Archived press release

Official advice on climate targets too weak, say leading scientists

17 March 2009

Leading UK climate scientists today (Tuesday 17 March 2009) warn that the greenhouse gas reduction target recommended by the Government's climate change advisory body is based on 'dangerously misleading' assumptions and is too weak to prevent dangerous climate change.

The Committee on Climate Change has urged the Government to reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions by 34 per cent by 2020 when it sets a legally-binding climate change target next month - but a research report by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, for Friends of the Earth, says that the reduction target should be 42 per cent at the very least. Later today the Tyndall Centre is briefing MPs on its findings.

The new research also calls on the Government to achieve its greenhouse gas targets through domestic reductions, and not by buying pollution offsets from abroad. It warns that using offsetting to meet targets now will lock the UK into carbon-intensive development, and make it far harder to develop a genuinely low carbon economy.

In December last year the committee recommended that the Government commits the UK to a 34 per cent reduction by 2020, and that this target be increased to 42 per cent if an international climate agreement is reached. The Tyndall Centre strongly challenges the recommendation to take on an interim target, instead of one rooted firmly in scientific evidence.

More than 90 Labour MPs - including four Ministerial aides - have signed a Parliamentary petition calling on the Government to adopt a 42 per cent target now and to make all the emissions cuts in the UK.

The Tyndall Centre report follows a high-level scientific conference last week that confirmed the impacts of climate change are likely to be worse than feared.

Friends of the Earth's Executive Director Andy Atkins said:

"This advice from one of the world's leading climate research centres cannot be ignored - if we are to play our part in avoiding dangerous climate change, the Government must commit the UK to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 42 per cent by 2020 without buying pollution 'offsets' from abroad."

"This will show strong international leadership by example ahead of crucial UN climate talks in Copenhagen later this year, and help ensure the UK reaps the huge financial and employment benefits of going green."

"The UK has one of the best renewable energy potentials in Europe - investing in green power and cutting energy waste can create tens of thousands of jobs and help lead this country out of recession."

Professor Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Centre said:

"The Government's Committee on Climate Change report is to be welcomed as a step in the right direction. However, based on naïvely optimistic assumptions, the Committee's recommendations fall far short of what is necessary to meet the Government's own climate change commitment."

"This reality gap is exacerbated if the UK were to buy a quarter of its emissions reductions from poorer parts of the world - as the Committee suggest. At a time when the message from Copenhagen is for urgent action and leadership, paying poorer communities elsewhere to make the reductions for the UK risks undermining seriously the Government's hard-earned reputation as leading the international climate change agenda."

"If the UK is to maintain its leadership reputation it must aggressively pursue emission pathways in line with its two degrees commitment. This means agreeing to cut UK emissions by at least 42 per cent by 2020, and refusing to resort to either buying emissions from overseas or relying on the EU's emission trading scheme as a means of exceeding its emission budget."

Notes:

1. Friends of the Earth commissioned the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research to review the Committee on Climate Change's (CCC) recommendations on legally-binding short term greenhouse gas targets which are due to be set next month. A copy of the report is available to download from http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/tyndall_climatereport_ccc2008.pdf

2. The short term targets - or greenhouse gas budgets - are part of the Government's Climate Change Act - which Friends of the Earth led the campaign for - which commits the Government to slashing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

3. The CCC is urging the Government to commit unilaterally to reducing emissions of all greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the UK by at least 34 per cent in 2020 relative to 1990 levels (21 per cent relative to 2005), and to increase this to 42 per cent relative to 1990 once a global deal to reduce emissions is achieved.

4. The UK and EU, amongst others, take the position that a two degrees centigrade rise in temperature represents the threshold between acceptable and dangerous climate change. In March 2007, European leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the two degrees threshold. And later in 2007, the Bali conference heard repeated calls for reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions of 50 per cent by 2050 to avoid exceeding the two degrees threshold.

5. This Tyndall Centre analysis, whilst acknowledging the CCC Report is an important contribution to the debate, is nevertheless critical of many of the CCC's findings and challenges its recommendations:

• The report is significantly compromised by its implicit need to deliver demanding but nonetheless politically palatable conclusions.
• The report assumes that global emissions will peak by 2016 which is 'at best highly optimistic and at worst dangerously misleading'.
• It is 'imperative' that the Government commits to cutting its emissions by at least 42 per cent if the UK is play its part in tackling climate change - regardless of whether there is an international agreement.
• The UK should commit to achieving reductions from the non-traded sector without offsetting or trading until there is a meaningful global emission cap premised on the 2°C threshold. In theory almost three quarters of CCC's proposed 42 per cent target could be undertaken outside the UK. The figure is 65 per cent for the 34 per cent target.
• Failure to urgently cut emissions at home could lock the UK into a high carbon lifestyle. For example the Government recently gave the go-ahead to a third runway at Heathrow arguing that it could purchase emissions from outside the UK to compensate. But once the runway is built there will be increased pressure for additional terminals and even more flights.

6. Over 100 MPs have signed the EDM. 90 of these are Labour MPs, among which are four Ministerial aides: Mrs Claire Curtis-Thomas MP - the Personal Private Secretary to Baroness Scotland, Mr David Wright MP - the Personal Private Secretary to Jane Kennedy, Ms Dari Taylor MP - the Personal Private Secretary to Phil Hope and Mr Stephen Pound MP - the Personal Private Secretary to Stephen Timms.

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust