Inadequate plans to prepare for impact
Publish date: 16 July 2019
Issue Number: 614
Diary: Legalbrief Environmental
Category: Climate Change
The UK Government’s own advisers have declared themselves shocked that the country has no proper plans for protecting people from heatwaves, flash flooding and other impacts of the climate crisis. A report in The Guardian notes that the Committee on Climate Change said the UK’s climate crisis preparations were being run like Dad’s Army and left the population at real risk, adding that funding for programmes to tackle problems resulting from global heating had been cut. The CCC’s annual progress reports, published last week, also found that just one of the 25 emissions-cutting policies it said were vital in 2018 had been delivered in full. Lord Deben, who chairs the committee, said Ministers could be sued in court if the failure to act continued. Theresa May announced in June that the UK would be the first major economy to set a legally binding target to end climate emissions by 2050. However, the CCC said the targets for 2025 and 2030 were likely to be missed by an even bigger margin than last year. ‘There are no areas where government is planning properly,’ said Chris Stark, the CCC CE. He said it would be prudent to prepare for a 4°C rise, a level scientists see as catastrophic. Doug Parr of Greenpeace UK said: ‘This is a truly brutal reality check on the government’s current progress in tackling the climate emergency. The new Prime Minister really must take the government’s net zero commitment and turn it into something practically meaningful.’
Australia risks becoming one of the world’s biggest climate polluters as its share in global greenhouse gas emissions may amount to 17% by 2030. So warned Australian Conservation Foundation’s (ACF) climate change and clean energy programme manager Gavan McFadzean last week. According to a report in The Mercury, Berlin-based science and policy institute Climate Analytics has published a study showing Australia may be responsible for up to 17% of Paris Agreement compatible global carbon dioxide emissions in 2030. ‘This report confirms Australia is on track to become one of the world’s worst contributors to climate damage,’ McFadzean said. The study also found that in 2017, Australia’s part in global carbon emissions from its use of fossil fuels equalled about 1.4% of global fossil fuel combustion emissions. According to the research, Australia is one of the highest per capita carbon emitters in the world, outrunning China by a factor of nine, the US by a factor of four and India by a factor of 37, the report states.
About a quarter of the world’s highest-emitting publicly listed companies fail to report their greenhouse gas emissions and nearly half do not properly consider the risks from the climate crisis in their decision-making, new research has found. A report in The Guardian notes that the findings show the distance even the world’s biggest companies still have to cover to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change, according to the group of investors co-ordinating the report. The research covered a sample of 274 of the world’s highest emitting companies which are publicly listed, and therefore must make official disclosures of key financial data. It was carried out by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics and commissioned by the Transition Pathway Initiative, a group of investors supportive of the Paris agreement, with about $14tn in funds under management. Simon Dietz, co-director of the Grantham Institute, said: ‘It’s over three years since the Paris Agreement was signed, and this research shows the corporate sector is improving its climate planning and performance, but not fast enough. Cutting through the noise, we can see that barely 12% of companies plan to reduce emissions at the rate required to keep global warming below 2°C.’ Faith Ward, co-chair of the Transition Pathway Initiative, said investors would be taking note: ‘This research shows clear leaders and laggards emerging within sectors from airlines to aluminium, and that gives investors an investment-relevant decision to make today.’
A UN report on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) warned last week that the impacts of climate change and inequality across countries were increasing global hunger and undermining goals to end extreme poverty by 2030. A Jurist report notes that the report identified notable gaps toward achieving 17 SDGs, some of which address poverty, clean water and sanitation, economic growth, and climate change. Among the reports key findings was the dampening effects of climate change on the UN’s goals. The report noted that the year of 2018 was the fourth warmest year on record, levels of carbon dioxide concentrations continued to increase in 2018, and ocean acidity is 26% higher than pre-industrial times and is projected to increase to between 100 and 150% by 2100. The report identifies progress in some areas, such as on widespread immunisation, decrease in child mortality rates and increase in people’s access to electricity, but warns that global response has not been aggressive enough. ‘It is abundantly clear that a much deeper, faster and more ambitious response is needed to unleash the social and economic transformation needed to achieve our 2030 goals,’ said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
