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GVEG
Golden Valley Environment Group GVEG Petition on Climate Change Bill - Update Prepared by: Peter Gunn-Wilkinson, December 2008 It is now just over a year since the first GVEG Green Supper was held to support a petition to ensure that the Government’s proposed Climate Change Bill addressed the critical issues arising from the accelerating pace of climate change. The petition was presented to Paul Keetch MP on December 4th 2007, and identified the targets required for the transition to a low-carbon economy and responded appropriately to the urgency of the situation. It argued for the need for realistic reduction targets for both the short and long term and to provide effective legislation. The response to the petition by Ministers of all parties was generally positive and recognised the need to establish significantly higher targets, compared to the 50% reduction in the Bill, based on the advice of the government’s climate change committee. The Act received its royal assent in November 2008 and now includes a revised target for an 80% reduction in C02 and other greenhouse gas emissions (GHG emissions) from 1990 levels by 2050. This long-term target has now been supported by further recommendations by the climate change committee for interim targets up to 2020. The committee’s report ‘Building a Low Carbon Economy – Britain’s Contribution to Tackling Climate Change’ (December 2nd 2008) sets out proposals for the transformation of Britain into a low-carbon economy and takes on board our emphasis on the need to establish higher short and medium-term targets for reductions in emissions. Ministers will respond to this report in March 2008. The main recommendations seek to develop proposals to transform the way we generate energy from sustainable sources, reduce energy consumption, and limit the growth of aviation and shipping emissions. The committee recommends an interim target for 2020 of 34% reduction in C02 and other GHG emissions, rising to 42% if there was a global deal to cut emissions as part of the Copenhagen Treaty negotiations (these would replace the targets for 2012 established in the Kyoto Treaty). These reductions, which go further than existing commitments, are in line with proposed EU legislation and should ensure that the UK makes a fair contribution towards reducing global temperature rises as close as possible to 2C. The committee also proposed short - term targets. In the five years to 2012, it proposes that average annual UK emissions should equate to 604m tonnes of CO2, down from 695m tonnes in 2006. Overall, the cuts in GHG emissions equate to a reduction from 11.6 tonnes per person to 7-8 tonnes on average by 2020. The report has been broadly approved by environmental groups, but there is a general concern that the government may fail to act to implement the tough policies identified in the report to deliver the emission cuts which will increase from an average of 1% per year to 2.5% per year. The targets are also dependent, and environmental groups will need to continue to monitor the situation to ensure that government targets reflect the real changes required to reduce the rate of global warming. The Climate Change Act, together with the work of the Climate Change Committee, now contain much more ambitious targets, proposals for establishing 5-year carbon emission budgets, and mechanisms for monitoring progress. These changes have strengthened the legislation and, in part, have resulted from successful political lobbying by environmental groups, including the GVEG. We can therefore look back on our first Green Supper with some pleasure, and recall that a very nice evening was part of a bigger movement for change. |