London's Mayor Sadiq Khan Played the Long Game on Climate. And It Worked
· Time
Around the world, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, countries are in the middle of a climate reset. Right-wing politicians want to nix climate policy full stop. Their left and center-left counterparts are backtracking on promises for aggressive new policies under the assumption that climate is no longer popular—or perhaps that it never was.
Sadiq Khan, the London mayor who completed a decade in office last month, says his tenure offers a different lesson. His climate policy push has generated moments of significant blow back from right-leaning politicians and outspoken members of the public, leading political observers to cast green policies as all-but-inevitable instigators of climate backlash. And yet Khan survived and his policies did too. “There is a silent majority who aren’t keyboard warriors,” he told me in April.
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Every country, province, and city has a different texture, but it’s a reminder that ditching climate entirely may not be necessary or wise in this moment of reassessment. “These policies, green policies, environmental policies, can be popular,” Khan says.
There was no greater backlash than in 2023 when Khan pushed through an expansion of the city’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ), a program that charges Londoners with vehicles that do not meet certain emissions standards for driving across the city. What was meant as a technocratic method of reducing air pollution and addressing climate change turned into a culture war focal point. Protesters tore down and disabled enforcement cameras and painted the policy as a civil liberties issue. Other opponents dismissed the air pollution science guiding the policy. “This new phenomenon… of disinformation, misinformation… gave a vocal minority massive airtime and gave people the impression this was an unpopular policy,” he says.
Calmer heads complained that the policy would increase the cost for commuters and small businesses that bring vehicles into the heart of London. The issue received wall-to-wall coverage. Watching from afar especially, it felt as though the effort had become a central political issue in Britain.
But the reality was more complicated. A poll conducted the year after implementation, around the time of the 2024 mayoral election showed that voters ranked the issue ninth on a list of priorities.
In Khan’s telling, a lot was on the line when he was up for reelection in 2024. Leaders in other cities that were in various stages of considering a similar policy—including New York and Milan—were watching closely. Defeat might have signaled a political cost not just to pollution charges specifically but to climate policy more broadly. He won with an even greater share of the vote than in the previous election.
Khan, who serves as the co-chair of C40 cities, a group of cities committed to climate action, explains his climate policy success in part by focusing much of his public message on kitchen table issues rather than climate specifically. He explained ULEZ as a health matter rather than a climate measure. (Indeed, air pollution in many cities including London is a silent killer). “People don’t talk about climate change, climate emergency, environment… What they do know is the young child’s been diagnosed with asthma,” he says. “What they do know is, in winter, bills keep on going up.”
And he has sought to connect clean energy with affordability and cost savings at a time when constituents in London and voters around the world are concerned with the rising cost of living, particularly energy. “The reason why we're suffering a cost of living crisis is we're relying upon fossil fuels from overseas,” he told me.
It’s hard to map the particular policy approaches and particular rhetoric in London onto other cities—in the U.S. or elsewhere. Every city has its own characteristics. Driving is more entrenched in most U.S. cities. Pollution concerns are top of mind across much of Asia but less so in many advanced economies where the most dangerous pollutants tend to be less visible. And, of course, climate policy provokes a unique set of responses in the U.S.
But Khan’s tenure is a reminder that climate policy that actually improves people’s lives can be popular, or at the very least durable, if only it’s given the opportunity to settle in.
This story is supported by a partnership with Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners. TIME is solely responsible for the content.