Government’s hazy climate change targets are failing, says thinktank

Government spin won't change what's in the atmosphere. Photo:thewritingzone

The government’s climate change targets are ‘an excuse for inaction’ according to new report released today by thinktank, Policy Exchange.

‘Green Dreams: a Decade of Missed Targets’ accuses the government of being vague and dithering, and despite promising to ‘put concern for the environment at the heart of policy-making’ looks likely to miss over half of the green targets it has set since 1997.

Report author, Tara Singh, analysed 132 White Papers, speeches and publications since 1997 and found that out of 138 high level targets, 60 per cent of targets have been missed, are unlikely to be achieved or are worded so vaguely as to make meaningful analysis impossible.

Two-thirds of the key climate change targets appear unlikely to be met while a massive 88 per cent targets for biodiversity have been missed. Other areas where policy appears to be failing are rural affairs (only 31 per cent met), transport (17 per cent met) and water (17 per cent met). The sole area where a majority of targets are on course to be achieved is waste.

Singh criticises the target setting culture of the UK government and highlights how targets are met without the finance to back them up, and are chopped and changed, confusing industry when certainty is needed, and making targets so vague or so long-term that they are meaningless.

The report also found that when targets are in danger of being failed, as is so often the case, that a pattern of ‘creative accounting’ has emerged. Singh says: ‘The atmosphere does not care about accounting tricks: it cares about the amount of carbon in the air. Trying to take some of the UK’s carbon emissions off our carbon balance sheet is fundamentally dishonest—and potentially very dangerous in the fight to tackle climate change. As time passes and targets are missed, the Government finds it politically convenient to set increasingly nebulous objectives.’

Singh provides the example of the target set in 2006 for ‘all new homes to be zero carbon within a decade’ but in the first month of 2008, just three zero carbon homes were built.

Other barriers in reaching targets include setting unrealistic goals, and reformulating targets in the hope the failure won’t be noticed, and setting them in the absence of a commitment to turn plans into action.

Singh concludes: ‘Our environment does not benefit just because a target is set, only when it is ambitious and is subsequently achieved.’