MPs launch inquiry into adequacy of current carbon targets

Just a week after climate scientists warned that the impacts of climate change will be more severe and felt earlier than previously expected, the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) of MPs has announced an inquiry into whether UK carbon targets are stringent enough given the latest scientific findings.

The inquiry, which was officially launched yesterday, will assess the government's planned carbon budgets and ask how consistent they are with the emissions reductions now required by rich countries such as the UK if they are to achieve the goal of avoiding "dangerous levels" of global warming of more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The inquiry will look at the Committee on Climate Change's (CCC's) two recommended emission reduction targets for 2020 of 34 and 42 per cent below 1990 levels and how either target, if adopted by the carbon budgets, would affect the UK's chances of reaching its goal of cutting emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

Importantly, given the many scientific reports released last week, the EAC said in a statement that it will also examine the "implications of the latest developments in climate science for carbon budgeting policy, and the extent to which the CCC is equipped to take them into account".

The EAC is now inviting organisations and members of the public to contribute to the inquiry and submit views on a range of relevant issues, including whether the targets are consistent with the latest science, the extent to which government policies make the budgets achievable, and the role emissions trading and offsets should play in meeting the budgets.

Evidence sessions for the inquiry are likely to be undertaken in June, with a report expected to follow later this year.

The government is scheduled to announce its first three carbon budgets covering the next 15 years on the same day as the financial Budget next month.

The inquiry was welcomed by Friends of the Earth, which only this week released its own study commissioned from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, which warned that the proposed carbon targets are too weak to prevent dangerous levels of climate change.

The report said that the CCC's budget proposals had been based on a "naively optimistic" assessment of when global carbon emissions will peak and as such the government should opt for the deepest cuts for 2020 recommended by the committee if it wants to have any hope of limiting warming to two degrees.