Tory MP John Redwood said his party colleague Alok Sharma, set to lead a vital climate conference in November, should focus on China and Germany, in the battle against climate change.
But he was met with resistance from online users, after suggesting the UK cannot afford the costs of tackling the climate crisis at a national level.
Tweeting today about his BBC Radio 4 appearance, Redwood said he was “finally allowed to say” that the Cop26 conference in Glasgow “must challenge China” to cut its “huge” carbon dioxide emissions.
He also called for Germany to close all its coal power stations and “level competition over fuel choice”.
Redwood has also said that heat pumps, electric vehicles and vegetarian diets should not be encouraged through taxing people and said the shifts “can only go at the pace people are willing to accept”.
But one Twitter user asked him, “how do we let the planet and the climate know what pace we’d be able to manage?”
Yesterday, Redwood focused in several tweets on China and Germany taking action.
He insisted “others will be reluctant to impose more costs and disruption on their economies” and said the UK “doesn’t want and afford” heat pumps.
The MP repeatedly complained about the two countries “dominating export markets” through coal burning and about China’s “advantage in making things to export to the rest of us”.
But he was told by Twitter users to ‘not forget India’, and that the UK should act on global heating regardless of what other countries do, because “morally it’s the right thing to do” and “our planet is irreplaceable”.
One Twitter user asked Redwood: “Why should UK people live lives of honesty and integrity when the prime minister constantly lies and his government acts with self-serving duplicity?”
Whilst another slammed Redwood’s tweets as “consistently wrong headed”. “We are heading for catastrophe and someone must lead the struggle to avoid it,” the post continued.
Redwood’s string of tweets seemed to completely ignore the fact that Alok Sharma said ahead of the Cop26 talks that the UK will continue supporting new fossil fuel projects.
Sharma also rejected controversies stemming from him allegedly travelling to 30 nations in seven months, whilst encouraging people to limit their carbon emissions.
The MP has also not addressed recent Brexit decisions to trade more heavily with countries in other corners of the world instead of relying as much on UK’s neighbours in the EU. The UK-Australia trade deal has been labelled as catastrophic for both the environment and animal welfare.
Liz Webster, who lives on a farm in Wiltshire with her husband, told The London Economic in June that the government is trying to deliver a “green Britain” whilst importing “nasty food” from countries far away from Britain.
She said: “They are trying to blindfold the British public by using this environmentalism and then they are importing food which has been produced under very low standards and is not environmentally friendly.”
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