The government has been defeated in court – for a second time – for not doing enough to meet its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmental campaigners argued that the energy minister signed off the government’s climate plan without evidence it could be achieved.
The High Court ruled on Friday that the government will now be required to redraft the plan again.
In response the government defended its record on climate action.
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: “The UK can be hugely proud of its record on climate change. We do not believe a court case about process represents the best way of driving progress towards our shared goal of reaching net zero.”
The legal challenge was brought by environmental groups Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth and The Good Law Project.
Tony Bosworth, lead campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said it was “an embarrassing day for the government”.
Speaking outside the court to BBC News he said: “What we now need to see is a climate plan which is robust, which is comprehensive and which is fair, which makes sure we meet all our climate targets, and which does that in a way which doesn’t leave anybody behind.”
Urgency is a word in constant use to emphasise the immediacy and scale at which our changing climate demands action. After more than ten years at the helm of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), I recognise the opportunities that this urgent action offers — economic, social, and environmental — as well as the disastrous consequences of failing to respond quickly enough.
Yet, the meaning of ‘urgency’ seems lost on those who need to grasp it most – our political leaders. They alone have the power to set in motion the rapid transformation that is necessary to deliver on our climate goals. That was recognised by the UK when they hosted the UN climate talks in Glasgow in 2021. We led the world in setting the tough targets we need to avert disaster and to turn this immense problem into a real opportunity to build a better world. Alok Sharma and his team rose to the occasion and, with all its deficiencies, my view is that COP26 set us on the path to Net Zero in 2050.
Yet, necessary as they are, targets are only the beginning of the process and the CCC has consistently emphasised the necessity of a detailed programme if those targets are to be achieved. It was the lack of that which led the High Court to insist that this Government produce a clear delivery programme by the end of March 2023. In response, the Government published a many-paged document which, it claimed, met the Court’s requirement. In fact, upon detailed expert analysis, it became clear that this document gave even less assurance of meeting our legally binding targets than had been previously thought. It was because of this that I took the decision to support a legal challenge in the High Court by Friends of the Earth. Their challenge over the inadequacy of the government’s climate strategy was heard last month alongside two separate, but related, cases brought by Good Law Project and ClientEarth.
I was still in post at the CCC at the time the Government produced its updated climate strategy. In the many years I led the organisation, the CCC would get advanced information about any plans published under the 2008 Climate Change Act. Yet ahead of the publication of the UK’s new climate strategy in March 2023, this failed to happen. The departure from established ways of working has led me to believe the Government did not want its official advisers to examine the draft plan before it was published.
Government told to reject John Woodcock’s proposals to blacklist Palestine solidarity and climate campaign groups
UNIONS and human rights groups have called on the government to reject “profoundly anti-democratic and repressive” proposals to blacklist Palestine solidarity and climate campaign groups.
John Woodcock, Westminster’s adviser on political violence, urged the government earlier this month to ban politicians from engaging with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), as well as groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil.
Mr Woodcock, who has received money from Israel lobby groups, said that the government should take a “zero-tolerance approach” to pro-Palestine protests, which he claimed were a “menace […] threatening our democracy.”
In a joint statement, civil rights orgnisations Liberty, Friends of the Earth and Amnesty International said the activities of organisations like PSC are “essential elements of our democratic system.”
“Any suggestion that the government or political parties should ban all meetings or engagement with legal civil society organisations or sections of the electorate is profoundly anti-democratic and sets a dangerous precedent,” it warned.
…
“Politicians should be listening to the wishes of the public and put pressure on Israel to end its murderous assault, rather than trying to shut down democratic engagement and debate.”
Exclusive: Under current policies, Britain could fall short of internationally agreed goal of 68% cut in emissions by 2030
The UK government is likely to miss its targets under the Paris climate agreement by a wide margin, analysis shows, dealing a devastating blow to Britain’s standing on the international stage.
Under current policies, the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions are likely to be 59% lower in 2030 than they were in 1990 – but the country’s internationally agreed target is for a 68% reduction by the end of this decade. The gap is likely to leave Britain in breach of these commitments.
The 2030 emissions goal was agreed at Cop26, the UN climate summit hosted by the UK in Glasgow in 2021, and has been reaffirmed at Cop28, taking place in Dubai this week.
Failure to meet the UK’s commitments would hinder international efforts to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels.
The estimate comes from analysis of publicly available and government data carried out by Friends of the Earth. It found that current policies would achieve just over half the emissions cuts needed by 2030.
The gap had grown significantly under Rishi Sunak’s leadership, Friends of the Earth found.
Environment technicians gather on a sample plot at the Kasigau corridor in Kenya on August 9, 2023. (Photo: Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images)
“Carbon offset trading is reckless and irresponsible,” said one campaigner.
A coalition of climate groups had a message for world leaders on Monday, Finance Day at the United Nations Climate Change Conference: “Stop carbon offsetting now!”
