Climate

Boris Johnson says Cop26 will have failed unless the world has committed to “halve emissions by the end of this decade”, toughening his aims for the crucial climate summit.Ahead of leaders gathering in Glasgow in Sunday, a Downing Street spokesman said: “This is the decade action needs to be taken – it’s no longer something that can be talked about in broad terms.”In recent days, Mr Johnson has spoken about net zero targets for 2050 – rather than to slash carbon emissions by 2030 – prompting suggestions he was laying the ground for effective failure.But the spokesman, asked what “success” would look like, said it must be 2030 commitments to “keep alive” the aim of preventing global temperature rises of more than 1.5C since industrialisation.Currently, the planet is “way off track”, the United Nations has warned, on a path to 2.7C – and, experts say, 2.1C even if existing CO2-cutting commitments are kept.Just 7.5 per cent would be chopped off predicted annual greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 – far from the 47 per cent reduction that is needed.“We must halve emissions by the end of this decade,” the spokesman said, ahead of Mr Johnson putting G20 summit leaders in Rome, to pile on more pressure for deeper CO2 cuts.“Countries around the world, particularly developing countries, are already seeing the real world impacts of this. They know what limiting 1.5 means in the real world, because they are seeing the impact of temperature rise – flooding, or droughts – already.”However, the spokesman said Cop26 would not attempt to agree a specific figure for reducing expected gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emitted by 2030, insisting that was not its role.And he declined to say whether a tougher “rachet” mechanism – to force countries to prove progress towards announced goals every two years, instead of five – would be set down.But No 10 insisted the UK, as the Cop26 host, would not be “marking its own homework” on success or failure, when the summit concludes in two weeks’ time.It would be up to the UN and others to judge whether the agreements reached are “sufficient that we remain on track” to a temperature rise of 1.5C.What No 10 is calling an “extremely ambitious goal” for Glasgow comes despite gloom that China has failed to shift in its long-awaited “nationally determined contribution” (NDC).Emissions by the world’s biggest current contributor to the climate emergency would still only peak by 2030 and be reduced to net zero only three decades later.Mr Johnson will badger other G20 leaders to go faster and further despite the failure to boost spending on the UK’s – largely unfunded – net zero plan, in Wednesday’s Budget.Instead, the chancellor Rishi Sunak was sharply criticised for making flying and driving cheaper, widening the divide with sky-high train fares.Nevertheless, the spokesman said: “The success of Cop26 still hangs in the balance. Too many countries are still doing too little. It’s going to be challenging.”Speaking on the flight to Rome, Mr Johnson called Cop26 “the last opportunity for the planet“, but also struck a more cautious note.“We are not going to stop global warming in Rome or in this meeting in Cop” he said.“The most we can hope to do is slow the increase. What we need to do is to take steps now that give us the ability in future to come back and make further commitments.”In Rome – as well as meeting Emmanuel Macron, to try to calm the fierce post-Brexit fishing dispute – Mr Johnson will come under pressure to go further on vaccine donations to poor nations.No 10 says it is on course to have handed over 30 million “surplus” doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab by the end of the year – with a total of 100 million pledged by the middle of 2022.But Gordon Brown has organised a letter, signed by 160 former world leaders and global figures, demanding an emergency military airlift of far more.Ahead of the G20, Mr Johnson also announced £160m to build floating offshore wind ports and factories around the UK, to help hit a target of providing 1GW of energy by 2030 – nearly 9 times the current volume worldwide. More

Boris Johnson’s government will struggle to reach its net zero target unless local councils get involved in making homes more energy efficient, MPs have warned.Ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK ministers have set out proposals to encourage green home improvements as part of a wider plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.But MPs on the housing committee said the government’s strategy lacks proper funding for local authorities to help make Britain’s homes more energy efficient.Labour MP Clive Betts, the chair of the housing select committee, said councils must be given support to help deliver change. “The government must learn the lessons of past failed nationally delivered ‘green’ schemes,” he said.Mr Betts added: “To meet the scale of the challenge and enable local councils to make long-term decisions on behalf of their communities, the government should also come forward with a long-term funding plan for local authority climate action.”The government’s plan to hand out £5,000 grants to help residents replace their gas boilers with green heat pumps over the next three years has been branded “inadequate” by environmentalists.Only 90,000 of the UK’s 22 million gas-heated households will benefit from the £450m commitment, according to Friends of the Earth. Greenpeace also warned it “stopped short of what is required”.The report published by the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on Friday also claimed the government’s strategy lacked ambition.The MPs said there was a risk a large number of existing gas boilers will simply be replaced with new gas boilers unless families were given a greater incentive to make changes.