risky one and underestimates the public’s appetite for “strong and clear” climate leadership from government.

The current government is already struggling to reconcile net zero commitments with its economic growth agenda, which includes a new runway at Heathrow airport. Not only is prime minister Keir Starmer facing divisions within the ruling Labor party over net zero ambitions, he is also dealing with increasingly prominent net zero skepticism from the leaders of the Conservative and Reform parties.

The political language of “pragmatism” therefore risks spreading from Badenoch to Starmer, becoming a discourse of delay that promotes non-transformative solutions.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.