Tomorrow's England questions and answers
What is Tomorrow’s England?
A partnership between 11 environmental organisations:
Beyond Green
Campaign for Better Transport
Campaign to Protect Rural England
Forum for the Future
Groundwork
The National Trust
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
The Wildlife Trusts
Women’s Institute
Woodland Trust
WWF-UK
When does it launch its new materials?
Launch day is Tuesday 26 February 2008, with the project stretching over the coming months
What is ‘Our Changing Climate; Our Changing Lives’?
It’s a ‘first’ in drawing together high level reports and research findings to create a graphic and plain-English picture of the threats posed to different aspects of everyday life: transport, wildlife, health, sport, leisure, woodland, landscape and heritage. This is relevant to people at a local level, addressing the problem of global problems seeming too big for people to deal with in their own lives. They are threats we can tackle if we take action It comes with a simple message: If you care about where you live, act now to protect what makes it special
But it’s still old stuff then?
It might sound familiar but it highlights for the first time the collective evidence on what effect climate change may have on the way we live our lives and how our local areas might be affected. The way we have drawn it together is also a completely new approach - friendly but compelling. It’s a message for every man, woman and child living and working in the South East. It’s actually an exciting document, to think we have the power to change things. PLUS our toolkit is completely new. It offers challenging discussion material for all sorts of groups - from faith to women’s groups, residents’ associations and conservation groups, plus practical advice on how to ‘walk the walk’: Adapt shopping habits Travel smarter Eat more wisely Save energy The toolkit is an England-wide document and we shall be looking at ways to spread the message further.
Which area does the project cover?
The South East, initially: Kent, Surrey, East and West Sussex, Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire.
So it’s not just scare tactics?
Definitely not. All the signs and research, both at home and internationally, predict irrevocable change. What we are offering is a way to mimimise the impacts.
Isn’t the jury still out? There’s disagreement about human-caused climate change, isn’t there?
No, climate scientists overwhelming agree that human-caused climate change is real. You rarely get 100% agreement on anything in the scientific community so the degree of consensus amongst climate scientists that this is happening, and that human activity is driving it, is staggering. Climate sceptics are in a tiny minority, and the media is doing no-one a favour by giving them prominence. The scientific debate has moved on and now centres on how serious the impacts are likely to be and what we have to do to minimise them.
Looking at the language, it’s all ‘would’ and ‘could’, rather than anything definite.
No-one can be precise about eventual outcomes. Our organisations are united in agreement that climate change is happening and will worsen, unless we act. The ‘would’s’ and ‘could’s’ are because we can never be entirely sure about what might happen and there might be unexpected effects that we currently can’t predict. It is based on the best models and predictions that we know of. It also highlights the fact that we can do something to change an otherwise gloomy outlook. Our Draft Climate Change Bill calls for reductions in UK carbon dioxide emissions of at least 60% from 1990 levels by 2050, with an interim target of achieving emissions reductions in the range of 26-32% by 2020.
What happens now?
We have to deliver our message at local, grass roots level. Our coalition members have great regional networks and we shall be using those to best advantage in coming months. We also have a web site www.climatechangeandme.net. Both the booklet and the toolkit are on there, together with links to reports and research which have helped shape these publications.
You could argue that SE would become rather pleasant, the UK’s always so wet and chilly. Flowering bougainvillea, sparkling wines and new vegetables? We’ll be able to holiday in the UK rather than jetting off to the Med, surely an attractive thought?
The term ‘global warming” can be a little misleading. Global warming refers to average world temperature and that will in turn seriously disrupt our weather patterns, bringing more frequent and extreme weather such as droughts, flooding, hurricanes and heatwaves. In the UK it will mean overall wetter winters, drier summers and increased likelihood of storms, droughts and water shortages. It could, however, mean more pepole holidaying in the UK.
To reduce CO2 by 80% by 2050 sounds ambitious. Living in the South East, will I have to make many lifestyle sacrifices and give up my current way of life?
Yes, an 80% reduction is a massive cut - but the good news is that we know it is achievable! Most of the savings will come from the UK doing things differently - generating electricity from renewables, running vehicles on more environmentally-friendly fuels and building and insulating our buildings better, but we still need to make an individual effort. People won't have to 'sacrifice' very much - but our current over-consumption does suggest that we might do some things less. For example, more efficient appliances will use less electricity and better built and insulated buildings will save on energy costs. We might also have to accept that we can't sustain any more airport expansion if we're serious about achieving the reductions in emissions we need.
2050 is more than 40 years away. Don’t we have time to develop technical, science-based solutions to the climate change problem instead?
No, we don’t. We need to start cutting emissions now. We will develop new technology of course but we can’t rely on some future techno fix to reach the cuts in emissions we need. A recent WWF report, Climate Solutions, showed that the world has more than enough sustainable energy and technology to curb dangerous climate change, but only if key decisions to cut emissions are made over the next five years. We can’t afford to wait – we also need to reduce emissions now using existing, proven technologies. The faster we reduce emissions, the better our chances of avoiding dangerous climate change.
Why should there be an emissions reduction target of “at least 80%”?
The UK is the first country in the world to make its domestic carbon dioxide reduction targets legally binding. Our Draft Climate Change Bill calls for reductions in UK carbon dioxide emissions of at least 60% from 1990 levels by 2050, with an interim target of achieving emissions reductions in the range of 26-32% by 2020. However, if the UK is serious about tackling global warming then the forthcoming Climate Change Bill target to reduce CO2 emissions by “at least 60%” by 2050 must be increased to “at least 80%” if the UK wants to truly demonstrate the leadership it claims on tackling climate change.
What’s the urgency about stopping at two degrees?
The 2°C threshold is based on the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It recently concluded that a temperature rise of 1.5-2.5°C would place 30% of species at greatly increased risk of extinction. Staying below this 2°C threshold has been accepted by many governments, including those in the European Union, as a key objective. Many of the world’s scientists now agree that to avoid the worst impacts of climate change we need to make sure that average temperature rise stays well below 2°C above pre-industrial temperature. The world has already warmed up by 0.7°C since then. Due to the time delay between the release of CO2 into the atmosphere and its effect on temperature, we are already locked into a further increase of at least 0.6°C, so in total 1.3°C in total. If warming exceeds 2°C (or 1.3°C above current average records of temperature), climate change starts to become even more dangerous. We run a rapidly increasing risk of major irreversible effects – such as the melting of the Greenland icesheet.
The UK is responsible for a tiny amount of global emissions, so what’s the point us going to all this effort?
The UK is directly responsible for approximately 2% of global emissions when you take into account emissions generated within UK geographical borders only. BUT, when you consider the impact of our consumption from overseas – the emissions generated by other countries making the things we import and buy - we are responsible for many times that figure. As the first nation to industrialise, the UK is also responsible for a huge amount of historical emissions. Many of the worlds’ biggest companies have their headquarters in the UK and they are responsible for huge amounts of carbon emissions globally. The UK must show true leadership and send out a clear signal on the need for countries to do their fair share to tackle climate change.
