COP26 President Instructs Media to Hold Him to Account

Alok Sharma MP, a key supporter of air travel expansion, told the Society of Editors conference to "scrutinise" the actions of him and his colleagues.

Policy Exchange, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The keynote speech at last week’s 2022 Society of Editors conference was delivered by Alok Sharma, president of Glasgow’s COP26 and Conservative MP for Reading West. Speaking on the media’s role in addressing climate change he told journalists gathered that

“the world has agreed what it needs to do […] And to achieve that, we need you to do what you do best, and hold governments and businesses to account.”

Mr. Sharma claimed “it will ultimately be the biggest story in many of our lifetimes.”

Arguing that climate change ‘will be’ the biggest story of our lifetimes is not the only way in which Mr. Sharma has shown himself to be behind the curve.

As former Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, he is expected to be one of the most informed people in the country on sustainable energy, infrastructure and ecology—and yet, he is still positioning himself as a key supporter of Heathrow expansion and framing the issue in terms of economic growth.

When the capital’s two biggest airports were planning significant expansion in 2014 to “increase UK capacity for air travel” resulting in 40 new direct daily flight routes and a doubling of cargo capacity from Heathrow, Sharma made a name for himself by championing the plans.