Two years ago Friends of the Earth began their Big Ask campaign for a Government Climate Change bill. Tens of thousands OI got involved and over 400 MP.s signed an early day motion. We were asking for annual, legally binding cuts in green house gas emissions of 3%, to be independently monitored.
In response, the government has now come up with a draft Bill which, although proposing statutory targets falls far short of what is needed to tackle dangerous and accelerating climate change.
Proclaimed last month by Environment Secretary David Milliband "robust and durable and fancifully spun by Tony Blair as a revolutionary step in confronting the threat of climate change the Bills targets are far too low and far too remote.
Its 60% cuts by 2050 and an interim 26-32% by 2020 are way below what is needed to prevent us reaching the potentially 2C tipping point, when global warming could spiral out of control. Many scientists and environmentalists now agree that 90% is needed and a good proportion say by 2030.
The government has also rejected annual targets in was actually more of the same favour of five yearly 'carbon budgets' and reviews since, according to Milliband You cannot have annual targets because you cannot predict the weather' (Surely the precise reason for frequent monitoring !)
The Bill does propose a nominally independent monitoring body. Yet the question, as with New Labour appointed outfits is will it be truly independent and will it have any teeth?
Failure to meet targets may apparently result in a judicial review which would 'name and shame. This is scarcely a problem for a government already so mired in lies and corruption. Missed targets can also be adjusted by buying Stern concluded that the failure to tackle it was 'the greatest market failure ever' His remedy in credits from less-polluting countries -meaning the richer carry on polluting at the expense of the poorer.
Whether New Labour is serious or not about climate change can be judged both by their past record of failure, as well as current attempts to remedy this.
Earlier this year Gordon Brown, as Chancellor and aspirant prime minister commissioned a report from a former World Bank economist on the economics of climate change.
Stern concluded that the failure to tackle it was 'the greatest market failure ever. His remedy was actually more of the same - that the crisis could be seen as a huge business opportunity if companies got their act together and switched renewables, energy efficiency products and so on.
Gordon Brown however lacks vision even in this field of conversion to a low carbon economy that would benefit capitalism. Despite professed enthusiasm for market mechanisms such as the ETS and some new-found rhetoric about a 'new world order' (heaven forbid) for the environment, all his measures so far have amounted to mere tinkering.
Thus, paltry tax increases on air flights and gas-guzzlers are quite irrelevant in the face of government support for massive road and airport expansion. Miserly increases in grants for microgeneration are also no substitute for the huge investment needed in renewables (still only around 4% in Britain) - instead of current massive subsidies to the nuclear and fossil fuel industries.
In fact, research suggests that Brown's recent so-called green budget proposals would cut only 33,000 tons a year from Britain's domestic carbon emissions - a mere 0.15% of the total! - so much for New Labour's false claim to be leading the world in tackling climate change'