Q&A: Greens' Zack Polanski - fight inequality to save climate

LONDON - Since becoming leader of Britain's Green Party in September, Zack Polanski has gone viral on social media, propelled his party higher in opinion polls and been compared to New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

Despite leading a party with the environment in its name, Polanski's leadership has focused most closely on another issue: economic inequality.

He spoke to Context on the sidelines of Thursday's National Emergency Briefing in London, where Britain's leading climate and nature experts spoke to politicians, business chiefs and culture leaders about the climate crisis.

So far in your leadership you've spoken a lot about inequality and migrant rights. Should climate be a bigger priority?

There's two key questions here: one's about communication and one's about the work that you do.

In terms of the work that you do, you can't get a bigger priority than the climate and nature crisis. If we lose nature, everything collapses and there is no existence.

In terms of communication, we know if someone can't get food on the table, heat in their homes ... the climate and nature crisis can feel a very distant threat.

Now it's not a distant threat; it's happening right now both across the world but also in the U.K., we've seen wildfires and floods.

But we know if we don't talk about changing people's everyday needs, then they just become disconnected from it.

It is the multi-millionaires and billionaires, and their high-polluting lifestyles that are disproportionately destroying the environment, communities, and democracy.

So, ultimately, tackling the inequality crisis is exactly the way to tackle both the climate and nature crises.

The Labour government has put a big emphasis on the energy transition. What do you make of their progress so far?

I'm deeply sceptical about the Labour government's plans on the energy transition, and that's for several reasons. I think the principal one, though, is around the Rosebank oil field (in the North Sea). We need to know that this is absolutely ruled out without condition. This will be (equivalent to) 28 of the lowest income countries' emissions together.

On top of that, we are expanding aviation. We could be looking at something like a frequent flyer levy. If someone's taking one flight a year, that is totally fine, but it's for people, particularly business people, who are taking multiple flights a week ... that cannot continue.

At the same time, I don't want to be churlish where work is being done. I think that needs to be supported, things like Great British Energy (state-owned company) - but already we're 18 months in and we still don't have the details.

We need a nationalised energy company, and (doing) things like reducing green levies and not insulating people's homes is completely incoherent.

Insulating homes could reduce bills, reduce emissions, and create hundreds of thousands of green jobs in the public sector.

The poll-leading Reform UK party says the cost of Britain's net zero commitment is too high, and the country's global responsibility is small. How do you respond?

We need to separate Reform politicians from people who might be curious about voting Reform. They're the people I want to speak to because we know they care about the climate and nature crisis. What they're saying is that they shouldn't be paying for it. And you know what? I agree.

The people who should be paying are the fossil fuel companies - the very people who have for decades destroyed our environment.

The point is about making sure businesses and governments do their part and recognise the global inequality. People who have been exploited and extracted for their oil and gas for decades while the U.K. and many people in the West have benefited.

This shouldn't be about working class communities in the West suffering. It should be about tackling global inequality, making sure that countries in the Global South are protected, particularly through loss and damage funds.

Here on the domestic level, the same power structures happen. We need to make sure that the multi-millionaires and billionaires ultimately pay to make sure that the just transition happens fairly.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

(Reporting by Jack Graham; Editing by Clár Ní Chonghaile.)