Fellow Green, Dr Richard Lawson - infact he was elected minutes before John Marjoram as a councillor back in the 80s, making him the first elected Green party councillor - anyway he has been carrying on a correspondence with the Government around Simultaneous Policy as a way forward re Climate Change. See more here re Richards letters to Government and more here re SP.I've for a long time been very supportive of this approach to tackling problems and find it difficult to get my head around why the Government is reluctant on this. Hence my letter to the Minister Ian Pearson - key extract below:
"I am appalled by the lack of movements forward in terms of action on climate change. Preliminary figures for 2006 show that CO2 emissions rose by 1.2 per cent last year alone – meaning CO2 emissions from the UK now stand at their highest level since Labour came to power in 1997. Given the urgency of the situation with regard to climate change and the challenges presented by achieving 100% multilateral agreement on a solution, I think the way forward needs to be using Simultaneous Policy. I note that you have already noted support for Contraction and Convergence and that you would support it when a reasonable number of parties have indicated a similar willingness. I am disturbed to read that the UK would not be in the business of initiating simultaneous policy with regards to climate change. I would welcome clarification on this. Would you also be able to let me know at what stage would the Government be prepared to join a Simultaneous Policy for Contraction and Convergence process if it were to be initiated by some other country?"
I'd just sent this off when I got the second of four reports being released this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the group looked at the impacts of global warming, both present and projected, and said we can expect more big floods, droughts, wildfires, species extinctions, and mass migrations. Most vulnerable are the Arctic, sub-Saharan Africa, small islands, and Asian river deltas, but the report also predicts flash floods for Europe and heat waves for North America.
It also makes clear it's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit. The report was written by hundreds of scientists and reviewed by government officials; negotiations over the final wording got heated during an all-nighter before the report was released (one journalist commented "you'd think they could've just scrawled "apocalypse" on some scratch paper and been done with it"). Several scientists accused government negotiators of watering down the report, making it, in the words of one, "much less quantified and much vaguer and much less striking than it could have been." Read New York Times report here.
Photo: Step It Up campaign in FloridaMeanwhile on a more positive note the success last Saturday in the States of the "Step It Up" campaign is very encouraging - 1,400 rallies and events re climate change - read more here and here. Plus the first major U.S. oil company, ConocoPhillips, joins coalition to limit greenhouse gases.
2 comments:
Well done again to Richard and now to Philip on linking C&C to Simpol and pressuring government to engage with this formation.
The 'consultation' on the climate bill is underway and provides an opportunity to further this pressure by using the arguments set out below.
The links to animations quoted below may not be working consistently. So if, for this purpose, anyone would like a copy of the C&C DVD issued to all MPS by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on climate change, please write to me sending your postal address at: -aubrey.meyer@btinternet.com
Basis - C&C response to Climate-Bill-Consultation
Aubrey Meyer
Apr 01, 2007 07:31 PDT
Dear Sir/Madam
The Government is circulating a draft Climate Change Bill for public consultation. It is available at: -
http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm70/7040/7040.pdf
This letter asks you to respond to the consultation after considering the critique of the bill made in the DVD “An Incontestable Truth – Contraction and Convergence the Irreducible Response to Climate Change” published and circulated by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change”.
Copies of the DVD are available from the APPGCC Chairman Colin Challen MP and it is also on-line at: -
www.tangentfilms.com/Risk Analysis web.mov
www.tangentfilms.com/AIC.mp4
The above should work - please test - in a Quicktime Player.
The file below works in an MS Web Browser [Logos touch-sensitive to advance through scenes] www.gci.org.uk/images/CandC_model_context_animation.swf
If you agree with the arguments led there and supported by the eminent contributors to the DVD, we ask you to do two things: -
1. Use the public consultation to inform the government of the need to embrace the architecture of Contraction and Convergence in the Bill.
2. Write to your MP - who by now will have had a copy of the DVD from the APPGCC - asking them to support your arguments to Government in the debates on the Bill when these happen in parliament.
