Climate doctors say 'feel the pain'...
It's worth looking at some of the international ramifications of the - that the country needs a "step change" in ambition if it's to achieve government targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
It's worth it because the UK has been one of the developed world's champions when it comes to curbing emissions, having cut greenhouse gas output by about 16% since 1990.
So here's the rub: if the UK has been relatively successful but is still being told it has not done enough - and told that by its own advisors, the (CCC), rather than by green campaigners - what does that say about everyone else?
According to , the UK stands in bronze medal position behind Norway and Germany (among OECD countries) in the table of emission slashers, and at opposite poles from back markers such as Spain, Portugal, Greece and New Zealand, which have all seen emissions rise by more than 20% over the same period - 50% in the case of Spain.
(I'm using here UN data up to 2006, the last year for which comparisons are readily available - , but is unlikely to have changed the overall picture.)
In large part, Germany and the UK have cut emissions through chance. German re-unification forced the closure and refurbishment of old, inefficient industry in the former Soviet sector, while the advent of North Sea gas (combined with some other domestic political concerns) in the UK prompted a .
A point that this week's CCC report brings out is that most UK reductions since the "dash for gas" have been achieved in greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide.
show that methane release is down 53%, mostly from cleaning up landfill practices. Nitrous oxide (NOX) emissions have been cut by 47% - most of that reduction occurring in a brief blitz in the late 1990s when emissions from production of - a precursor to nylon and other polymers - fell dramatically.
The CCC pegs this as a problem because, clearly, you can't keep making cuts here for ever. We've seen with the that when an industry comes on side with a policy initiative, changes can be made rapidly: this is what happened with nitrous oxide in the chemical industry in the late 1990s.
But methane and NOX emissions from agriculture have proved less tractable. And even if you could eliminate all methane and NOX emissions overnight, you can only make double the carbon cuts achieved already with these gases because their emissions have already been halved.
By comparison, carbon dioxide emissions from power stations - closely tied to economic performance - have risen slightly from the late 1990s when the "dash for gas" ended.
If landfill methane and industrial NOX were "low-hanging fruit" that the UK has now picked, other nations are in a similar situation.
France already has a low-carbon portfolio of electricity generation because of on nuclear energy.
Germany's high recycling levels leave it with fewer possibilities than the UK in terms of cutting landfill emissions.
And when it comes to the EU as a whole - still the main political driving force in global moves to agree a new climate treaty - the biggest greenhouse gas reduction of all has come from the former Soviet bloc's economic meltdown in the years after 1990, which is unlikely to be repeated.
The Committee on Climate Change makes the point that if the UK is to go much further in reducing its greenhouse gas footprint, it now has to begin making serious cuts in carbon dioxide emissions from every sector of society - housing, industry, power generation and transport.
The size of the "step change" they're advocating can be seen from the words used by chief executive David Kennedy, talking about making energy use in the home more efficient across the country.
Rather than just "sending low-energy lightbulbs though the post or targeting pensioners for cavity wall insulation" - a phrase that he managed to utter without sounding dismissive - a nationwide plan was needed, he said, that would go from street to street transforming the nation's housing stock.
The graphs of forecasts show no carbon savings from loft or cavity wall insulation beyond about 2015, because every cavity wall and loft in the country would have been done by then.
The UK government says that it is already planning a "step change" though the that it published in June.
Opinions are divided on how well that plan stacks up against government targets, and in particular against the pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 34% from 1990 levels by 2020.
Like other European nations, the UK's main emission-cutting tool is the , aimed at incentivising companies to change their ways and penalising those that do not.
If a new treaty is agreed at the , it is certain to contain measures aimed at developing a global carbon market.
The idea is that carbon prices should then drive emissions downwards worldwide. The market will channel clean development money to countries that need it, and levies on trading are likely to be used to raise funds to help the poorest nations adapt to climate impacts.
The CCC's conclusion is that the market alone cannot deliver the scale of carbon cuts that the UK has signed up to - a "step change" away from reliance on the market and towards greater direction and greater regulation is a must, it says.
The EU as a whole is signed up to a 20% cut from 1990 levels - a 30% cut if there is a global agreement.
; and the US could yet end up adopting targets that require significant and rapid action to achieve, even if they don't look terribly ambitious in the eyes of campaigners when related to 1990 levels.
Japan's emissions now stand 6% above 1990 levels, partially because it plucked its own low-hanging fruit - energy efficiency - in response to the oil crisis of the 1970s.
As a few recent analyses (including one from the ) have shown, the degree of "ambition" shown in the pledges of developed nations in the lead-up to the Copenhagen summit are not enough to bring carbon cuts of the 25-40% scale that the (IPCC) suggests are necessary to "avoid dangerous climate change".
The conclusion from the CCC's report provides part of the explanation.
For most countries, a "step change" in ambition would require a "step change" in policies - policies that would, for most, mean making the first painful bites into the nether regions of national carbon emissions.
A little wincing at the prospect seems to me entirely natural.
I'm Richard Black, environment correspondent for the ±«Óãtv News website. This is my take on what's happening to our shared environment as the human population grows and our use of nature's resources increases.
Comments
or to comment.