View: "The recently published 7th Carbon Budget makes the UK a climate leader"
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The 7th Carbon Budget is a world-leading target and should be welcomed. However for a number of reasons, it falls short of what is now needed.
First, the UK's outdated near-term carbon budgets to 2032 are not driving the transformational changes needed across key sectors such as transport, housing and agriculture, where emissions are largely flatlining. Without bold action now, it is not credible that the UK will be able to meet its more ambitious longer-term targets.
Second, the 7th Carbon Budget is not a fundamentally new pathway. The target is very close to that set out in the Climate Change Committee's Balanced Pathway published in 2020, despite five years of worsening climate impacts, growing concern about tipping points, new evidence of food security risks, and continued high global emissions.
Finally, some climate scientists, including NEB expert Prof Kevin Anderson, argue that the CCC's original pathway was insufficiently ambitious even when it was published.
We recognise that some will see this criticism as uncompromising. The 7th Carbon Budget is indeed ambitious by international standards and represents genuine progress. However, the climate system does not compromise. It responds only to physical outcomes.
Our responsibility is therefore to ask a simple question: are current plans commensurate with the scale and immediacy of the threats we face?
The evidence indicates they are not.
Prof Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change, University of Manchester, said:
“Climate change is governed by physics, not political expediency. Temperatures respond to the cumulative build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. They do not care about distant net-zero dates or politically convenient targets. What matters is the total volume of emissions released over time…. The maths is unforgiving.”
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The 7th Carbon Budget is a world-leading target, which should be welcomed. However for a number of reasons, it falls short of what is now needed.
First, the UK's near-term carbon budgets covering the period to 2032 are not sufficiently robust to kick-start the transformational changes needed across the economy if the UK is to meet the more ambitious 6th and 7th carbon budgets. Relatively soft targets have permitted a situation where emissions from transport, housing and agriculture are effectively flatlining.
Second, the 7th Carbon Budget is essentially a formalisation of a pathway devised over five years ago. The target of 535 MtCO₂e for 2038–42 is extremely close to the 526 MtCO₂e set out in the Climate Change Committee's Balanced Pathway published in 2020.
Since that pathway was developed, circumstances have changed significantly.
Only a few years ago, the IPCC suggested that 1.5°C of human-induced warming would be reached around 2040. Yet average global temperatures over the last three years have already been around 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.[add link to SR15 report - see excerpt below]
There is growing concern about climate tipping points such as AMOC which is now widely considered to be nearer than thought only a few years ago
There is new evidence of near-term threats to food security, including assessments commissioned by the government that have not been fully released to the public.
We have also had five additional years in which rising global emissions have continued to use up the small remaining carbon budget for keeping temperatures within 2°C.
Finally we note that some climate scientists, including Prof Kevin Anderson, argue that the CCC's Balanced Pathway was insufficiently ambitious to meet the UK’s temperature and equity commitments as enshrined in the Paris Agreement, even when it was published.
In our view, the appropriate response to changing circumstances would have been to significantly strengthen the 7th Carbon Budget to align with the Paris commitments rather than largely reaffirm the pathway set out in 2020.
We recognise that some will see this criticism as uncompromising. The 7th Carbon Budget is ambitious by international standards and represents genuine progress. However, the climate system does not compromise. It responds only to physical outcomes.
Our responsibility is therefore to ask a simple question: are current plans commensurate with the scale and immediacy of the threats we face?
The evidence indicates they are not.
