{"id":400613,"date":"2025-09-07T12:04:57","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T10:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=400613"},"modified":"2025-09-07T12:04:58","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T10:04:58","slug":"claim-climate-pragmatism-is-cover-for-climate-delay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=400613","title":{"rendered":"Claim: Climate \u201cPragmatism\u201d is Cover for Climate Delay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essay by\u00a0<\/strong>Eric Worrall<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPragmatism\u201d allegedly allows politicians to be in favour of climate action without actually having to do anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Politicians now talk of climate \u2018pragmatism\u2019 to delay action \u2013 new study<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published: September 5, 2025 3.28am AEST<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steve Westlake<\/a>
Lecturer, Environmental Psychology, University of Bath<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has described her plan to \u201cmaximise extraction\u201d of the UK\u2019s oil and gas from the North Sea as a\u00a0\u201ccommon sense\u201d<\/a> energy policy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

Politicians are using language like this increasingly often \u2013 calling themselves \u201cpragmatic\u201d on climate change and invoking \u201ccommon sense\u201d. It sounds reasonable, reassuring, and grownup \u2013 the opposite of \u201chysterical\u201d campaigners or \u201cunrealistic\u201d targets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But new research<\/a> my colleagues and I conducted, calling on a decade of interviews with UK MPs, shows that political \u201cpragmatism\u201d is fast becoming a dangerous form of climate delay. By framing urgent action as \u201cextreme\u201d and steady-as-she-goes policies as \u201cpragmatic\u201d, leaders across the political spectrum are protecting the fossil-fuel status quo at the very moment scientists warn we need rapid, transformative change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\u00a0flawed assumption<\/a>\u00a0underlying 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 \u201cby stealth\u201d, meaning they did it on the quiet, now they turn to ideas of pragmatism in an attempt to maintain a fragile political consensus in favour of net zero \u2013 a consensus that is\u00a0already fracturing<\/a>.

\u2026Read more:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0https:\/\/theconversation.com\/politicians-now-talk-of-climate-pragmatism-to-delay-action-new-study-264317<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The flawed assumption is the public will not support climate ambition, even though the consensus is \u201calready fracturing<\/a> \u201c. The linked already fracturing article blames \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 President Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most intriguing part of the article for me is what Author Steve Westlake didn\u2019t mention, the reason why politicians would even want to evade the issue of \u201ctransformative change\u201d and keep the fossil fuel status quo in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The explanation for the need to keep the status quo is obvious \u2013 renewable energy is a colossal failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite 10s, likely hundreds of billions of pounds thrown at Britain\u2019s Net Zero transformation, all Britain has achieved is large scale impoverishment of the working class, gutting entire regions of British industrial heartlands, and offshoring those manufacturing jobs to \u201cdeveloping\u201d countries which are still allowed to emit CO2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate \u201cpragmatism\u201d is somewhere between an admission of failure and a cry for help, by politicians who don\u2019t have the guts to openly admit they got it wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cPragmatism\u201d allegedly allows politicians to be in favour of climate action without actually having to do anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":400616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"Explore how political 'pragmatism' is delaying climate action while the fossil fuel status quo persists, despite urgent calls for change.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"Why Climate Pragmatism Masks Delayed Action on Climate Change","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691818902,691829997,691818056,691821549,691818154,691818610,691819148],"class_list":["post-400613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-britain","tag-carbon-dioxide-co","tag-climate-change","tag-kemi-badenoch","tag-net-zero","tag-north-sea","tag-oil-and-gas","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1Gdv","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":379615,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=379615","url_meta":{"origin":400613,"position":0},"title":"The Folly of Starmer\u2019s Surrender Summit \u2013 Not so Much \u2018Ruthlessly Pragmatic\u2019 as Cravenly Sycophantic","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"05\/23\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"When the first post-Brexit\u00a0UK-EU summit\u00a0to be held in London today was announced in February, UK Minister for the Constitution and European Union Relations Nick Thomas-Symonds said that Britain will be \u201cruthlessly pragmatic\u201d in talks to \u201creset\u201d its relations with the EU. 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