07 July 2010
Source: LocalGov.co.uk ()

LGA conference: Councils offered mixed message on climate change


Nick Appleyard

Local authorities were sent a mixed message from speakers at today’s Local Government Association climate change workshop.

Former chancellor, Lord Lawson, who is chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and Professor Andrew Watkinson, director of Living with Environmental Change, both agreed that climate change was real. But their perspectives on how best councils should deal with the issue were worlds apart.

"This is a huge job for local authorities but I believe the community has to respond to this challenge – both in terms of mitigation and in terms of adaptation."

Professor Andrew Watkinson, director of Living with Environmental Change
Lord Lawson believes a globally binding target is ‘utterly unrealistic’ and unless all major nations get onboard there is no sense in pressing ahead with the move to decarbonisation.

He cited the Green Infrastructure Bank commission’s recent estimations that the UK needs to spend £50bn a year in moving towards a low carbon economy as an obstacle and urged local authorities to block planning permits for ‘awful wind farms’.

Lord Lawson warned councils against diverting scarce resources towards climate change adaptation when they could be put to ‘better use’. However, he gave no examples of this better use.

Prof Watkinson disagreed saying: ‘There is uncertainty, but there is a risk. There is a risk we can manage.’

He said the responsibility for adaptation and local mitigation to climate change rests with local government.

‘This is a huge job for local authorities but I believe the community has to respond to this challenge – both in terms of mitigation and in terms of adaptation.

‘We need to move towards a risk management framework and we need local action. There is a huge opportunity to develop a green economy.’

Council delegates responded angrily to Lord Lawson’s remarks. Graham Jones, from Norfolk County Council, said he was shocked and local authorities had a responsibility to commit to reductions. ‘It must make sense to switch towards alternative energy – we have to change,’ he added.

Liz Hutchins, Friends of the Earth’s (FoE) parliamentary campaigner, called for an area-based approach.

Ms Hutchins told LocalGov.co.uk local carbon budgets were the way forward and FoE is in talks with both the Department of Energy and Climate Change and Communities and Local Government as to how these can be rolled out.

She said: ‘Both parties of the coalition supported them in principle but I think there is a question about what they would look like and the time that they would be introduced. Local carbon budgets would be a good successor to the current system that wasn’t ambitious enough.’





Your comments

The Climate Change Act leaves Britain in the position of having binding emissions reduction targets, when most of the rest of the world has none. Carbon dioxide taxes and the ETS is a pointless and extremely expensive political gesture. The inevitable result of this will be ?carbon leakage? big time - the export of local jobs and industry overseas. In the 1980?s we used to talk about ?workers pricing themselves out of the market?, but today we have a government of scientifically illiterate MPs pricing British industry out of the market, on the basis of the highly contensious hypothesis that C02 is the primary forcing agent in global warming, which has yet to be proven as we still have no general law of climate change. The current situation represents scientific and economic madness for the UK, because we only accounts for less than 2% of global CO2 emissions. There is zero chance that the developing countries will choose to remain permanently underdeveloped by substantially restricting their use of fossil fuels. So, turning the UK into a low carbon economy makes no sense at all - it will weaken our economy and have zero impact on the global climate. And may I add that as it stands 4.5 million people - in this country - suffer from fuel poverty, so morally speaking where is the sense of caring in the ?Big Society? for these our most vulnerable citizens.

Fay Kelly-Tuncay, Added: Tuesday, 3 August 2010 10:19 PM



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