Cutting Carbon Emissions?

Here is an excerpt from a letter I sent to the Willesden and Brent Times, which I thought I would post here in case they don't publish it.

"Brent Liberal Democrats have signed the pledge but they have also made it clear that they are not going to keep it. Instead of a 10% cut in carbon emissions in 2010, a recent Brent Council Scrutiny report admits: “If current trends continue we will also face difficulty in meeting the Local Area Agreement target of a 3% CO2 reduction by 2010 or a 6% reduction by 2010/11.”

It goes on to say the failure to meet even a 3% target is down to “lack of resources and conflicting priorities.” In other words, the Liberal Democrats will fail to meet anything like the 10% target because they did not regard it as important enough.

Incidentally, the target under Labour was for a 20% cut by 2011 compared to 1990 levels. A couple of months ago, the Liberal Democrats lowered Labour’s 20% target to 6% (compared to 2005/6 emissions) because they realised they no longer had any prospect of meeting it.

In fact the Liberal Democrat performance is even worse than it seems. The 3% figure uses 2005/6 emissions as a baseline i.e. emissions will be 3% lower than in 2005/6. The Liberal Democrats inherited a number of initiatives from the previous Labour administration in Brent. These led to a 7.3% cut in carbon emissions in 2006/7. Because the Lib Dems saw the green agenda as a low priority, they allowed emissions to start rising (by 2.8% in 2007/8). The only reason that there is any reduction at all is because Labour managed such a big drop in 2006/7.

Putting climate change first requires action, not just more of the Liberal Democrats’ broken promises."