51����

If you think the UK should be governed on the basis of sound scientific evidence, with climate change made a priority, look away now.

After losing its majority in the election, the Conservative party is seeking to continue to govern with the help of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, whose politicians’ record on things scientific is abysmal.

The DUP once appointed an outright climate change denier as Northern Ireland’s environment minister, and its ministers have opposed climate measures. The party is fiercely opposed to abortion. Last year, one DUP assembly member called for creationism to be taught in schools. And another has admitted he thought only gay people could get HIV.

What’s more, in a post-election reshuffle, Prime Minister Theresa May has appointed Michael Gove as environment minister for England and Wales. Gove is infamous for his 2016 comment that “people in this country have had enough of experts”.

He reportedly tried to remove global warming from the school curriculum as education minister, and recently called for the abolition of European Union regulations protecting important wildlife habitats.

“His record of and his attempt to wipe the subject from our children’s curriculum show him entirely unfit to lead our country in tackling one of the greatest threats we face,” the leader of the UK’s Green Party, Caroline Lucas, said in a statement.

Paris Agreement

Since being appointed, though, Gove has criticised US president Donald Trump for deciding to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement. “I think he is wrong. I think that we need international co-operation in order to deal with climate change,” Gove said in an interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

Theresa May, who has a habit of demanding the scientifically impossible, has conspicuously failed to condemn Trump’s intended withdrawal from Paris.

Many think the Conservatives won’t manage to stay in power for long. Even if they do, the ability of the DUP and Gove to influence environmental regulations could be limited.

That’s because if the UK leaves the EU but remains part of the single market, as seems more likely to happen given the result of the general election, it will still have to comply with almost all EU environmental regulations. It will, however, lose the power to influence them.

With the government struggling to stay in power and focused on the upcoming Brexit negotiations, it seems certain that tackling climate change won’t be high on the agenda. The UK has a target of cutting emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, but it is already failing to do enough to meet its interim targets.

The Conservative government has slashed numerous green policies since 2015 saying they were too expensive. It was supposed to unveil a “Clean Growth Plan” last year outlining how it would still meet its climate targets but this has been repeatedly delayed, reportedly due to the Brexit result.