"The UK as many others Member states is developing fake measures to fight against climate change designed to make public feel better about thereselves, without political pain:
Car voluntary agreement with the EU and Tax looks morelike incientive than anything else! The other big fake measure is the biofuel: 1. A study conducted last year by Sarasin, a Swiss bank placed "the present limit for the environmentally and socially responsible use of biofuels at roughly 5% of current petrol and diesel consumption in the EU and US" 2. A study by the Dutch scientific consultancy Delft Hydraulics found that the production of every tonne of palm oil causes 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. This makes oil palm 10 times worse than petroleumJust a lot of hot air" JLR
Tony Blair talks the talk on climate change. But a new investigation reveals that the government's strategies for cutting carbon dioxide emissions are little more than a sham. By George Monbiot
George Monbiot
Monday March 5, 2007
Guardian
'If we do not motivate ourselves to take the decisions commensurate with the gravity of the threat that we face," said Tony Blair at the launch of the Bill Clinton's climate initiative last year, "we will betray in the most irresponsible way the generations to come. That is not something I want on my conscience as a political leader."
Well, it looks as if he is going to have to live with it. Blair has had 10 years in which to tackle Britain's contribution to global climate change, and he has blown it. His bold initiatives and stirring speeches now look like little more than greenwash. For the first time, we have the figures to prove it.
With Channel 4's series Dispatches, I commissioned a team of environmental scientists at University College, London, to conduct a peer-reviewed audit of the government's planned greenhouse gas reductions. The scientists, led by Professor Mark Maslin, estimated the real impact of its carbon-cutting policies. Nothing quite like this has ever been done before. The results are staggering.
The government has two formal targets for reducing Britain's climate-changing gases. The first is the one set by the Kyoto protocol, which commits the UK to a 12.5% reduction by 2012. The second is its long-term goal of a 60% cut in carbon dioxide by 2050. This target will be made legally binding later this year.
Last year the government's Energy Review found that to show "real progress" towards the 2050 target, by 2020 the UK's greenhouse gas emissions would need to be reduced to between 143 and 149m tonnes a year. This means a cut of 29 to 31% on 1990 levels. We asked Maslin's team to assess the policies that are supposed to deliver it.
For an audit, the 2020 aim is more useful than the 2050 target. If we are to have a realistic chance of hitting it, the necessary policies must already be in place or in development. While the Blair government would be only partly responsible if we fail to make 60% by 2050, it will carry almost all the blame if we do not reach its milestone in 2020.
Our audit reveals that the government's assessment of its own policies is wildly optimistic. Instead of a 29-31% cut by 2020, it is on course to deliver a reduction of between 12% and 17%. At this rate the UK will not meet its 2020 milestone until 2050. This result suggests that the government's claim to be "leading the world on tackling climate change" is simply another product of the Downing Street spin machine. Its carbon-cutting policies are little more than a sham. Take transport, for example. The government expects that national transport emissions (not counting international flights) will rise by 4m tonnes between 1990 and 2020. Maslin's team discovered that the real increase will be between 7 and 13m tonnes.
Faced with a vocal and powerful motoring lobby, Blair's government has sought to cut emissions in three ways, all of which are failing. The first is a voluntary agreement, struck in Brussels with the major motor manufacturers. In 1998, the car makers promised they would reduce the average emissions from new cars from 190 to 140 grams per kilometre in 10 years. The deadline is next year, and they will miss their target by half: the real figure is likely to be 164 grams.
The second mechanism is the tax we pay to put a car on the road - vehicle excise duty (VED). In 2001, the government replaced the flat rate for VED with a graduated tax. Owners of the most fuel-hungry cars would have to pay more than owners of efficient models. Seven bands were introduced, starting with A (for cars that produce less than 100 grams per kilometre) and rising to G (for those producing more than 225 grams).
A survey carried out by the Department for Transport found that to encourage most drivers to switch to a less polluting model, you would need a difference between the bands of at least £150. The government's Sustainable Development Commission went further: if the tax were to be really effective, the top whack should be £1,800. But the government's top rate is £215, and the average difference between the bands £35. When you are shelling out £65,000 for a Range Rover, is that really going to make a difference?
