Climate change: Nothing but hot air?

The UK EU presidency is failing to exercise global leadership on tackling climate change, argues Caroline Lucas MEP.

Current EU president Tony Blair is fond of reminding us that he is exercising global leadership on tackling climate change.

Whether he’s calling for technical solutions in New York, pledging to lead negotiations on new international targets at the G8 summit or calling for more EU cooperation on reducing emissions, the message is the same: the UK accepts the urgency of tackling the looming climate crisis and is leading efforts to combat it.

This week, world leaders gather in Montreal for the most significant talks on climate change since the Kyoto Protocol was adopted. The EU will be represented by the European Commission, MEPs and the UK, as current EU presidency holders. And all the indications are that we’ll hear the same message again.

The reality, however, couldn’t be much further from the rhetoric. Far from exercising global leadership on tackling climate change, the UK is manifestly failing on a number of counts.

Carbon dioxide emissions are rising, for the third consecutive year, and London is quietly but firmly backing away from its commitment to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a binding international treaty and towards the US position that new technology and voluntary agreements mediated by market forces will solve the problem.

Just this month, we have learned that the UK is planning to buy its way out of its commitments to reduce CO2 by buying ‘emissions credits’ under the Kyoto Protocol’s carbon trading scheme.

But perhaps worst of all, the UK is failing to adopt measures already agreed at international level in a shameful attempt to shield industry from meeting the true economic costs of their activities.

The UK has, for example, failed to fully implement a whole raft of recent EU directives designed to tackle climate change, according to a report commissioned by the European Parliament’s Green group. ‘So much hot air’ examines the UK response to three EU directives designed to reduce CO2 emissions, and finds it to be slow, patchy and incomplete.

Despite holding the EU presidency, Blair’s government has delayed implementation of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, failed to set binding targets for energy demand reduction under the Energy Services Directive and failed to promote small-scale combined heating and power plants in line with the Cogeneration Directive.

The report also criticises London for attempting to undermine the EU emissions trading system by renegotiating (upwards) the previously agreed level of the UK’s CO2 emissions: and there lies the rub.

Blair’s failure to implement measures to cut emissions is based on his belief that doing so will have a negative impact on the British economy and that climate change can and should be tackled without affecting the economy at all.

This is just not realistic. Most governments accept the need for reducing emissions by 60 per cent by 2050: but that figure, drawn from an International Panel on Climate Change report, was a global average.

To make cuts in an equitable way in recognition of the fact that we in the rich north who have disproportionately caused climate change have a disproportionate responsibility for addressing its problems, and to take into account more recent science, the EU will need to deliver cuts of between 80-90 per cent by 2050.

This will require nothing short of a revolution in the way we use and consume energy: the way we work and run our economy, the way we get around, the way we design and construct buildings and even the way we measure our very progress using the blunt instrument of GDP growth.

Massive investment in energy conservation and improved energy efficiency, switching to renewable energy sources and developing and implementing ‘green’ technology - though not through nuclear power, whose expense, long lead-in time, environmental and security risks hugely outweigh any potential contribution- are all vital components of such an energy revolution, but they won’t happen all by themselves.

The first step to delivering them is the global adoption of legally binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently. The mechanism exists, in the Kyoto Protocol, for a binding international programme of tough targets to take over from the protocol in 2012, and this week’s talks in Montreal provide a golden opportunity for Blair to deliver on his pledge to prioritise the fight against climate change during his G8 and EU presidencies by championing the cause of just such an agreement, in the framework of contraction and convergence based on per capita carbon emission shares.

But if Blair flinches in his commitment to international targets – as he has already begun to do – the UK presidency could mark the beginning of the end of international cooperation on tackling what he has acknowledged to be the greatest single threat we face.

Unfortunately, this is all too likely: the UK’s failure to fully implement EU directives on climate change is rooted in the Blair government’s belief that measures to tackle climate change must not be allowed to interfere with ‘business as usual’.

The irony is that the measures we really need would provide so many economic and social benefits – less fuel poverty, more employment opportunities, stronger local communities, for example – that it would be in our national interest to pursue them even if it weren’t necessary for the sake of meeting the climate change challenge.

The UK has promised to take strong action on climate change but has failed to deliver. How does Blair think he can possibly exercise global leadership on tackling climate change when he won’t even implement those measures already agreed? It seems all his promises and fine words are little more than so much hot air.