“Moving to lower or zero emissions from new homes is important,” said Mr Betts. “But to reach net zero, it’s crucial that insulation is improved in existing homes and that householders are offered viable choices and incentives to replace their gas boilers and decarbonise their heating.”The MPs report also urged the government to set funding plans to decarbonise heating beyond 2025, and bring in a new target of moving to zero carbon homes by 2030.The Local Government Association (LGA), the body representing local authorities across England, said council bosses would have to be “at the core” of the country’s efforts to hit the net zero target.“It is absolutely crucial that councils are at the forefront of the national response to climate change,” said councillor Darren Rodwell, the LGA’s environment spokesperson. “We need the government to work in partnership with local authorities to … help to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 or sooner.” More

“Insufficient care” in changes to how farmers receive subsidies has led to a “haphazard” transition process, risking livelihoods, MPs have warned.After Brexit, the government is replacing the EU’s agricultural subsidies with a new payment system designed to help farmers while also boosting biodiversity, protecting soils and improving access to land.While the old EU system largely paid farmers based on the area of land they farmed, there are concerns the new system, known as the Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme, could inadvertently put greater pressures on farmers to extract money from their land – possibly through increased use of unsustainable practices.The Environmental, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) Committee warned the government’s handling of the transition means farmers are now left with considerable uncertainty about how the seven-year transition to the new system would affect their businesses.The committee said the government department responsible for implementing the process – Defra – has put “insufficient emphasis and care” into managing the transition, risking a “haphazard” process with unintended consequences.The report criticised the government’s communication with farmers, saying Defra must “develop a clear engagement strategy which connects with the full range of farmers and land managers, or its plans will risk falling at the first hurdle.”As well as there having been delays in communicating the new policy to farmers, the committee also highlighted particular challenges the system presents to those farming the uplands.“Defra must avoid ‘squandering’ the potential of uplands, tenant farms and common land to deliver public goods such as carbon capture and storage,” the report said.The ELM payments should follow the same path as the previous EU subsidies did, the committee said – where farmers were not rewarded for taking action to revitalise the environment – and they said the new payments must fairly and fully represent the costs of delivering green action.Defra must publish an impact assessment detailing the consequences of the transition for different agricultural sectors and regions, develop a clear engagement strategy with farmers, and publish precise and measurable objectives for ELM.The committee also urged the government to retain the current budget for agricultural payments until at least 2029.Neil Parish, chairman of the Efra select committee, said: “This is the most fundamental change to agricultural funding in a generation, and the impact of this huge change on farmers’ incomes and entire ways of life cannot be underestimated.“The plan to support farmers through this transition must be robust, and it must be able to adapt to unforeseen circumstances.”He accused the government of being determined to plough ahead with phasing out the old payments without considering how it would affect farmers’ livelihoods and the environment.“It is essential that the government undertake the necessary work to understand exactly what the consequences of this transition will be.”He added: “These schemes will only be successful if uptake is high- and this can only happen if land managers are clear on how ELM will work for them.“It is essential that Defra engage effectively with the full range of land managers and farmers to communicate its plans, and that it funds peer-to-peer learning, which will build the confidence needed for the English farming sector to fully embrace the change.”A Defra spokesperson said: “Our future agricultural policy will move away from the arbitrary land subsidies and top-down bureaucracy that epitomised the EU era and incentivise farmers to farm more sustainably, create space for nature and enhance animal welfare outcomes. We are supporting the choices that farmers make for their own holdings.“Since January, in England, we have increased the money going to Countryside Stewardship, we have consulted on an exit scheme and we will be setting out plans to support new entrants.”Additional reporting by PA. More

