Low Carbon: Official advice on climate targets "too weak"

Leading UK climate scientists have warned 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.

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 earleir this month 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."