The conference, COP28, is hosted in Dubai by the United Arab Emirates—which, as the coalition highlighted in a joint statement, is set to “hold numerous promotional thematic events,” despite two decades of negative impacts from carbon offset schemes.
“Carbon offset trading is reckless and irresponsible,” declared Jutta Kill of the World Rainforest Movement—part of the coalition that includes ETC Group, Focus on the Global South, GRAIN, Indigenous Environmental Network, Just Transition Alliance, and the Oakland Institute.
“Throughout 2023, academic research , media , and civil society investigations have exposed how these projects routinely generate phantom offsets and result in land grabbing and human and Indigenous rights violations,” the organizations noted, pointing to “the forced relocation of Ogiek Peoples in Kenya’s Mau Forest” and “extensive sexual abuse at a Kenyan offset project.”
“Over the past months, Kenya, along with Liberia, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, have signed deals with Dubai-based Blue Carbon covering a total of over 24 million hectares of community lands,” the coalition continued. “Carbon offset project developers, standards bodies, auditors, and credit providers have pocketed millions from churning out carbon credits that have failed to reduce emissions and exacerbated the climate crisis.”
One “damning” probe from September found that nearly 80% of the top carbon offset schemes be deemed “likely junk or worthless.” Another study from that month, focused on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) projects, similarly concluded that reductions were dramatically exaggerated.
“At COP28, world leaders and climate negotiators need to recognize once and for all that carbon markets are a failed source of climate finance. They are volatile and unstable, marked by fraud, incapable of reducing emissions, and actually harm communities,” Oakland Institute executive director Anuradha Mittal said Monday.
The coalition pointed out that in addition to impacts such as relocations and abuse, “these projects, many of which are repackaged as so-called ‘nature-based solutions’ or ‘natural climate solutions’ or, when done at coastal and marine areas, as ‘blue carbon,’ have also drawn peasant and Indigenous communities into costly and complicated legal battles in their effort to affirm their rights and reclaim community territories and in their fights to resist the projects.”
"Nature based solutions", "net zero", "soil carbon farming"… ⚠️Look beyond the corporate smokescreen 🧐
None of the corporations pushing these schemes have pledged to stop burning fossil fuels or change their core business model, as we urgently need.
— Friends of the Earth International (@FoEint) October 3, 2023
The Kichwa communities in the Peruvian Amazon, Dayak communities in Indonesia, and Aka Indigenous communities and Bantu farmers in the Republic of Congo’s Bateke Plateau are among those negatively affected by carbon offsetting schemes.
“Over 20 years of history with offsets have resulted in the rights of Indigenous peoples being violated, increased land grabbing, and disproportionate impacts on Indigenous environmental defenders,” stressed Indigenous Environmental Network executive director Tom Goldtooth. “The false solutions will become a crime against humanity and Mother Earth.”
GRAIN’s Devlin Kuyek said that “they prop up a system that has enabled corporate polluters and rich countries to delay action and profit from the crisis. Whether unregulated or with a U.N. seal of approval, carbon offsetting in all its shapes and forms, including REDD or so-called ‘nature-based solutions’ and ‘blue carbon,’ is a fraud that must be immediately scrapped.”
The coalition asserted that rather than carbon offsetting, “what is urgently needed is renewed focus on keeping fossil fuels in the ground and commitments to real climate action based on equity and justice.”
As Friends of the Earth International’s Kirtana Chandrasekaran put it: “What we need are real emissions reductions and real climate finance. Anything less is failure.”
The new ‘scramble for Africa’
Agreements have been struck with African states home to crucial biodiversity hotspots, for land representing billions of dollars in potential carbon offsetting revenue.
The coalition’s demands contrasted sharply with Sunday comments from Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, COP28 president and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company CEO, who claimed there is “no science” behind the push to rapidly phase out planet-heating fossil fuels—which one leading expert said “dismisses decades of work” by global scientists.
Going into COP28, a U.N. analysis warned that countries’ currently implemented policies put the world on track for 3°C of warming by 2100, or double the Paris agreement’s 1.5°C target. Already, the planet has warmed about 1.1°C relative to preindustrial levels.
Even though the international community is way off track in terms of meeting its climate goals, Bronwen Tucker, global public finance lead at Oil Change International , pointed out Monday that “on Finance Day at COP28, instead of rich country governments committing to pay their fair share for a fossil fuel phaseout, they tried to shirk their responsibilities.”
The biggest historical contributor to planet-heating pollution, the United States, and foundation partners on Sunday announced the Energy Transition Alliance. Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and a lead economist for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate and Energy Program, said the offset initiative “is still very much a work-in-progress, and the details shared thus far raise a fair degree of skepticism about its ability to meaningfully contribute to addressing the climate crisis.”
“Richer nations and large corporations should have no claim over monetizing the scarce remaining carbon budget and yet this program is premised on that unjust idea,” Cleetus added. “At COP28, the primary focus should be on securing an agreement among nations for a fast, fair fossil fuel phaseout and ramping up public finance.”