Campaigners have criticised the government for scrapping a planned fuel duty rise, saying the freeze on petrol and diesel taxes for the twelfthyear in a row amounted to a subsidy for drivers of polluting vehicles just days before the UK hosts a major climate summit. Rishi Sunak announced in the Budget on Wednesday that the planned rise in fuel duty would be cancelled because of high pump prices.The chancellor said he was “not prepared to add to the squeeze on families and small businesses”.The move, which will cost the taxpayer nearly £8bn over the next five years, drew sharp criticism from clean air and active travel advocates, coming just days before the UK hosts the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow. Jemima Hartshorn, founder of clean air pressure group Mums for Lungs, told The Independent: “The chancellor clearly hasn’t made the connection between the climate emergency, public health, the pandemic and the need for combining all of these in a responsible Budget that addresses future challenges but also ensures the health of children now.”The UK continues to suffer from illegal levels of pollution linked to emissions from the high numbers of cars, taxis and lorries on the roads. Ms Hartshorn said motor vehicle owners “receive much more generous subsidies compared with sustainable means of travel, such as public transport. This needed to be addressed in the Budget so that investment and subsidies from the government ensure that everyone is encouraged to travel in a way that is not polluting and harming our children.”Simon Munk, campaigns manager at the London Cycling Campaign, also criticised the government for the fuel duty U-turn and said the government should focus on discouraging unnecessary car journeys rather than making it cheaper to drive. “We understand that many people are struggling with the cost of living, but with Cop26 looming, and the planetary climate crisis rightly in starker focus than ever before, this announcement is the polar opposite of what the government needs to do to help save our planet and our country from runaway climate change,” he said.“We urgently need to swap the government’s £27bn roads building programme to building active travel and convenient, affordable public transport schemes, and move towards a system of charges that discourages avoidable trips by car, and helps people switch to good, sustainable alternatives. “In London that means a long-term funding deal on active travel and public transport for TfL and the Mayor, and them having the ability to implement ‘smart road-user pricing’ inside the M25.”Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the fuel duty freeze was a “big tax loss” for the Treasury and “hardly consistent with climate change objectives”.However, warnings about the climate and health impacts of the policy were brushed aside by motorists. At one forecourt in London, drivers told The Independent they welcomed any move to keep prices down. Liz Durham, a dog walker from Clapham Junction, said petrol had become much more expensive since the pandemic. “Filling up my tank cost £58 today,” she said at the Jet petrol station in Loughborough Junction, south London. “When I bought this car three years ago it would never have cost me this much. Prices have gone up a lot recently and the whole thing is such a mess. “Cutting fuel duty will be beneficial to anyone who has to drive, like me. I have to drive for work, the dogs don’t collect themselves.” Samantha Stewart, who lives in nearby Brixton, also backed the fuel duty freeze. “Driving has been very expensive since the whole petrol-gate thing,” she said, referencing the shortages of drivers last month which led many petrol stations to temporarily close after running out of fuel. “I have noticed prices shooting up. If fuel duty had risen it would have affected us financially. £40 on petrol used to go a long way, but not anymore. Those that are less vulnerable should drive less, and more people should walk, but I have long Covid so it is more difficult for me.”RAC fuel spokesman Simon Williams said: “We welcome the chancellor’s confirmation that duty will continue to remain frozen at 57.95p a litre until next year. With pump prices at record highs, now would have been the worst possible time to change tack and hike up costs still further at the forecourt.” More

