Climate chief Alok Sharma could quit if next PM is not set on net zero

Climate chief Alok Sharma warns he could quit if the next PM is not committed to net zero agenda as Europe is consumed by wildfires

• The Cop26 leader said a new PM must take climate change ‘incredibly seriously’
• Climate experts warn weather such as expected 40C heat is ‘not normal’
• The world is on track to more than double its 1.5C warming target without action 

The Cabinet minister who led last year’s landmark UN climate change summit in Glasgow has indicated he could resign if the next prime minister is not fully committed to the net zero agenda.

Cop26 president Alok Sharma said some of the remaining candidates in the Tory leadership race had been only ‘lukewarm’ towards climate commitments.

Leaders at Glasgow’s Cop26 agreed to try and limit global warming to 1.5C – and the UK has pledged to become net zero by 2050.

It comes as climate experts warn of increasingly frequent extreme weather, such as that being seen across Europe and in the UK, and emphasise that the effects of climate change are not coming, they are already here.

In an interview with The Observer, Mr Sharma urged the new PM to ‘proactively’ set out their support for the net zero agenda and ‘green’ growth.

The Cop 26 president said: ‘I hope every candidate realises why this is so important for voters generally and why it’s important for Conservative supporters’

This fire in Gironde, France, this week led to the evacuation of more than 12,000 local residents for their safety

Mr Sharma said the new Conservative Prime Minister must follow in Johnson’s footsteps and understand the severity of global warming

In Gironde’s wildfires more than 7,000 hectares of land have been destroyed, with people fleeing before it

‘Anyone aspiring to lead our country needs to demonstrate that they take this issue incredibly seriously, that they’re willing to continue to lead and take up the mantle that Boris Johnson started off,’ he said.

Asked if he could resign if candidates were weak on net zero, Mr Sharma said: ‘Let’s see, shall we? I think we need to see where the candidates are. And we need to see who actually ends up in No 10.

‘I hope every candidate realises why this is so important for voters generally and why it’s important for Conservative supporters. And I hope that we will see, particularly with the final two, a very clear statement that this is an agenda that they do support.’

Pressed a second time, he added: ‘I don’t rule anything out and I don’t rule anything in.’

Of the five remaining candidates in the contest, only Kemi Badenoch has said she does not support the UK target of getting to net zero emissions by 2050, describing it as ‘unilateral economic disarmament’.

The others have indicated varying degrees of enthusiasm for the policy, which is unpopular with some sections of the party amid concerns about the impact on the economy.

An orphaned mountain lion cub who was badly burned in a recent Northern California wildfire receives care at an animal rescue shelter

A turtle, who had been hiding underground to escape the fire, is spotted after volunteers rescue him in Marmaris district of Mugla, Turkey

The UK is bracing for several days of record-breaking heat this coming week with temperatures possibly reaching 40C in England.

In a viral video online, a Met Office weather forecaster predicted what UK summers would look like in 2050 if climate change continued at its current rate – but shockingly, the next few days have a strikingly similar forecast. 

BBC weather presenter Matt Taylor took to Twitter this week to urge people to recognise the rising global temperatures.

He said 40C for the UK is ‘not normal’, heat records are becoming more frequent and added: ‘I never thought this would be possible so soon.’

Meanwhile in April of this year the UN released a bombshell report which showed the horrifying reality of climate change.

It said the world is on track to more than double the 1.5C target this century, and the world must act ‘now or never’.

Climate scientist Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University has explained why the 1.5C threshold is so important.

 ‘At 1.5°C, there’s a good chance we can prevent most of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheet from collapsing,’ he said.

But hit 2C and those ice sheets will collapse.

A firefighter tackles a forest fire around the village of Eiriz in Baiao, north of Portugal, on July 15, 202

And there are grave consequences for coral reefs too – 1.5C warming will destroy around 70 per cent of the world’s reefs – rising to 99 per cent at 2C.

And if current trajectories continue, a third of all the planet’s animal and plant species will be extinct by 2050. 

Temperatures have been sweltering across swathes of Europe this week and wildfires have raged across large areas of the continent.

In one region in France alone, more than 12,000 people have had to be evacuated as fires rage.

Spain, Turkey, Croatia and Portugal have also seen huge fires – 3,000 firefighters were required to tackle flames in Portugal this week with dozens of people injured in the blazes.

And wildfires have destroyed 3,500 acres of land in Extremadura in Spain.

It is unknown how many animals have been killed or injured in these fires, but it is expected that many have fallen victim to the increasingly unforgiving weather systems.

Wildfires are also a problem across the world, notably in the US in hot states such as California. 

The UK government has held Cobra meetings about the upcoming boiling temperatures, as the NHS is expected to struggle with demand.

The Met Office has issued its first ever red weather alert for extreme heat, meaning there is a danger to life among all of the population, not just in those more vulnerable to heat.

On Friday, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said she would impose a temporary moratorium on the green levy on domestic energy bills, arguing there were better ways to achieve the net zero target.

The debate took place as fires raged across the world, and some of the worst fires have been in Portugal, where the pilot of a firefighting plane died o Friday when his plane crashed while on an operation in the northeast. 

It was the first fire fatality in Portugal this year but the blazes have injured more than 160 people this week and forced hundreds to be evacuated.

Fire season has hit parts of Europe earlier than usual this year after an unusually dry, hot spring that left the soil parched and which authorities attribute to climate change.

As the worst French fire moved closer to inhabited towns, some of the 11,000 people who evacuated in the region described fear and uncertainty about what they’d find when they get back home. 

Images shared by firefighters showed flames shooting across a mass of pine trees and black smoke stretching across the horizon.

Firefighters focused efforts Saturday on using fire trucks to surround villages at risk and save as many homes as possible, Charles Lafourcade, overseeing the French firefighting operation, told reporters.

Some 3,000 firefighters backed by water-dumping planes are battling the blazes in southern France, the president said, and Greece sent firefighting equipment to help.

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