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Climate bill success!
WDM hailed the significant progress made by the government in strengthening the bill, but urged ministers to close the remaining loopholes before the bill goes for royal ascent in November.
During the evening the government presented its latest amendments to the bill, and debated several others put before it by MPs from all three major parties. Highlights of the revised bill include:
- an increase in the UK’s emissions reductions targets from 60 per cent to 80 per cent by 2050; although the 2020 targets remain unchanged
- regular carbon budgets, to be set every five years by the climate change committee
- a commitment to ‘have regard to’ the contributions of aviation and shipping to UK emissions, although without an explicit requirement to calculate within the annual budgets until at least 2012 or an international agreement has been reached.
WDM campaigners have played a huge role in sending the message loud and clear to Parliament that we need a visionary piece of legislation to tackle one of the gravest threats to poverty eradication.
And while the latest version of the bill represents a massive step forward, we need to keep pushing to close the remaining loopholes – in particular the possibility that the government could use emissions trading to buy its way out of domestic action to cut emissions.
As the bill enters its final stage, we will be pressing the government to adopt amendments that would bind the government to make at least 70 per cent of emissions cuts here at home, rather than via carbon trading.
What's next?
Email Ed Miliband, the new minister in charge of energy and climate change and tell him to take climate change seriously by stopping Kingsnorth coal power station.
You can still write to your MP to ask for a strong climate bill
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