Jonathan Brady/Press Association via AP Images
An anti-ULEZ sticker on a vehicle on Warwick Avenue, London, on the second day of the expansion of the low-emission zone to include the whole of London
In a quest to improve the city’s notoriously poor air quality, London embarked on a new strategy in 2015, introducing Ultra Low Emission Zones in certain areas of the city. Nearly a dozen European countries have introduced these zones: Some prohibit noncompliant vehicles entirely; others ban them during periods of increased pollution. Transport for London, the local government organization that oversees most of the city’s transportation networks, began levying a daily fee on drivers of older, polluting vehicles in central London in 2019 and expanded it to new areas in 2021.
On Tuesday, London’s Labour Party mayor, Sadiq Khan, expanded the reach of the city’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), which implements one of the world’s strictest climate standards, to cover the entire city. The development sparked waves of complaints and vandalism. Cameras used to enforce compliance completely disappeared in some sections of the city. Other cameras have been painted red, covered with cardboard boxes, sprayed with foam, and had wires cut. At least one Conservative member of Parliament endorsed the vandalism. Some groups of protesters also converged on 10 Downing Street to protest the expansion. Roughly a dozen other cities in Britain have low emission zones with varying restrictions. Bath, for example, only levies charges on taxis, vans, and other commercial vehicles.
The climate backlash is real. Farmers in Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain have protested against EU agriculture directives on nitrogen emissions from, and allotments of green space to, livestock that they fear will compromise their livelihoods. France’s Yellow Vest movement targeted French President Emmanuel Macron’s carbon tax increases, which were later repealed. Resentment against vehicular emission charges can pile up so high that it undermines the foundation of the policy itself. Khan has been compelled to pivot from extoling cleaner air in a country where air quality is a severe environmental threat to defending the policy against Conservative Party policy attacks.
The ULEZ backlash exposes a growing rift in public acceptance of certain climate change policies designed to shift deeply ingrained personal habits. The threat from greenhouses gases is certainly well known. But many economically strapped Londoners view cars as a necessity, particularly in outer neighborhoods of the city that may not have good transit access. They may not see climate change as an imminent threat to themselves or their families and believe that commercial sectors, not they themselves, should assume these kinds of burdens.
London’s poor air quality causes 4,000 premature deaths each year. Thanks to ULEZ’s implementation so far, city officials report that levels of nitrogen dioxide have been cut “by nearly half in central London and by a fifth in inner London, helping to reduce the number of air pollution-related asthma admissions for children by a third, and saving 800,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions since 2019 (the equivalent of 1.1 million flights from London to New York).”
The ULEZ backlash exposes a growing rift in public acceptance of certain climate change policies designed to shift deeply ingrained personal habits.
A report on the 2021 expansion of the inner London ULEZ zone published by the mayor’s office earlier this year found that ULEZ compliance rates were high and increasing. As a result, there had been a 60 percent reduction in the number of older vehicles and less polluting heavy vehicles on inner London roads. Pollution from nitrogen oxide and fine particulate matter have also been reduced. But a new study conducted for the city in June concluded that schools, hospitals, and care homes remain exposed to levels of pollutants that fall outside World Health Organization guidelines. Communities close to major roads also are unlikely to meet WHO targets.
Londoners are no strangers to mandated driving fees. To improve air quality and cut down on epic traffic jams, 20 years ago city officials levied congestion fees on drivers navigating central London at peak periods. But while the mayor, environmentalists, and health advocates including parents of children who have died from respiratory ailments praised ULEZ compliance, the new programs to curb emissions are controversial.
A £160 million (roughly $204 million) city grant program called a “scrappage scheme” has already approved 6,000 cars and motorcycle applications, for which drivers received up to £2,000 (roughly $2,545) for getting rid of their clunkers. During 2021, 15,000 vehicles were taken off the roads. There are also menus of discounts and exceptions, and most cars in the expanded zone are already compliant, according to the city.
But the backlash has already had political consequences. In a recent special election, Labour lost a seat in London’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip neighborhoods, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s former district, that it had hoped to win. ULEZ was deeply unpopular in this outer London enclave. “I think the government are not being realistic in terms of people’s finances,” an Uxbridge resident told The Guardian. “The scheme is a good idea, but it is coming in too quickly and people can’t afford it.” Feeling the pressure, Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer suggested Khan had to take residents’ economic circumstances into consideration. (The mayor of London can expand the ULEZ, a High Court judge ruled after a group of Conservative local governments took the city to court.)
One of the most vocal critics of ULEZ is the very man who, as mayor of London, introduced the policy in 2015: the inimitable Johnson. In his quest to return to something approaching relevancy after the Brexit and Partygate implosions, Johnson jumped into the controversy, calling Khan’s decision to proceed with the expansion “bone-headed,” and tried to justify his implementation of the plan by explaining that it was only intended for the city center—as if the polluted air in the rest of the city somehow did not need the same attention.
Turning the country’s climate policies into a Labour-Tory free-for-all comes on the heels of the Conservative government backtracking over lifting a ban on onshore wind turbines due to party leaders’ fears of a voter backlash before the next general election. “The patterns of backlash … are confounding,” writes James Patterson of Utrecht University’s Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development in his paper “Backlash to Climate Policy.” Though Patterson notes that “the United Kingdom has had a relatively stable climate policy framework over time,” that era may well be over. The controversies that have erupted over ULEZ will force Labour leaders to think twice about new climate regimes despite the increase in measurable benefits that ULEZ has already produced.
