The Big Ask Climate Debate comments_3024 April 2008
Dear Mr Blair
The realistic way to have a sustainable, achievable move to radically lower carbon emissions in the long term is to have annual targets. In practically every other sector of government e.g education and health, you have annual targets. Against this, to have benchmarks that are measured every, say, ten years looks suspiciously like avoiding accountability within a single term of government. Would you trust such a plan if it were espoused by a Conservative government?
Be resolute; go for annual targets.
Nicholas Deere
Its welcome that you haive raised the profile of climate change internationally, and your recent conversion to the need for a climate bill is likewise welcome, but without binding targets you are opening yourself to the charge it is to be an insubstantial bill more to do with appearances than action. To talk of climate change as the biggest threat we face, spend very little on low carbon technologies, and then plan to heap billions at the ID cards and Trident replacement sadly leaves one to doubt your sincerity.
There can be no better legacy for Tony Blair than to energsie and unlease the low carbon technical ingenuity locked up in these Islands awaiting the serious backing of a supportive financial framework. To work with Europe to push for a DC cable technology solar power deal with North Africa.
I urge you Tony, leave the doubters for dust. Be remembered as the PM who began the 21st C, not the one who stalled it.
Steve Crawford
If the government is serious about climate change it needs to signal the urgency, and it should immediately call a halt to major road building programmes, airport expansion and using public money to fund fossil fuel projects. It should also impose a 60mph speed limit on motorways and duel carriageways.
Quentin Given
Dear Prime Minister,
I really do think that the Government (and regrettably probably the opposition too) have got their thinking back to front on where and how to intervene in public matters.
On the big issues, such as climate change and international trade you cede ground to the 'market' at every turn. It's up to the market to come up with the answers and Government will only intervene when there is 'market failure'. And yet on issues like fox hunting, smoking, parenting, political protest etc, you are busily passing laws to curb the rights of the individual.
Someone once described the market as 'the institutionalisation of individualism and non-responsibility'. Is this a good mechanism to trust with issues such as climate change? The Stern report would suggest not.
The UK needs to put some real and potentially unpopular legislation in place on the big issues. It feels really rather sad that the only way you can feel powerful is to curb individual public freedoms - and by choosing to go to war.
Although I think you made the wrong decision, I do actually respect the fact that you were willing to take the flak for deciding to go to war. It's the one time I'm aware of when you've actually stood for something and taken a political risk. I'd like to hope that this might give you some access to the US to influence its thinking on climate change. But on top of this, as other people have said, it needs to be backed up by credible policy on the home front. Please be bold. Set a tough framework, for the market to work within. It would be a far more important legacy than pretty much anything else...
Mike Arundale
I agree with FOE that we need targets for annual reductions. The situation is getting increasingly desperate. It is heartbreaking knowing that species of animals and plants are likely to be lost forever as a result of global warming. We must do everything possible to save our planet's rich diversity, whatever sacrifices to economic growth are required. Watching David Attenborough's wonderful, educational programmes about the Earth's wildlife and knowing the wildlife is still there to me is worth more than any number of percentage increases in economic 'growth'. The only genuine form of 'growth' is that which recognises and respects the delicate balance between humans and nature and is environmentally sustainable.
Penelope Kempe-Lee
I agree with Tony Juniper and Friends of the Earth that it is no argument against annual targets to say that a year is 'too short a period' to meaningfully monitor progress in reducing emissions - Tony J's analogy with the annual budget is spot on.
That said, I want to communicate very strongly my gratitude for the leadership I feel the government has taken on this issue. I believe the international advocacy, support and best-practice work the UK can do on this should ultimately prove more important than the reduction in carbon emmissions here. It is still an uphill fight to convince many people that there is even a problem that needs to be addressed.
The United States must be brought into the process, but many Americans are in denial that human-driven warming of the planet is even happening, and there are many industry-supported sources of misinformation and half-truths to support them. Having been arguing this issue with my American brother for the past month, I have become depressingly familiar with how strong can be the will to deny that all is not right with our world.
We must act, but we must also, and at all times, work to convince others of the need to act.
Andrew Joncus
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