Current EU president Tony Blair is fond of reminding us that he is exercising global leadership on tackling climate change.

Whether he’s calling for technical solutions in New York, pledging to lead negotiations on new international targets at the G8 summit or calling for more EU cooperation on reducing emissions, the message is the same: the UK accepts the urgency of tackling the looming climate crisis and is leading efforts to combat it.

This week, world leaders gather in Montreal for the most significant talks on climate change since the Kyoto Protocol was adopted. The EU will be represented by the European Commission, MEPs and the UK, as current EU presidency holders.

And all the indications are that we’ll hear the same message again.

The reality, however, couldn’t be much further from the rhetoric. Far from exercising global leadership on tackling climate change, the UK is manifestly failing on a number of counts.

Carbon dioxide emissions are rising, for the third consecutive year, and London is quietly but firmly backing away from its commitment to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a binding international treaty and towards the US position that new technology and voluntary agreements mediated by market forces will solve the problem.

Just this month, we have learned that the UK is planning to buy its way out of its commitments to reduce CO2 by buying ‘emissions credits’ under the Kyoto Protocol’s carbon trading scheme.

But perhaps worst of all, the UK is failing to adopt measures already agreed at international level in a shameful attempt to shield industry from meeting the true economic costs of their activities.

The UK has, for example, failed to fully implement a whole raft of recent EU directives designed to tackle climate change, according to a report commissioned by the European Parliament’s Green group. ‘So much hot air’ examines the UK response to three EU directives designed to reduce CO2 emissions, and finds it to be slow, patchy and incomplete.

Despite holding the EU presidency, Blair’s government has delayed implementation of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, failed to set binding targets for energy demand reduction under the Energy Services Directive and failed to promote small-scale combined heating and power plants in line with the Cogeneration Directive.

The report also criticises London for attempting to undermine the EU emissions trading system by renegotiating (upwards) the previously agreed level of the UK’s CO2 emissions: and there lies the rub.

Blair’s failure to implement measures to cut emissions is based on his belief that doing so will have a negative impact on the British economy and that climate change can and should be tackled without affecting the economy at all.

This is just not realistic. Most governments accept the need for reducing emissions by 60 per cent by 2050: but that figure, drawn from an International Panel on Climate Change report, was a global average.

To make cuts in an equitable way in recognition of the fact that we in the rich north who have disproportionately caused climate change have a disproportionate responsibility for addressing its problems, and to take into account more recent science, the EU will need to deliver cuts of between 80-90 per cent by 2050.

This will require nothing short of a revolution in the way we use and consume energy: the way we work and run our economy, the way we get around, the way we design and construct buildings and even the way we measure our very progress using the blunt instrument of GDP growth.

Massive investment in energy conservation and improved energy efficiency, switching to renewable energy sources and developing and implementing ‘green’ technology - though not through nuclear power, whose expense, long lead-in time, environmental and security risks hugely outweigh any potential contribution- are all vital components of such an energy revolution, but they won’t happen all by themselves.

The first step to delivering them is the global adoption of legally binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently.

The mechanism exists, in the Kyoto Protocol, for a binding international programme of tough targets to take over from the protocol in 2012, and this week’s talks in Montreal provide a golden opportunity for Blair to deliver on his pledge to prioritise the fight against climate change during his G8 and EU presidencies by championing the cause of just such an agreement, in the framework of contraction and convergence based on per capita carbon emission shares.

But if Blair flinches in his commitment to international targets – as he has already begun to do – the UK presidency could mark the beginning of the end of international cooperation on tackling what he has acknowledged to be the greatest single threat we face.

Unfortunately, this is all too likely: the UK’s failure to fully implement EU directives on climate change is rooted in the Blair government’s belief that measures to tackle climate change must not be allowed to interfere with ‘business as usual’.

The irony is that the measures we really need would provide so many economic and social benefits – less fuel poverty, more employment opportunities, stronger local communities, for example – that it would be in our national interest to pursue them even if it weren’t necessary for the sake of meeting the climate change challenge.

The UK has promised to take strong action on climate change but has failed to deliver. How does Blair think he can possibly exercise global leadership on tackling climate change when he won’t even implement those measures already agreed? It seems all his promises and fine words are little more than so much hot air.

This article originally appeared in the November 28 edition of Parliament Magazine.

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