BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
Page 92
sions specifically had only fallen by 5.6% since 1990, and the review
admitted that the UK was unlikely to meet its self-imposed domestic
goal of a 20% reduction in CO emissions (from the 1990 baseline) by
2
2010.
Indeed, table 26.1 demonstrates that whilst CO emissions have fallen
2
over the entire period 1990 to 2006, from a 1997 baseline they have actually increased by approximately 2.2%. Whilst emissions fell in the commercial, agriculture and public sectors from 1997, they rose in both the
energy supply and transport sectors, with little change in the domestic
sector.
In reality, the government’s CO record is considerably worse than
2
these figures suggest. Despite its dramatic growth in emissions in
the last decade, the aviation sector is not incorporated into either the
Kyoto or domestic CO targets, and as such is not included in these
2
statistics on the UK’s carbon emissions. Indeed the issue of aviation
has been ominously absent in the discussion thus far, largely because
New Labour has failed almost entirely to tackle the staggering growth
in emissions from this sector. Between 1990 and 2004 emissions
from aviation doubled, and are expected to double again by 2030 if no
million tonnes (carbon dioxide equivalent)
United Kingdom
900
800
basket of greenhouse gases
Kyoto target by 2008–2012
700
600
carbon dioxide
domestic carbon
500
dioxide goal by 2010
400
300
200
100
0
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
Figure 26.1. Emissions of greenhouse gases, 1990–2005 (DEFRA, available at:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/globatmos/gagccukem.htm).
Source: AEA Energy & Environment
further action is taken.15 Despite raising the Air Passenger Duty again in
February 2007, the DfT has acknowledged that current rates of progress
on aviation taxation will not stop the massive predicted growth in
flights. Indeed the DfT’s aviation White Paper, The Future of Air
Transport, sanctioned new runways at Birmingham, Edinburgh,
Stansted and Heathrow, plus new terminals throughout the UK. The
Tyndall Centre warns that, on current trends, by 2030 aviation will be
consuming some 60% of the UK’s 2050 CO target, and that it is incon2
ceivable that reductions in other sectors would be able to accommodate
this.16
With respect to land transport, emissions were approximately 7%
above 1990 levels by 2006. With the scrapping of the fuel duty escalator,
and a further cut in 2001, the fuel duty has fallen in real terms at almost
every Budget since then, and as a result driving in Britain in 2004 was 7%
cheaper in real terms than in 1997.17 According to Chris Huhne, the
Liberal Democrat spokesperson for the Environment, ‘The steady rise in
15 Friends of the Earth, ‘How Green Was Gordon? The Environmental Record of Gordon
Brown’s Budgets 1997–2007’, briefing, March 2007, available at: www.foe.co.uk.
16 ‘Climate Change and the UK Aviation White Paper’, Tyndall Centre, University of East
Anglia, Norwich, December 2003.
17 ‘Climate Change: Hot Under the Collar’, The Economist, 1 April 2006.
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carbon emissions since 2000, when the government capitulated to the
fuel protestors, is now coming home to roost.’18
As for the energy sector, part of the explanation for the rise in emissions was related to the higher than expected economic growth of the
country, and the rise in global energy prices which led to the increased
use in coal at the expense of gas. For instance, in 2006 alone the shifting
balance from gas to coal-intensive means of electricity generation led to
an increase in emissions from power stations of 6%.19 What emissions
reductions were achieved in the early Blair years from the energy sector
were a result of a prolonged windfall from the ‘dash for gas’ that occurred
under the previous Conservative administration, and were a temporary
and transitional effect. In addition, the Renewables Obligation on electricity generators has had limited success given the huge obstacles presented by the UK planning process. It is clear that living off the windfall
effect from the ‘dash for gas’ will become increasingly difficult for the
UK’s energy sector, especially as its ageing nuclear power stations come to
the end of their lives. As such the question of the UK’s future energy mix
will become ever more pressing.
In tackling housing sector emissions, programmes such as the EEC and
Warm Front are set to deliver emissions savings of 1MtC annually by 2010.
