UK sets up climate change 'war room'
Updated on 26 June 2009
In order to stop rising emissions and avoid dangerous climate change, the government wants all countries to peak greenhouse gas output by 2020.
A climate change "war room" has been set up in the Department of Energy & Climate Change as Britain calls for countries around the world to have more ambitious commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The world is inching slowly - some say too slowly - towards a global deal to tackle climate change in Copenhagen in December. It is intended to be the follow-on from the Kyoto Treaty that runs out in 2012.
Kyoto demanded that industrialised countries - like Britain - cut their greenhouse gas emissions. Now the Climate and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband says the Copenhagen deal should go further, to "irreversibly break" the rising trend in global emissions.
Speaking ahead of a speech today by the prime minister that will outline a manifesto for Copenhagen, Mr Miliband said the deal should include binding commitments that emissions from developed countries must peak in 2015 and that global emissions overall, including those from growing economies like China, India and Brazil, must start falling after 2020.
Scientists have long warned that emissions must peak, then fall dramatically, in order to limit the temperature rise from climate change, but this is the first time a leading politician has suggested the idea of emissions peaks be enshrined so prominently in a global climate treaty.
Britain wants the Copenhagen deal to reach agreement in three areas: emissions cuts by developed countries, reductions by developing countries compared with what they would emit under "business as usual", and a deal on finance to help poorer countries mitigate and adapt to the impact of climate change.
British climate negotiators want the financial deal to include a global carbon market to trade emissions - something environmentalists condemn as they say it would allow countries to avoid making cuts domestically as they could buy emissions reductions from abroad.
Mr Miliband also reiterated his call for the British public to be mobilised on climate change. A new web site and CO2 calculator is launched today and thousands of copies of a leaflet on Britain's ambitions for Copenhagen are to be distributed.
He said: "There is a real danger of defeatism in this debate, a danger people think 'nothing can be done, it is all too late, it is inevitable, let's just hide under the bedclothes'."
But as much as British rhetoric on climate change may give the impression to a domestic audience that the UK is leading the way, the reality is rather different. Britain is part of the EU - and negotiates any climate treaty as part of the EU bloc. And many of the commitments offered so far by developed countries fall short of what scientists say is necessary to avoid "dangerous climate change".
All eyes are on the US. President Barack Obama has made a long term commitment to cut American emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, but in the short term the US aims are much more modest - to return levels to what they were in 1990. This is more ambitious than it initially seems, though, as the US has actually increased its emissions by 16 per cent since 1990.
That is not good enough for China - whose total emissions now outstrip America but each Chinese only emits only a quarter of what an American does on a per capita basis. China wants rich countries to cut their emissions by 40 per cent by 2020.