As it stands the draft bill is presented as the UK’s response to the achieving the objective of the United Nations Climate Treaty. The objective is to cut global emissions sufficient to stabilise the rising accumulation or ‘concentration’ of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere at a value that is considered safe.
The target figure in the bill will require UK citizens collectively to deliver a reduction of UK greenhouse gas emissions of 60% by 2050 by law.
The bill’s intention to provide leadership in avoiding dangerous rates of global climate change is good and we support this intention.
However, we have serious reservations about the vacuous context in which this UK-only target figure has been selected. Lacking any globally numerate rationale for emissions control, it is at best symbolic and in reality wholly inadequate and deeply misleading.
Concentrations of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere are an expression of cumulative emissions. The rate of concentrations rising is accelerating as a result of two factors: -
1. emissions from human sources – such as fossil fuel burning - are still rising,
2. natural sinks for these gases, such as the oceans and the forests, are slowly failing with result that an increasing fraction of emissions is staying permanently in the atmosphere.
These factors make the situation increasingly urgent as we continue to cause the problem of climate change much faster than we are acting to avoid it.
The relationship between concentrations, sources and sinks for emissions can best be understood like that of a bath [the atmosphere] into which water from a tap flows [source emissions] and from which water drains away through a plug-hole [sunk emissions]. The tap-is flowing faster than ever; the plug-hole is getting increasingly blocked and the bath is threatening to over-flow.
If there is still to be any meaningful chance of achieving the objective of the UN Treaty, very deep cuts in human emissions and the restoration of natural sinks are needed globally, quickly and organised in a globally rational and equitable mechanism.
The only emissions reduction mechanism that can be deployed to this purpose is Contraction and Convergence (C&C) as devised by the Global Commons Institute which already has enormous support: - www.gci.org.uk/briefings/ICE.pdf
Please use the public consultation on the Bill to urge the Government in the strongest terms to adopt Contraction and Convergence without delay and please write your MP asking that person to represent your concerns on this in parliament.
A leadership role on the international stage by definition requires C&C as, in the words of the Climate Treaty Secretariat the objective of the Treaty inevitably requires it.
Failure to organise and achieve this imperils modern civilisation, the lives of billions of the people and the biodiversity on Earth.
Yours Faithfully
Just sent this by a guy in Cheltenham:
This is why it was so important that Derek Wall said that the Green
Party supported C&C when he spoke in Stroud. It is bad enough that the
government introduced a Bill that refuses to set binding targets under
the spurious argument that governments might only remain in power for 4
years and that the economy might grow and that would make a particular
years cut difficult! That’s the whole point, we wouldn't be in this
mess without economic growth and we might stand a chance of getting out
of it if politicians told the truth about unending economic growth on a
finite planet. The Tories use the same deceitful mantra but call it
green growth instead! It's as if Peak oil was made up.
The main thing is the 60% by 2050 is based on stabilizing gge @ 550ppm
Co2. This is what Sir David King calls politically expedient and
commits the earth to something like a 3C rise and a high risk of
runaway global warming. Please see mark Lynas book for what sort of
world this will be). This is deeply deeply unacceptable. The government
is committed to stabilizing the temp rise this century to 2 C (which
could be very unpleasant as well). This would need a stabilization of
450ppm Co2 (some people say it needs to be 400ppm, which at 2ppm per@
rise gives us 10 years!). So basically the government is being deeply
deceitful and grossly negligent in it’s duties to the electorate. The
other parties are also in favour of a policy which is wrong, dangerous
and will fail us all.
I see C&C and this consultation as a real opportunity for the Green
Party to differentiate themselves from the Johnny come lately green
charlatans. It fits with the idea of localization and it is about
fairness and social equity and actually making poverty history. The Green Party can show leadership on this. They can tell people the
truth, which is sadly missing from our major political parties. They
must do, without C&C we are stuffed.
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