The government will cut taxes on domestic flights to make it cheaper to fly within the UK, Rishi Sunak has announced – despite being told by his climate advisors that he needs to reduce aviation.In a budget delivered just days before the UK hosts the Cop26 UN climate conference in Glasgow the chancellor said he wanted to make internal air travel cheaper to “cut the cost of living”.And he also announced that the government will continue to freeze fuel duty, a policy which has made it increasingly cheaper to drive compared to more environmentally sustainable alternatives.Mr Sunak’s announcement attracted the ire of environmentalists, with Green MP Caroline Lucas warning that the chancellor did not “get the memo on the climate emergency” and Friends of the Earth branding the move “astonishing”. It comes a day after the government’s own Climate Change Committee (CCC) told Boris Johnson he needed discourage people from flying and that his administration’s net zero strategy had “nothing to say” on aviation.Mr Sunak’s policy in flights is the polar opposite of some other European countries – which have increasingly moved to restrict domestic air travel where rail alternatives are available.But the government is moving to push passengers from rail to flying by cutting the price of internal flights while rail fares are set to rise at the fastest rate in a decade from January.”Right now people pay more for return flights within and between the four nations of the United Kingdom than they do when flying home from abroad,” Mr Sunak told MPs on Wednesday afternoon.”We used to have a return leg exemption for domestic flights, but were required to remove it in 2001. “But today, I can announce that flights between airports in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will from April 2023 be subject to a new lower rate of air passenger duty.”Mr Sunak claimed the policy would “help cut the cost of living with nine million passengers seeing their duty cut by half”. “It will bring people together across the United Kingdom, and because because they tend to have a greater proportion of domestic passengers it is a boost to regional airports like Aberdeen, Inverness and Southampton which are major regional employers.”The Chancellor also confirmed he would extend state support to English airports for a further six months to “help them get through the winter”.Mr Sunak also said he would create a new “ultra long haul band” of air passenger duty affecting just 5 per cent of passengers would increase air passenger duty on flights over 5500 miles long.In a statement earlier this week the CCC, a statutory body which advises the government on meeting its climate change targets said: “The government does not include an explicit ambition on diet change, or reductions in the growth of aviation, and policies for managing travel demand have not been developed to match the funding that has been committed. “These remain valuable options with major co-benefits and can help manage delivery risks around a techno-centric approach. They must be explored further with a view to early action.”Friends of the Earth’s head of policy, Mike Childs, said: “Cutting Air Passenger Duty on domestic flights is an astonishing move that completely flies in the face of the climate emergency. The Chancellor should be making it cheaper for people to travel around the country by train, not carbon-guzzling planes.“Air Passenger Duty for all flights should have been increased, or even better replaced with a frequent flyers levy, aimed at curbing multiple flights taken by a minority of people each year.“As the Prime Minister prepares to host next week’s crucial climate summit, this retrograde step is another illustration that the government’s carbon reduction plans don’t add up.”Rebecca Newsom, head of politics at Greenpeace UK said Mr Sunak was “actively making things worse by making it cheaper to fly between UK cities”, while James Thornton, chief executive of campaign group ClientEarth the announcement on fuel and domestic flight duties “goes against everything we know about climate change” and warned that the UK had “missed a crucial chance to lead by example”. Luke Murphy, head of the environmental justice commission at the Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank, meanwhile said Mr Sunak had “used the budget to extend the ages of fossil fuels”.“Cutting air passenger duty was the most significant new policy mentioned in the budget speech today which will have an impact on greenhouse gas emissions – and it will increase them. Rishi Sunak talked for longer about beer duty, than our duty to future generations to address the climate and nature crises,” he said.“The truth is, this climate-void, fossil-fuel heavy budget failed to deliver the necessary £30 billion of investment needed each year to meet our climate and nature targets.”And Sam Alvis, head of green renewal at Green Alliance, said the chancellor’s approach to climate was “increasingly difficult to understand”.“Just days away from a vital climate conference championed by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak barely mentions net zero and encourages people to fly around the UK rather than take the train. The measure on air passenger duty will even cost the Treasury money rather than boost its revenue, he said.Ed Miliband, Labour’s shadow energy and climate secretary said: “Another Budget from the Chancellor which failed on both the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis. “No green recovery, no plan to save families £400 on bills, no plan for green steel. Working people will pay the price of Tory climate delay.” More