The UK has become the first nation to propose laws that set binding national limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
The draft Climate Change Bill, published on Tuesday, requires that carbon dioxide emissions are cut by 26% to 32% by 2020 and 60% by 2050, relative to 1990 levels. It also:
• requires a "carbon budget" every five years to ensure the targets are reached
• creates an independent monitoring committee to check progress each year
• requires that the UK government reports at least every five years on current and predicted impacts of climate change, and on its proposals for adaptation
The carbon budgets will set five-year interim targets to help the nation achieve its 2050 goal. The first such budget should be set for the period 2008 to 2012, and there will always be three carbon budgets set, covering the 15 years ahead. Watch a video of UK environment minister David Miliband presenting the climate change bill.
Setting an example
Environmental campaigners welcomed the emphasis on carbon budgets, rather than a five-year rolling target which had been suggested, because a budget requires more rigorous effort to ensure any overshoot in a given year is recouped later.
"Miliband is to be congratulated for publishing the bill and he is right to be proud of it – he and the government are an example to the rest of the G8," says Andrew Pendleton, senior climate policy officer at the charity Christian Aid.
However, Pendleton and other environmental campaigners would still like to see the 2050 target increased and have annual targets of 3% cuts to ensure compliance.
"The proposed target of a 60% reduction in emissions by 2050 does not go far enough, and should be revised upwards to 75% if the UK is to make a fair contribution to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change," says WWF.
"If the final legislation is not significantly stronger, the process would represent a massive lost opportunity. It is the first step on a long journey rather than the destination itself," agrees Pendleton.
The UK government rejects annual targets as being too rigid: it says such targets do not make allowances for annual variations in the climate that are not necessarily linked to human-made global warming.
Leadership role
Prime Minister Tony Blair put climate change at the top of the international agenda when the UK chaired the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations in 2005 and the UK could now become the first nation to limit emissions by statute.
The draft Climate Change Bill will go to public and parliamentary consultation before becoming law in 2008.
"Crucially, the Climate Change Bill, the first of its kind in any country, demonstrates our determination that this leadership role will continue," Miliband said.
The UK and Germany are leading efforts to extend the Kyoto protocol, which ends in 2012, and expand its scope to bring in booming economies such as China and India, as well as the US, which rejected it 2001.
