No meat, no dairy and three outfits a year: Welcome to Sadiq Khan’s plan for London
C40, a global group of city mayors chaired by Sadiq Khan, has a radical vision of net zero that critics say will restrict personal choice
ByTim Sigsworth15 September 2023 • 11:38am
Picture the scene. You have just made it through the door from work, although not by car because private vehicles no longer exist. You change out of your work clothes into something more comfortable, perhaps one of three new items of clothing you are allowed to buy every year.
Then it is downstairs for dinner, since all this virtue is hungry work. But don’t forget that meat and dairy are off the menu, so instead you might like to daydream about getting away from it all – only to remember that you used up your quota of one short-haul return flight every three years last summer.
This is the radical vision of a net zero future dreamed up by C40, a global collective of city mayors chaired by Sadiq Khan, which advocates extreme measures to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and limit global temperature increases to 1.5C.
The Mayor of London is, of course, no stranger to pushing the dial on climate change. His unrelenting
expansion of the Ulez ultra low emissions zone in August faced down major criticism from affected businesses, disadvantaged citizens and vigilante vandals.
Khan is showing no signs of slowing down: this week, plans were unveiled to lower the speed limit to 20mph on a further 40 miles of roads in London, the capital’s largest-ever rollout to date.
Khan’s influence on C40 goes beyond his chairmanship CREDIT: Victoria Jones/PA Wire
Since December 2021, he has led C40, which is made up of the mayors of 96 cities from six different continents. It spends its time conducting research, holding conferences and drawing up “climate action plans” and was originally founded by the then-Labour mayor of London Ken Livingstone in 2005.
It merged the following year with a similar body set up by former US president Bill Clinton, and its current board president is Michael Bloomberg, the US billionaire. Its website lists the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office as a “major funder”, among several other governments, charities and multinational companies.
In 2019, when Khan was vice-chairman, C40 commissioned a startling study by the University of Leeds and Arup, a consultancy, about how cities could slash their emissions by 2030. Citizens’ consumption habits were its central focus as it set out a range of “progressive” and “ambitious” targets.
Its more radical suggestions involved no less than: the abolition of private vehicles; the prohibition of meat and dairy consumption; the rationing of new items of clothing to three each per year; and the restriction of short-haul return flights to one every three years.
It also proposed slashing the use of steel and cement in construction and significantly increasing the proportion of buildings made from wood, disregarding the major restrictions this would place on attempts to solve the housing crisis by building more homes.
Khan has not proposed implementing any of these suggestions. But to his critics, the report is emblematic of C40 as an unelected, self-appointed body which holds radical positions on net zero and climate change that the public could not bear.
Howard Cox, the motoring campaigner and Reform candidate for next year’s London mayoral elections, dubs it an undemocratic “global quango” which, if elected, he would pull London out of.
For Andrew Montford, director of Net Zero Watch, it is “divorced from reason”, and Graham Stringer, the Labour MP for Blackley and Broughton, holds that its policies would disproportionately affect the poorest in society.
Yet at the same time as presenting these “ambitious” targets, the report itself insists that it “does not advocate for wholesale adoption” of them because they would not even be feasible unless production processes became much more cost- and resource-efficient.
They are instead “reference points” for cities to “reflect on”, and it is “ultimately up to individuals” to decide their own consumption habits. To some, this suggests the very advocates of net zero policies that would completely transform the way we live our lives accept that they would not actually work.
“Fresh from imposing misery on motorists through his draconian Ulez expansion, Sadiq Khan appears to be conspiring new ways to make people’s lives miserable,” says Craig Mackinlay, the Tory MP who chairs the net zero scrutiny group in parliament.
Tory MP Craig Mackinlay: ‘Fresh from imposing misery on motorists through his draconian Ulez expansion, Sadiq Khan appears to be conspiring new ways to make people’s lives miserable’ CREDIT: Yui Mok/PA
“I’ve really had enough of this authoritarian, miserabilist approach to net zero. What we need is for technology and innovation to allow people to become more prosperous and greener at the same time; not poorer, colder and hungrier.”
Khan’s influence on C40, moreover, goes beyond his chairmanship: five of its 11-strong management team are alumni of London mayoral administrations or the Greater London Authority (GLA).
Anna Beech, managing director for governance and executive engagement, helped draw up London’s first climate change action plan under Boris Johnson, while Cassie Sutherland, managing director for climate solutions and networks, was a City Hall project manager on a London environment strategy in 2018.
Juliette Carter, managing director for corporate services, used to work in human resources at the GLA and deputy executive director Kevin Austin was its external relations chief, both before Khan’s election. Executive director Mark Watts was once a senior advisor to Ken Livingstone during his time as Mayor of London.
According to staff profiles on C40’s website, it employs 279 people outside of this management team, all of whom are subject to a stringent eco-friendly office regime. Internal staff documents ban the use of paper, even for note-taking and to-do lists, as well as printing using coloured ink or on just one side.
Measures advocated by C40 include imposing a quota of one short-haul return flight every three years CREDIT: AFP/Getty Images
Flights and taxis can only be justified in “exceptional circumstances”, additional time off in lieu is given to staff who are forced to travel long distances by train instead, and conferences and events should aim to only provide vegetarian and vegan catering. C40 declined to comment on these policies.
“There are two fundamental problems with Sadiq’s approach,” explains Stringer, despite sharing a political party with him. “It relies on regressive charges and taxes, and it restricts personal choice. It will damage the poorest people and that is who Labour should be representing. The report’s policies are at one with many net zero policies that punish low-paid and disadvantaged people and put damaging burdens on industry.”
A spokesperson for the Mayor of London, said: “This report was published well before Sadiq became Chair of C40. The ideas mentioned are not proposals let alone recommendations and the Mayor is certainly not suggesting to anyone that they shouldn’t eat meat, or that they shouldn’t fly. It is for cities to determine the most effective implementation pathway for them.
“Sadiq has set an ambitious target for London to reach net zero by 2030, and London is leading the way by insulating homes, electrifying our bus and taxi fleets, and expanding electric vehicle infrastructure to the extent that our capital has the most public rapid charging points of any European city.”
A spokesman for C40 said: “The report is a generic analysis of emissions not looking at any specific C40 city. It is not a plan for cities to adopt. It’s up to individuals to make their personal lifestyle choices, including what type of food to eat and what type of clothing they prefer.”
