Staying green in the gloom
In the UK The Guardian is reporting on the need for Staying green in the gloom
Ed Miliband, the [UK's] secretary of state for energy and climate change, may only just have found a desk in his newborn department, but he already has a crucial document to read at it. Yesterday’s interim advice from the committee on climate change was short and strong: by 2050 Britain must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to below 80% of 1990 levels, rather than the 60% cut now proposed in the climate change bill. This tougher target, the report says, must be written into the bill before it becomes law. On top of that, the 80% reduction needs to be made even harsher to compensate for emissions from international aviation and shipping, excluded from the existing 60% target.
In these dark economic times our dear leaders will be tempted to put off the hard decisions regarding emissions reduction targets, and this would be catastrophic. Politicians are elected to make hard decisions; be they sending our children off to war, rescuing corrupt banks, or applying the crimps to the economy in order to save our futures. In Australia the final Garnaut Report seems to pretty much throw in the towel in the name of political pragmatism, but still implores the Rudd government to take the hard decisions, the decisions we elected them to take. Time will tell but if we get this wrong it’s our children, and their children who will suffer the real consequences. — DS