The third policy is to encourage us to switch to biofuels - diesel or alcohol made from plants. By 2010, the government wants 5% of all our transport fuels to be made this way. By 2020, the EU wants to raise this to 20%. But there are two massive problems, which the government consistently refuses to address. The first is that beyond a certain point, the production of fuel begins to compete directly with the production of food. A study conducted last year by Sarasin, a Swiss bank placed "the present limit for the environmentally and socially responsible use of biofuels at roughly 5% of current petrol and diesel consumption in the EU and US". Already, when only a tiny fraction of our transport fuel comes from plants, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation reports that the demand for biofuels has helped to cause a "surge in the prices of cereals" to "levels not seen for a decade". All over the world, the poor are feeling the effect.
The second problem is that the new market has stimulated a massive expansion of destructive plantations, especially of oil palm. Palm oil planting is the major cause of tropical deforestation in both Malaysia and Indonesia. As the forests are cut down, the carbon in both the trees and the peat they grow on turns into carbon dioxide. A study by the Dutch scientific consultancy Delft Hydraulics found that the production of every tonne of palm oil causes 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. This makes oil palm 10 times worse than petroleum. Already nine new palm oil refineries are being built, in Malaysia, Singapore and Rotterdam, specifically to meet the growing demand from the European biofuel market.
The government urges us not to worry - a "second generation" of biofuels will eventually become available, made from straw, wood and waste. But there is no guarantee that these will out-compete their cheap but destructive rivals, or that they will be ready before the last rain-forests in south-east Asia have been felled.
In every sector the audit found similar oversights, elisions and deceptions. In housing, for example, the government has loudly proclaimed its intention to use better building regulations to make new houses more energy efficient - by 2016, it says, every new home in the country will be "zero carbon". But since the energy efficiency regulations were first introduced in 1985 there has not been a single prosecution for non-compliance. Building inspectors treat the energy rules as a joke - in one recent survey they dismissed them as "trivial" and "not life threatening". A study by the Building Research Establishment of new houses passed by the inspectors found that 43% of them did not meet satisfactory energy standards.
But the biggest greenwash of all involves flying. Under the Kyoto protocol, the pollution from international flights does not count towards a country's emissions. The government has taken this as a licence to ignore flying even when setting its own targets. The emissions simply do not appear on the balance sheet. Otherwise it could not justify its instruction to the UK's airports to double their capacity between now and 2030.
Because they were assessing the government's own programme, the auditors didn't produce figures for aviation. But even the government proposes that carbon emissions from planes will rise by 10.5m tonnes between 1990 and 2020. Had it been incorporated into the audit, this figure would have reduced the cuts for the whole economy by 2020 to between 8 and 13%.
But the government's figure is almost certainly a wild underestimate. It counts only half the emissions from planes flying to and from our airports, on the grounds that only half the passengers belong to this country. In reality, 67% are UK citizens. It also ignores the other greenhouse gases - especially high-level water vapour - that flying produces. If increases in international flights were counted in the national total, they could wipe out all the cuts in the UK's emissions between 1990 and 2020.
What makes these failures most shocking is that Blair's government took office in 1997 with a massive head start. When John Major left office, the UK was one of the few nations on course to meet its Kyoto commitments, with plenty of emissions to spare. That advantage has already been squandered. Today the UK is turning out slightly more carbon dioxide than it was in 1997 (though other greenhouse gases have declined) and we will just scrape in beneath the 2012 Kyoto bar, while on course for dramatically missing our 2020 and 2050 targets.
Instead of real action to deal with the greatest menace of the 21st century, the government has sold us a set of fake policies, designed to make us feel better about ourselves, without political pain. Next time Blair gives a heart-rending speech about his legacy to future generations, don't believe a word of it.
· George Monbiot will present Dispatches: Greenwash on Channel 4 at 8pm tonight. www.monbiot.com
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
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