Sunak's Weak Intervention May Prompt A Climate Change Revolution

26th September 2023

Prime minister Rishi Sunaks changes to the environmental plans for the UK look more and more like a cynical election ploy. This article from The Institute for Fiscal Studies sets out the case.

"We need some light shone on what needs doing and on how far away we are from doing it." Paul Johnson writes for The Times on our net zero targets.

My 11-year term as a member of the UK's Climate Change Committee came to an end about six months ago. In part that role was hugely gratifying. The government asked us to recommend what our greenhouse gas emission target should be. In 2019 we recommended net zero by 2050. That was our estimate of the "fair" contribution of the UK to a global effort to mitigate climate change, taking account of what is feasible, affordable and consistent with international agreements. Much later and much less is not enough. If countries like ours don't do something like that then the planet is in big trouble. The government agreed, as did parliament with barely a voice raised in opposition, and the target was enshrined in legislation.

To provide a path to that outcome we also advised on "carbon budgets", the appropriate emissions in each five-year period between now and 2050 to ensure that we are on a cost-effective path to that ultimate target. The government never demurred from those recommendations. It agreed to all the trajectories we recommended. Parliament has barely quibbled. What power! What impact!

We also assessed progress and made recommendations for action. So far, in the period since the Climate Change Committee was set up at the end of 2008, all the carbon budgets have been met, indeed exceeded. Let nobody claim that we have not made serious progress.

But, for all the consensus, real policy action and deliverable plans for sharp emission reductions over the next couple of decades have been rather thinner on the ground. Our reports became increasingly tetchy as the years passed. The fog of uncertainty over how we are actually expecting to decarbonise household heating, further massively increase zero-carbon electricity production and distribution, revolutionise agriculture and all the rest, has barely begun to clear.

Read the full article HERE