"We're all doomed" - or are we?

The Westminster and Holyrood governments are both promising Climate Change Bills. Can they make an impact?

The Journal, October 2007, page 39

We are increasingly experiencing for ourselves the real effects of climate change, and few now deny mankind’s hand in causing it. The climate change debate has also shifted from whether there is a problem at all (and whether we should act on it), to what we need to do, by when, and the economic implications of doing so.

“The time is therefore right for the introduction of a strong legal framework in the UK for tackling climate change. The draft Climate Change Bill is the first of its kind in any country.” (Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Climate Change Bill Summary, at www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange).

While official consultation on the draft bill closed in June, the final bill is not scheduled to be introduced to the (Westminster) Parliament until spring 2008, and no doubt there will be plenty of unofficial consultation, debate and amendment of the draft bill before then.

The UK targets and controls

In summary the bill as drafted would:

• make the UK’s targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through domestic and international action (26-32% by 2020 and 60% by 2050, against 1990 levels) legally binding;
• introduce (through secondary legislation) a system of “carbon budgeting”, setting binding limits on emissions over five year periods (from 2008-2012 and with three budgets always set in advance), but allowing emissions reductions “purchased” overseas to count towards UK targets;
• create an independent Committee on Climate Change, to advise the government on setting carbon budgets and report on progress;
• create enabling powers to legislate for future policies on emissions (including new emissions trading schemes, again through secondary legislation); and
• introduce a new system of government reporting to Parliament (including on policies on adaptation to climate change).

It is said: “Taken together these measures create a coherent framework that will ensure we achieve reductions in emissions whilst maintaining a strong and growing economy and high levels of social welfare” (Bill Summary, above).

As well as reconciling those potentially conflicting aims, the bill will also have to dovetail with the Energy white paper, the National Waste Strategy, and planning system reform, among others.

Impact assessment

If this all sounds incredibly hard to achieve (and it will be), consider that the Stern review estimated that developed countries will need to reduce carbon emissions by between 60% and 80% by 2050 – and the costs of inaction could be between 5% and 20% of global GDP! Further, “The risks of the worst impacts of climate change can be substantially reduced if greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere can be stabilised between 450 and 550ppm CO2 equivalent (CO2e). The current level is 430ppm CO2e today, and it is rising at more than 2ppm each year” (The Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, Summary of Conclusions, at www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/media/9/9/CLOSED_SHORT_executive_summary.pdf).

It is therefore tempting to think “We’re a’ doomed!” (as Private Frazer in Dad’s Army regularly put it). But “Don’t panic”: the Stern review also concludes that necessary action can still be taken and its costs limited to 1% of global GDP if strong action is taken now. There is, though, no room for complacency.

Scotland’s potential

Private Frazer might have been dourly amused to think that our increasingly wet and windy Scottish weather may yet be a great asset. Installed renewable power generation capacity (hydro-electric, wind, wave and tidal, biomass, landfill gas) now exceeds Scottish nuclear generation capacity. Scotland’s renewable energy potential is in any case far greater than the capacity currently installed. We are therefore promised a draft Climate Change Bill from the Scottish Parliament (in late 2008), to cover devolved environmental policy. The First Minister wants to commit to an emissions reduction target of 80% by 2050 and favours rejecting new nuclear power in favour of more renewables. Otherwise the Scottish Bill is likely to mirror the Westminster Bill.

Big problems require big solutions. Even radical Climate Change Bills will fall short in some areas. The omission of aviation and shipping emissions from the current bill was described by Friends of the Earth as like “a calorie controlled diet that opts to exclude calories from chocolate”. Valid questions regarding what happens if the government fails to hit its own targets have been raised. But the bills will be a vast step forward and, as the old Chinese proverb says, “the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”. All of us will, as citizens, business people and solicitors advising clients, require to make that journey.

Robin Priestley and Dixcee Fast, Planning & Environment Group, Anderson Strathern