Political parties have a key role in addressing climate change, but their responses to date have been constrained

Talks in Lima this weekend produced a global plan to tackle climate change in advance of next year’s Paris summit. Despite these periodic returns to the political agenda, parties in the UK continue to show varying degrees of interest and afford the issue differing levels of priority. Here, Conor Little discusses a project which looks at European parties responses to the issue, and argues that while parties do have a decisive role in addressing global warming, their responses are constrained by a number of factors.