“Every sector will need to decarbonise if the UK is to realise the 68% reduction in seven years’ time. However, the CCC report suggests that the UK’s largest sectors have not been supported with enabling policy frameworks to deliver this transition.”
By Graham Petersen
Adapting to the impacts of climate change at the same time as reducing emissions are 2 sides of the same coin. Unfortunately, the evidence shows the Government is failing badly on both counts.
Mitigation
In June, 2023, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) issued its annual report, It didn’t pull any punches on government performance, stating:
“The overarching message makes for grim reading; with the Committee’s confidence that the UK will meet its climate goals “diminishing” year on year. Indeed, projections for the UK to meet its 2030 goals under the Sixth Carbon Budget and to reduce emissions by 68% as part of the nation’s commitment to the Paris Agreement have worsened since last year”.
Every sector will need to decarbonise if the UK is to realise the 68% reduction in seven years’ time. However, the CCC report suggests that the UK’s largest sectors have not been supported with enabling policy frameworks to deliver this transition. It concluded that the UK has lost global leadership.
This is also the view within its own ranks with the resignation of Zac Goldsmith, the Minister for the International Environment, claiming “this government’s apathy in the face of the greatest challenge we have faced makes continuing in my current role untenable.”
Adaptation
The picture is no better following another CCC report in March, 2023. The findings show that ’for no outcome have we been able to conclude that there is sufficient evidence that reductions in climate exposure and vulnerability are happening at rates needed to appropriately manage risk.’
Breaking international commitments
The Global South and developing countries were also in line to be hit by government policy changes. A proposal in early July to drop the pledge of £11.6 billion in environment aid was dropped after intense pressure from the climate movement and a furious diplomatic reaction from the Global South, which was something of a model for the alliances we need.
Sustainable Development Goals – To cap off all this bad news for the government it was announced that the UK is not on target to meet a single one of its 17 SDGs by the 2030 deadline.
Labour Party performance – despite the government’s woeful record there is no cause for complacency in the Labour Party. Interviewed on Radio 4 Lord Deben made it clear that the opposition is also failing to adequately address the scale of the crisis. The rolling back of the commitments on the Green Prosperity Plan £28 billion pledge is one of a series of policy shifts under the guise of ‘securonomics’.
- This article was originally published in the Greener Jobs Alliance (GJA) July 2023 Newsletter.
- You can follow the Greener Jobs Alliance on Facebook and twitter.
