In the final days of October 2025, two stories—one unfolding in the corridors of British politics, the other in the battered communities of the Philippines—have placed the global struggle for climate justice and green transition squarely in the spotlight. At the heart of both lies a question: who will bear the cost, and who will lead the way, as the world faces the mounting consequences of climate change?
In Britain, Labour’s much-touted promise of a green revolution is colliding with hard economic realities and political skepticism. According to reporting published on October 26, 2025, Labour leader Keir Starmer has faced persistent scrutiny over the party’s commitment to its flagship green policies. The controversy isn’t new—back in 2023, Starmer reportedly interrupted a shadow cabinet presentation by Ed Miliband with an exasperated declaration: “I hate tree huggers.” While Starmer’s spokespeople swiftly denied the incident, the episode has lingered as a symbol of the party’s uneasy relationship with the politics of climate action.
Fast forward to the Labour conference this month, where the party quietly admitted to scaling back its original £28 billion annual green investment plan to less than £15 billion, with only a third representing new funds. The much-heralded home insulation scheme, once promised £6 billion per year, has seen its budget slashed to an average of just £1.3 billion annually. Yet, Labour insists it remains firmly committed to achieving clean power by 2030—a bold pledge that, so far, has not been matched by tangible results on the ground.
Labour’s predicament is as much about history as it is about policy. The party’s roots run deep in Britain’s industrial heartlands—coal mines, steelworks, and shipyards that once powered the nation and provided the backbone of Labour’s electoral support. Decarbonisation, for these communities, is not just an environmental imperative; it’s an existential threat. As the article notes, “Labour’s electoral backbone was built on industries most threatened by decarbonisation.”
This legacy explains why previous Labour leaders—Wilson, Blair, and others—often relegated environmental pledges to the margins, prioritizing jobs, growth, and union security. While Tony Blair’s own time in office was largely silent on green pledges, he has not held back in critiquing governments’ lack of commitment to climate action since leaving Downing Street. His skepticism toward overtly statist solutions—dismissing the American Green New Deal as naive for sidelining market mechanisms—reflects a worldview that still resonates with parts of the Labour establishment.
Starmer, however, finds himself in a political landscape where no party can afford to ignore the climate crisis. The modern Labour project, once celebrated for its embrace of growth and modernization, now faces the reality that “factories continue to close, shipyards shrink, and promised green industries have yet to sprout.” The machinery of decarbonisation—acronyms like GB Energy, the National Wealth Fund, and the Industrial Strategy Council—exists mostly on paper. In the North and Midlands, where Labour’s green transition is supposed to deliver new jobs, the impact remains “theoretical.”
The manifesto’s promise of 650,000 new green jobs has yet to materialize a year into government, even as traditional industries continue to decline. Harland & Wolff, the storied Belfast shipbuilders, are surviving under a rescue deal with a Spanish state company. Port Talbot and Scunthorpe steelworks face layoffs as they transition to greener electric furnaces, while Grangemouth refinery has been shuttered and repurposed as an import terminal by its Chinese owner. The skills gap—one of Britain’s most persistent policy failures—remains unaddressed, raising fears that workers will become “the miners of net zero,” as Unite’s Sharon Graham warned: casualties of a transition imposed upon them, not made with them.
Meanwhile, the economics of domestic green manufacturing are undercut by global realities. As the reporting highlights, “the global supply chain for solar panels and batteries is still dominated by coal-powered production in Guangdong,” making it difficult for Britain to compete on cost or scale.
Across the globe, in the Philippines, the human cost of climate change is not theoretical—it’s painfully real. In 2021, Super Typhoon Odette (internationally known as Typhoon Rai) tore through the archipelago, killing more than 400 people and becoming the second-most costly storm in the country’s history. Now, nearly 70 Filipino victims are seeking compensation from energy giant Shell, arguing that the devastation was intensified by climate change, to which Shell’s carbon emissions have significantly contributed.
As reported by the Associated Press, the group sent a “letter before action” to Shell’s London headquarters in October 2025, demanding an unspecified amount of compensation for deaths and damage. If the company does not provide a satisfactory response, they plan to file a lawsuit in Britain in mid-December. Their aim is not just restitution, but to set a precedent as the world prepares for the United Nations COP30 climate conference in Brazil next month.
“It is really important for me to carry our story outside the island, outside the Philippines and tell the whole world that we are here, we exist,” said Trixy Elle, one of the claimants, in an interview with the Associated Press. “We have to fight, we have to stand, we need to speak up for our rights.”
The effort is supported by Greenpeace Philippines and other advocacy groups, who argue that Shell’s “high historic emissions and early knowledge of the causes and effects of climate change” make it a legitimate target for legal action. According to the Carbon Majors Database, Shell is responsible for 2.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions since the start of the industrial revolution—a staggering figure that places it among the world’s largest corporate polluters.
Shell, for its part, denies legal liability and rejects the notion that it had unique knowledge about climate change. “We agree that action is needed now on climate change,” a Shell spokesperson told the Associated Press. “As we supply vital energy the world needs today, we are transforming our business to supply lower-carbon fuels for the future. The suggestion that Shell had unique knowledge about climate change is simply not true.”
The case against Shell draws on research by Ben Clarke of Imperial College London, who found that the heavy rains and high winds that made Typhoon Odette so deadly were exacerbated by climate change. Legal experts see this as part of a new wave of climate litigation: while past cases focused on potential future harms, this initiative is testing whether courts will hold companies accountable for past damages. According to the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, at least 226 climate-related lawsuits were filed globally in 2024 alone.
Yet, as Sara Phillips of the Stockholm Environment Institute points out, “Courts have generally accepted that climate change is human-induced, but they have been cautious about assigning liability to individual companies.” The outcome of the Philippine victims’ case could set a major precedent for future climate justice efforts worldwide.
As the world prepares for another round of climate negotiations, the stories from Britain and the Philippines serve as a reminder that the green transition is not just about targets and investments, but about people, livelihoods, and justice. Whether in the halls of Westminster or the storm-battered islands of the Pacific, the struggle to turn rhetoric into reality continues—and the stakes have never been higher.
