Portsmouth Climate Action Network

Patrick Wintour Guardian 10.3.08

A powerful new government climate change committee will meet today for the first time to decide how ministers will meet their commitment to cut carbon emissions by 60% by 2050, and whether the target needs to be strengthened in the face of worsening forecasts on climate change.

The committee, set up as part of the Climate Change Act and chaired by the former CBI boss Lord Turner, could play an important role in ministers being hauled in front of the courts for failing to take global warming sufficiently seriously

The committee will give advice by the end of the year on whether the emission cuts target should rise to 80%, and how ministers should set about cutting emissions in the first three of a series of five-year cycles leading to 2050. Ministers now have a legal duty to try to meet their targets.

The meeting comes as MPs on the all-party environment audit select committee warn that the Treasury is still not doing enough to face the challenge of green taxes. The MPs claim in a fresh report that green issues have been ghettoised in government and green taxes as a proportion of the tax take are continuing to decline.

In a damning assessment, the MPs write: "There is little sign the Treasury has taken on board the recommendations made in the Stern review on the economics of climate change last year in its approach to the environment."

Green taxes as a proportion of all taxes have continued to decline, falling to 7.3% in 2006 from a 1999 peak of 9.7%.

The new advisory body will set out, broadly sector by sector, where the burden of carbon cutting should fall in the proposed five-yearly "carbon budgets". Acting almost like an internal government select committee, it will report to parliament annually on the government's progress, providing powerful pressure on ministers to overcome the inertia that grips decision-makers on climate change all over the world.

Ministers will have to explain why they have decided not to follow expert advice, and in theory ministers could be made subject to court action if the committee ruled they were failing in their statutory duty to reach their target.

The other members of the committee, apart from Lord Turner, are scientists Sir Brian Hoskins and Lord (Robert) May, technology professor Jim Skea and economists Dr Sam Fankhauser and Professor Michael Grubb.

The committee has also been empowered to advise ministers on whether to incorporate international aviation or international shipping emissions in the UK's targets and budgets, something that does not happen at present, and is seen as a major flaw in government reporting.

Last update : 17-03-2008 07:27

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