Britain has the world's best climate policy: that's good news, and bad news

Even if every other nation followed suit we'd still be likely to hit catastrophic climate change with a global 4C temperature rise

First the good news: the UK has the world's strongest policies for tackling climate change. Now the bad news: the UK has the world's strongest policies for tackling climate change. Although this is the first nation on earth to set legally binding emissions targets, and although the targets here are as tough as anywhere else, if every other nation followed the UK's example, we'd still be likely to hit a catastrophic 4C of global warming.
In its new progress report, the Committee on Climate Change shows that carbon emissions in the UK fell between 2003-2007 by only 0.6% a year. They should soon be falling, the committee says, by 2.6%. Even this annual target, which would require a very sharp shift in government policy, bears no relation to the ultimate aim: preventing more than 2C of warming.
As work by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research shows, global cuts of 3% a year, starting in 2020, are unlikely to avert even 4C by the end of the century. As the UK has higher emissions than most nations, it has to cut carbon by more than the global average. If we really want to avoid more than 2C of warming, we need to start with a 10% cut next year, as the 10:10 campaign demands.
But as David MacKay, chief scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change has pointed out, even the cuts the UK has made so far are illusory. If you count the emissions outsourced to countries like China, as industry has moved abroad while continuing to supply our markets, you find that our greenhouse gases have been rising, not falling.
The committee points out that the recession has helped to put us on track, but that emissions are likely to bounce back up as soon as growth resumes. The government, it says, should avoid the temptation to let the recession do the work, then bank the cuts it causes as if they were the result of policy.
The downturn also has the unfortunate effect of reducing the carbon price, and therefore the incentive to make cuts. The carbon cap under the European emissions trading scheme was already set too high. Now, the committeee says, the recession ensures that the carbon price is likely to be closer to €20 in 2020 than the €50 it predicted before.
The progress report makes the obvious point that the market alone won't deliver the necessary cuts: either the EU must lower the carbon cap, or the government must impose new taxes or new obligations on electricity providers. The low carbon price and the risks of an uncertain market mean that electricity companies would rather to splash out on expensive new gas plants than build renewables. This would cancel out a big chunk of the UK's cuts.
So what will the government do: abandon its commitment to free-market mayhem, or break its own legally binding commitments? It won't find either option attractive.
monbiot.com