More analysis on the UK Government’s proposed new carbon emissions legislation, this from Richard Black, the BBC’s Environmental Correspondent. If you were to think of one word to characterize the Blair Government it would be “targets”, and, just as in Health, Education, and other areas of policy, the Government now plans to impose performance targets for reducing emissions. The problem in this case is that the targets are being imposed not on an agency of Government or on its employees but on the Government itself. As Black notes, a future Government could just decide to ignore these targets if they are not met, or even repeal the legislation making them binding.

” Is there a real target for legal action if emissions do not fall? And here is one of the big holes in the plan.

Normally the law works like this. If I do something which you do not like - whether it is planting too high a hedge between our gardens or planting an axe in your head - there is a powerful third party (the state, in some guise or other) which will intervene, apportion blame, and punish.

With the Climate Change Bill, it is not at all clear what happens should a future UK government not meet its legally binding emissions target. The consultation document - for this is draft legislation - says that “…a government which fails to meet its targets or stay within budget would be open to judicial review”.

This is perhaps the sort of sanction which a future government might decide it can withstand, particularly if elements of the low-carbon economy turn out to be unpopular.

There are plenty of examples, not just in Britain, of carbon targets which have been missed when they proved difficult.

Labour missed its 1997 election manifesto pledge of a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2010 by a vast margin. The Kyoto Protocol targets are supposed to be legally binding too; but a number of countries are currently way off achieving them, and the Canadian government has decided it is not worth attempting to reduce emissions as its predecessors promised.”

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This entry was posted on March 14th, 2007 at 13:41 (GMT) and is filed under Emissions Reductions, Policy . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.