‘Public pressure needed to stop climate change’
THE stark warning given by the chairman of the UK Environment Agency in the run up to COP26 was ‘adapt or die’.
Today is already Day 8 of the 14-day United Nations’ Conference of the Parties (COP 26) hosted by the UK in Glasgow.
Thankfully the world’s press is finally shining the spotlight on the deliberations of the world’s statesmen and women, business and community leaders, scientists and activists, about the scientific evidence that confirms we are nowhere near on track to prevent our catastrophic degradation of the earth’s life support systems.
Having spent 18 years serving on parliament’s Environmental Audit Select Committee, including as the chair from 2010 -2015, it is a relief that the world is finally taking the threat of manmade emissions seriously.
Over the years I have witnessed so many wasted opportunities from our government in response to farsighted recommendations.
After legislating for a ground-breaking Climate Change Act in 2008, there have been too many instances since of government undoing many of the early policies that would have put us on track.
Why for example, did the Government reject our report on phasing out fossil fuel subsidies? At best we have seen ineptitude from ministers, and at worst deliberate ideological denial about the threats to our planet.
Whether we will still have time to keep within reach of limiting temperature rises to no more than 1.5 degrees census above pre industrial levels depends on what is finalised between now and Friday.
After Friday, the time for talking will be replaced by the time for action.
It is certainly true that the experience of recent years has focused many more minds on the climate emergency.
We have all seen the record heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and floods, and they are set to get far worse.
If we fail we face the prospect of rising sea levels, people unable to feed themselves as crops fail and eventually the displacement and enforced migration of millions of people.
If we are to reach the safe target of global temperature of no more than 1.5 degrees, then carbon emissions will need to be reduced by about 50 per cent by 2030.
That’s eight years to make plans, implement the policies, and, most important of all, deliver reductions.
But UN reports have found that emissions are on track to be a catastrophic 16 per cent higher in 2030 rather than 50 per cent lower. This shows the scale of the problem.
We shall soon see if the detailed plans of each nation match up to the optimistic, but sometimes vague, pledges of COP26.
In the UK it is scarcely believable that Shell and BP have not been required to pay corporation tax on oil and gas production in the North Sea for the last three years.
With this tax break it is little wonder that
the fossil fuel industry is seeking approval for further massive offshore oil and gas projects. And it is surely time for the Government to rule out the prospect of a new coalmine opening in Cumbria.
By Friday this week the world’s leaders along with their officials and advisors and 40,000 or so participants will have packed their bags and left Glasgow.
That’s the time for individual governments to begin legislating for legally binding targets, as we have already done in the UK, backed by detailed implementation plans.
But we all know legislation alone doesn’t change things. We need political ambition at national and at local level, funding, ambition for innovation, skilled workers to deliver the transformation and public support to demand change.
Cleaning up our polluted air, water and land might be the right thing to do, but only a groundswell of public opinion will make it politically expedient to transform the fossil fuel subsidies into support for greener cleaner solutions instead.
That means change. Very big changes. It means evaluating everything we do so that we only do that which meets climate emergency and nature recovery targets.
It means all of our local councils demonstrating that each local plan is aligned; that each application for Levelling
Up funding takes us one step nearer; that the Local Enterprise Partnership only bids for projects that will deliver on this; that the NHS starts to act as an organisation that as well as providing treatment and care, does so in a way that drives our climate targets.
It means larger companies and pension funds disclosing full details of their financial plans for net zero. It means our schools and colleges too transforming what they teach. We are the generation which will determine whether or not our children and grandchildren avoid catastrophe.
Much greater public understanding is needed about the risks we have been taking and the opportunities that will be ours once we change the way we do business.
Here in Staffordshire, alongside Jeremy Lefroy former Stafford MP and Jonathan Porritt, chancellor of Keele University,
I am a patron of Staffordshire Climate Matters.
They are one of a number of groups who want to see action and who will be scrutinising local actions for proof that we meet carbon budgets and protect nature.
That is the only healthy prescription for our own health, the nation’s health and that of future generations. We are in a race against time. It is a race we cannot lose.