A Labour minority government fails on climate change

Friends of the Earth Cymru has accused the Welsh Assembly Government of failing to address the crisis of climate change in its legislative programme for the third Assembly term, announced today by First Minister Rhodri Morgan.

Friends of the Earth Cymru spokesperson, Gordon James, commented:

"In February this year, the Welsh Assembly voted unanimously that climate change should be the first priority of the Assembly Government [1]. Today's statement by the First Minister has failed to produce any legislation to bring this about.

"The Welsh Assembly Government also appears to have forgotten that the first action in its Environment Strategy Action Plan is to set ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emission. Yet, all we seem to hear from the First Minister is excuses for not setting targets.

"Despite all the rhetoric from politicians about the need to act on climate change, emissions in Wales continue to rise [2]. This is a shameful position for us to be in particularly as the scientific evidence is now so worrying [3]."

Notes

1. On February 7th 2007, the Welsh Assembly unanimously supported the following motion:
"The national Assembly for Wales recognises that mitigating the impact of climate change is the most important challenge facing the National Assembly and believes that this must become the first priority of the Assembly Government."

2. The latest official data shows that greenhouse gas emission in Wales rose for the three consecutive years between 2002 and 2004 and that carbon dioxide emissions were higher in 2004 than they were in the base year of 1990 despite a central government commitment to cut these emissions by 20 per cent between 1990 and 2010.

3. On May 22nd a study by the US National Academy of Sciences reported that carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing by about three per cent a year during this decade, compared with just over one per cent a year during the 1990's. The significance of this is that it is faster than even the highest scenario outlined in this year's reports by the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It has been noted before that the IPCC reports are conservative estimates because of the need to obtain political consensus amongst all the countries involved, but this latest study from the US National Academy of Sciences suggests that the IPCC's dire forecasts of devastating harvests, dwindling water supplies, melting ice and loss of species are likely to significantly understate the threat facing the world.