Date published: 2008/10/07
The BBC says:
The UK government's official climate change advisers have raised the bar on ambitions to cut emissions.
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) said a cut in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 80% by 2050 should include international aviation and shipping.
It said other industries would have to make up any shortfall in those areas.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has intimated at an 80% cut, but ministers have been wary of counting aviation and shipping, where cuts are difficult.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Of course the entire accounting system for emissions is bogus (they are counted where goods are produced, not where they are consumed), so in some sense the game being played here is indeed just a game. But needless to say, the academic middle class people who run the CCC want to play the game with severe cuts. Of course 2050 is a long way away, and no matter what the academic middle class people who run the country decide today, governments in the future can decide differently. And this is not the way to move foward today. Instead there should be a global carbon tax. But the academic middle class people who run the country prefer to play games.
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