A loophole big enough to fly a jumbo jet through
As you're probably aware, Labour is deadly serious about climate change. They're seriously thinking about possibly making a start.
Their latest attempt comes in the form of the Climate Bill, a serious piece of legislation which will set a series of legally binding carbon budget periods lasting five years each. Unfortunately the draft target for 2050 is inadequate: a 60% reduction on 1990 levels, and more pertinently, the bill excludes Aviation - the fastest growing source of greenhouse gasses in the UK. The draft bill - before consultation - had a built-in loophole you could fly a jumbo through, and everyone knew it.
The review process to date has included three committee reports and a storm of acronyms (reports by: EAC, EFRA, JSC). What all of these reports share in common is the vision of aviation being included in the Climate Bill's targets.
The Environmental Audit Committee say of aviation emissions:
“While the draft Bill contains provisions that allow these emissions to be included in the future, we recommend that they be included immediately.”
But the strongest criticism of government comes from the experts, in this case, the Tyndall Centre in the EFRA report:
"If you tot up the aviation and shipping additional emissions and include those within the domestic emissions budget, you get a new total UK cumulative carbon budget over a 50-year period between 2000 and 2050 of between 7 to 7.5 billion tonnes of carbon.
"If the same apportionment regime is used that the Government used in order originally to come up with its 60 per cent target, this would equate to something closer to a 600 to 750 parts per million CO2 rather than the 550ppm that the Government originally started from. […] this is a 92 to 100 per cent chance of exceeding 2°C or a 50 per cent chance of exceeding four degrees."
The key point is this: aviation significantly increases the challenge of meeting a given reduction target but this challenge must be met head on. We gain nothing from waiting until there is agreement within the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (as the Joint Select Committee suggests) or an international regime (as EFRA suggest); the more we wait the more it will cost to make these reductions.
This doesn't make economic sense, and it doesn't make sense for those whose homes are threatened by the ever expanding rash of British airports: bulldozed communities are lost rather permanently.
So what has the government decided to do with aviation? Nothing. They have kicked it into the long grass by asking the the Climate Bill's oversight body (the Climate Committee) to look into it. But this newly formed organisation is not starting that process now, but after it sets its first three five year budgets! From the report 'Taking Forward the UK Climate Bill':
“We intend that the Committee should undertake this work as soon as it has made recommendations on the first three budgets, and should report by autumn 2009.”
Business's demands are not complicated; given a clear framework, guided by strong regulatory certainty, it will achieve decent reductions. The government looks set to fail miserably in creating the business environment for low carbon investment. A confused policy is to no-one's advantage.
Setting 15 years worth of targets without considering the inclusion of aviation, shipping, or a more stringent target - as supported by 86% of respondents to the consultation - is yet another example of New Labour showing its true colour: anything but green!
Calvin Jones writes the Climate Action blog: climatechangeaction.blogspot.com
For other articles of his on the Climate Bill, see:
