What needs strengthening?

The Climate Change Committee has spoken!

Following immense pressure from NGOs, the scientific community and members of the public, the Climate Change Committee (at the request of the government) has reported early on the UK's emissions reduction target and other key areas of the legislation. The recommendation of the committee is that the target in the Climate Change Bill should be revised upwards to at least 80% by 2050, and that the legislation should apply to all greenhouse gases - not just carbon dioxide.

A target of 80% means the UK (according to the latest science) will be intending to deliver its fair share of the global cuts needed to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations at a safe level. In fact, if all developed countries followed suit and made a cut of 80%, we would have a good chance of staying below the tipping point of 2°C.

However, it is now up to the UK government to set a challenging interim target by 2020. The science dictates that if we leave it too late to make the cuts needed, we will set ourselves on a course of irreversible climate change. This is not something we can leave until the last minute, and so we need to plan now for a trajectory towards a low-carbon economy by 2050, which means equally realistic cuts by 2020 as the government will set for 2050.

WWF also believes that at least 70% of the target should be met by genuine reductions, allowing only 30% of the target to be met by buying carbon credits from international trading schemes.