Higher targets - or action now?
We are quite right to aim at global leadership over climate change, but we will only get it if we earn it. And at present we’re not. We have been at great risk of covering up our failure to reach even modest targets by taking on ever more ambitious ones, while kicking them ever further into the future. At the EU Summit in Brussels on Saturday the heads of government did exactly that – ratcheting up the targets for 2020 while failing to deliver the lesser targets for 2010.
The EU is way off track to meet its 8% cut in CO2 emissions by 2010. In the UK emissions have risen in 6 of the last 7 years, when they should have fallen by 12%. Air travel and car emissions continue to rise sharply. The UK target for electricity generation from renewables was 10% by 2010. We are currently at 4% and will be lucky to reach 6%, when the average for the original EU 15 is nearly 20%. Higher targets are fine, but without serious enforcement the plaudits are vacuous.
The test for the Climate Change Bill on Tuesday is clear. Does it have an explicit strategy to deliver 60% cuts by 2050, as the scientists require? What exactly are the mechanisms proposed to deliver this? Are they all enforceable? Will the Government set binding annual targets to achieve the cuts required, monitor progress and publish the results and bring in whatever changes or new mechanisms are necessary to keep Britain on track? Anything less is a cosmetic palliative in the war on Climate Change.