Rural Diaries - live the country life, love the countryside and learn about rural issues

Posted by Sally on April 29th, 2008 in Farming Issues, Green Living

The UK may lead the way in the world to reduce carbon emissions with a proposed Climate Change Bill to reduce carbon emissions by 60% by 2050 against 1990 levels. The bill would be, if passed, the worlds first legal framework for reduction in carbon emissions.

The question is being raised whether shipping and aviation (currently excluded) should be included in the bill. Why is that even being questioned? Yes they should be included but of course that will have an impact on a number of industries in the UK, including tourism and import/export costs. This is where it needs to be a worldwide initiative and not just individual countries trying to do their bit, because putting profit before the environment is how we got into this mess in the first place.

William Surman, over at Farmers Guardian has been discussing this issue and quoted “Liberal Democrat spokesman Steve Webb said Defra’s efforts were admirable, but not backed up by the rest of Whitehall. He earmarked Heathrow’s new terminal, the commission of new coal-fired power stations and the Treasury’s lack of a ‘green’ tax agenda as large Government hypocrisies.”

However it is not until his last paragraph that Mr Surman gets to the point that concerns me the most. He says “The new Bill will be hugely significant to the agriculture sector. Environmental sche-mes and renewable fuels to reduce carbon emissions are already a key focus of opportunity in agriculture and this year’s floods and the introduction of bluetongue – formally confined to the tropics – are just two examples of the threats that climate change bring to the countryside.”

Surely this is the bigger picture and what I would like to be hearing, alongside the great news of our country leading the way in a legal framework’, is what pressure is being put on countries like the US to find a globakl initiative - as compared to the US our emissions are a drop in the ocean.

That is not to say we produce less than other countries so let’s not bother but I am very concerned that as much as we are proposing to do I believe that without the support of the larger emission producing countries to “get with the program” as the Americans would say, we are not going to have much impact globally.

We do not live in a glass bubble, we cannot reduce our emissions and hope to clean up our own environment without reducing the threat created by other countries. European governments do not have a good track record at standing up to the US on any issue and of course they appear to hold the veto on just about every important global issue, yet they are only just accepting that global warming is a problem, having spent the last two decades or so denying it’s existence.

I am also concerned about a knee jerk reaction to find a solution. We are now seeing so many reports and articles about biofuel production creating world food shortages and yet mass production of biofuels is still in it’s infancy, with scientists scrambling to find solutions like the new microbe announced in Texas just last week - to read more see the College of Natural Sciences article.

Paul Vallely writes in the Independent about the rush to biofuels and the effect on the global food market. Yes it is a life line to UK agriculture but is it long term and at what cost globally? Whilst this may be seen as scare mongering I am left asking “isn’t that what we said about global warming just a couple of decades ago?”