Enviro: UK: Govt's new draft bill seeks transition to low-carbon economy

The Left-Anarchist Christian news source, Ekklesia reports on important developments in the United Kingdom regarding the environment. Recent govt initiatives, coming a month after the evangelical missionary organization, Christian Aid published a full-scale environmental report for the UK, will be accompanied by separate legislative proposals by the UK Conservatives and also the UK Liberal Democrats. Meanwhile. all British proposals suffer the same Achilles Heel as do the current and earlier Canadian ones: the UK and Canada are both signatories to the Kyoto Protocols on the environment which treaty gives Communist China a carte blanche on accelerating carbon emmissions to the extent of immediately eating up and surpassing the planned British restraints, considered from a global perspective.

[UK]'s Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, David Miliband’s draft Climate Change Bill, published on 12 March, which aims to enforce a 60 per cent cut in UK CO2 emissions by 2050, is a significant step in the right direction – but will require many amendments as it goes through consultation and Parliament, Christian Aid said today.

Christian Aid’s senior climate policy officer, Andrew Pendleton, acknowledged that the very act of publishing the bill makes the UK the first country to bring forward a legal framework for a transition to a low-carbon economy. "Mr Miliband is to be congratulated for publishing the bill and he is right to be proud of it – he and the government are an example to the rest of the G8," Mr Pendleton said.

"But if the final legislation is not significantly stronger, the process would represent a massive lost opportunity. It is the first step on a long journey rather than the destination itself."

Christian Aid is campaigning for a climate change bill that includes cuts of at least 80 per cent by 2050 with annual carbon budgeting ‘milestones’ rather than five year budgets – there is too much flexibility and wriggle room in a five-year cycle.

It also wants mandatory reporting of CO2 emissions by companies trading in the UK according to DEFRA’s own, currently voluntary standards.

Campaigners say that the world’s poorest people are already suffering the impact of climate change and stand to lose livelihoods and lives if the situation deteriorates.

But, of course, the situation is deteriorating, as China's emissions have already reached and are rapidly surpassing those of the entire European Union, to the effect that rapid depeening of the worldwide crisis from that source (on the same environmental reasoning) ensures that "the world's poorest people ... stand to lose livellihoods and lives" because "the situation is" indeed "deteriorating."

Even a two degree rise is likely to have massive, negative consequences; anything exceeding this would be an unmitigated disaster.

The Bill has four main pillars: it will set a UK carbon budget every five years; it will set up a committee of experts on climate change to advise the government on the economic impact of carbon; it will set up a system of annual reporting to Parliament on government progress towards each budget and will include enabling powers to set up carbon trading schemes through secondary legislation – which may even eventually mean individuals will have their own carbon budgets.

Mr Pendleton said: "A UK cut of 60 per cent of CO2 emissions is not enough. The ambition at the heart of this bill must be to cut CO2 emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050, with as steep a decline as possible as soon as possible, which means 40 per cent cuts by 2020. With the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats both developing proposals of their own there’ll be everything to play for as this bill passes through Parliament.

We should congratulate UK and EU for these efforts (whatever flaws they may yet habour), and we should urge Canada and US to move forward with the best they/we have got to date. But a united diplomatic effort, using all the powers of trade and world propaganda, is called for, especially as the 2008 Olympic Games in China draw closer. Else China will definitely secure for itself by then the Lead Prize as the world's worst polluter.

The struggle for a better and less carbon-incresive environment in Europe, UK, Canada, and USA will involve each responsible person politically and personally; but a united international front to curb China's pollution, while yet encouraging its industrial development and raising the standard of living of its population, is mandated by world conditions today. May the Lord have mercy on us all for the damage done to the good Creation.