The campaign for everyone to commit to ruducing their carbon footprint by 10% by 2010 is something we should all certainly support. Its great merit is to bring home to people, each of us, what impact our various activities have in generating climate change emissions, what practical ways there are to reduce these, and that this matter is extremely urgent. A third of all MPs have now signed up to this, and if a third of all adults in the country – about 15 million people – could be informed about this and persuaded to take action, it could have a significant impact in helping to achieve Britain’s carbon reduction targets. The main sources of these emissions are power generation, transport systems, industry and private households. It is this last category, which is hardest to reach and to regulate, that this campaign is aimed at. And there are signs that it’s really catching on. But, desirable as it is, it needs to be seen in the contaxt of the whole picture.

The biggest sources of climate change emissions derive from the other categories. In transport, the Government is still committed to trebling airport capacity by 2030, which would neutralise almost all the carbon reductions achieved in all the other categories. In power generation, the Government is still supporting E.ON in building the first coal-fired power station in Britain for 30 years, even though CCS will not be commercially viable for at least 15 years, if then. We are still generating a measly 4% of our electricity from renewables, compared with 10-25% in the case of France, Germany, Italy and Spain, and 35-50% for Scandinavia. Indeed the Government is still extending the fossil fuel era by supporting new oil concessions in Alberta, Iraq, the Caspian, and has even recently sought to annex a third of a million square miles off Antarctica because it is believed to be rich in oil and minerals. And in industry, leading companies are still not yet required to publish annually their carbon emissions so that their progress in meeting Britain’s carbon reduction targets can be monitored.
Moreover, more ambitious policies are needed internationally if we are to arrest and reverse climate catastrophe. First, deforestation, which is responsible for some 20% of all carbon emissions worldwide, must be slowed down and halted by aggressive action against illegal logging corporations, prosecuting them in the courts of their metropolitan countries. Second, we should take the lead in pressing for a worldwide carbon tax, and should show we mean business by introducing one ourselves, making it fiscally neutral by offsetting VAT by corresponding amounts. That more than any other single measure could green the international economy and tackle climate change at its root. Thirdly, we should end current policy on carbon offsets abroad which allows up to 50-70% of the domestic carbon reduction to be achieved by purchasing carbon credits from overseas. If the big developing countries like China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and Mexico believe we are treating this like a ‘get out of jail free’ card by making little or no carbon cuts at home, they won’t cooperate in making any sizeable cuts themselves, without which climate change cannot be reversed.

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