However, if the domestic sector is to reduce its emissions by 60% by 2050,
savings of up to 24MtC per year are required.20 Though the thought of
taxing domestic energy use has been anathema to New Labour, there has
also been a reluctance to implement less radical measures. These include
policies such as council tax rebates on cavity wall and loft insulation and a
reduction in VAT on high-quality environmental refurbishments, both
of which have been recommended by the EST and the Sustainable
Development Commission. Similarly, the government has remained
rather conservative in implementing the CCL on businesses. With only
two in-line-with-inflation rises of the levy since its introduction, the CCL
was in fact 13% lower in real terms in 2006 than when it was introduced.21
Yet, on the other hand, it is clear that the UK has had remarkable
success in steering international priorities towards tackling climate
change. For instance, building on the UK’s lead, in 2007 the EU set its
member states the target of a 20% reduction of CO emissions by 2020,
2
with the will to increase this to 30% if other states such as the US sign up
18 Hilary Osborne, ‘Coal Comeback Pushes up UK Emissions’, The Guardian, 29 March 2007.
19 Ibid.
20 Friends of the Earth, ‘How Green Was Gordon?’
21 Institute for Fiscal Studies, The UK Tax System and the Environment (London: IFS, 2006).
too. There is now also a binding renewable energy target of 20% by
2020. In addition, the UK was the first country to introduce a marketbased emissions trading scheme, which the EU has developed, launching
the largest carbon trading scheme in the world in 2002 (the European
Trading Scheme, ETS). Preliminary data suggest, however, that almost
93% of the industrial plants covered in the EU’s trading scheme emitted
less than their quota of free permits in 2006, effectively handing them
a sizeable cash windfall from the scheme. Though the UK’s allocations
were tighter than many of their European counterparts, British generators are still estimated to have pocketed around £1 billion. Nevertheless,
this failure has created an appreciation of the need to tighten allocations
for the 2008 ETS to a much greater extent than previously anticipated.22
Beyond the EU, one of the most significant achievements has been the
about-turn exhibited by the US and President G. W. Bush on the climate
change agenda. From a position of outright climate change denial, Bush
has since signed the Gleneagles Declaration, and also recognised in his
State of the Union address in 2007 that climate change was a serious challenge, and that he would commit the US to reduce its dependency on oil
and increase the use of bio-fuels in its transport sector.
Why was more not achieved?
That is, tackling climate change is fraught with an enormous complexity
of administration, management and integrated thinking both domestically and internationally, with various mitigation policies inevitably
undermined by scientific doubt. Stern aptly described the climate change
problem as ‘a multi-disciplinary collective action problem under uncertainty’.23 These factors go some way to explaining why it has been so
difficult for the UK government to achieve more in terms of reducing
emissions in the last ten years.
In addition, The Economist argues that the government has failed to
achieve more because ‘In the end . . . climate change is not yet a vote
winner.’24 Despite the attempts of New Labour to rearticulate and
impress the importance of climate change on UK society, tackling it
seems to offer little electoral gain
compared to issues of employment,
crime, health and education.
22 David Gow, ‘Smoke Alarm: EU Shows Carbon Trading Is Not Cutting Emissions’, The
Guardian, 3 April 2007.
23 Michael Roux, ‘Complacent Inaction Is just Not an Option’, The Australian, 26 April 2007.
24 ‘Climate Change: Hot Under the Collar’.
However, a number of polls indicate that there may in fact be a
growing public willingness to take the necessary political measures to
tackle climate change, and a growing appreciation that this is a real and
dangerous threat. A Guardian/ICM poll in 2007 revealed that 63% of
respondents would approve of green taxes to discourage behaviour that
harms the environment, whereas 34% would not.25 More significant,
however, is a poll in The Observer that revealed that only 11% of respondents were satisfied with the government’s record on climate change,26
suggesting that the government may have become a victim of its own
success in raising climate change concern and the expectation of radical
action. Nonetheless, as the furore over proposals for road pricing has
demonstrated, there are still vast swathes of British society that are
unwilling to make the link between their own behaviour and climate
change, or alter their behaviour because of it.
Leading from this, a fundamental problem has been that when it has
come to the tough choices, such as the UK’s energy mix, or tackling aviation and transport emissions, successive Labour governments have found
it hard to maintain the environmental imperative in face of tough opposition from business or voters. Though Labour has advanced the rhetoric
of sustainable development and ecological modernisation, neither of
these offer a panacea to tackling climate change nor absolve the government of its duty to make the tough decisions, even where these risk jeopardising short-term electoral goals.
This has been clearest in the transport sector, where concerns over
alienating ‘Middle England’, or the ‘Mondeo Man’27 have seen the government back-pedal or abstain on policies to tackle growing emissions.
For instance, though low-cost air travel has been heralded as the great
class equaliser, the Civil Aviation Authority’s 2005 report shows that
approximately 70% of all UK leisure flights are taken by people in the top
half of the income distribution, the very electoral base that New Labour is
loathe to offend.
The environment has not traditionally been at the heart of New
Labour policymaking and its climate change policies have typically been
most successful only when environmental, social and economic goals
25 David Adam and Patrick Wintour, ‘Most Britons Willing to Pay Green Taxes to Save the
Environment’, The Guardian, 22 February 2006.
26 ‘The Blair Years 1997–2007; Blair: The Poll’, The Observer, 8 April 2007.
27 Andrew Jordan, ‘Environmental Policy’, in Patrick Dunleavy, Andrew Gamble, Ian
Holliday and Richard Heffernan (eds.), Developments in British Politics, vol. VI
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), p. 270.