Tuesday Mar 28, 2006
20% cut in emissions no longer possible
The Guardian reports that today Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary, will admit that the Government's pledge to cut CO2 emissions by 20% by 2010 is no longer achievable.
The fact that Labour have pledged to reach this milestone on 3 separate occasions will no doubt be a huge embarrassment to them - quite rightly. I'm sure there will be plenty of excuses, but the fact remains that carbon emissions are now 3% higher than they were in 1997.
However, it's not all doom and gloom. As The Independent reports, an All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group, led by Chairman Colin Challen, are proposing a radical change from the drive for economic growth (which results in ever increasing CO2 emissions that overwhelm the cuts created by the Government's policies), to focussing on how much carbon we can afford to emit. The system, known as "Contraction and Convergence", would introduce carbon rationing for "carbon rich" countries, whilst allowing emissions from "carbon poor" to rise.
Of course this would mean real sacrifices for all of us, on an individual and business level, but given the situation we're in I'm not sure if we have much of choice.
Posted by Sam Thomas
( 11:10 AM )
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Comments[2]
It's the policymaker's fault, yes, but not only. We should all do our bit.
Buy consciously, recycle, consume less, turn off our TV standby lead, etc.
Look at Scandinavia, beers can only be produced in one kind of glass bottle, you get incentives to recycle, but people do recycle. It's a behavioural change. It's up to us.
Max
Posted by CyberMax on March 29, 2006 at 09:25 AM GMT+00:00 #
As you say, it's going to take effort on all levels, both in terms of Government policy and individual actions. I've blogged about it before but www.wearewhatwedo.org has a great list of small, easy to do day to day actions we can take to make a difference.
Posted by Sam Thomas on March 29, 2006 at 10:11 AM GMT+00:00 #