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Issue of the day: Climate change
Party spokesmen debate policy on protecting the environment.
Labour: Environment secretary Margaret Beckett
The government has made climate change one of its priorities for the G8 presidency and our presidency of the EU, which starts on July 1.
We need to act on a global scale, but also need to demonstrate leadership at home. We announced in September a review of the UK Climate Change Programme. We are not only on target, but are likely to go beyond our legally binding Kyoto Protocol targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2008 to 2012.
Between 1990 and 2002, our economy grew by 36 per cent, yet we have managed to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 14 per cent. This is crucially important, as it shows the developing world that it is possible to expand their economy, have greater prosperity and cut emissions at the same time.
But more does need to be done to meet the ambitious target we set ourselves to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent by 2010, on 1990 levels.
Greater energy efficiency, both for the household and business sectors, will play a key role in reducing carbon emissions.
To improve the energy standards of buildings, we are extending the Community Energy Programme, which delivers heat networks to reduce energy bills and tackle fuel poverty, for a further three years to 2008.
We are also revising the Building Regulations to provide additional economic incentives for energy efficiency, including tax relief for landlords installing insulation.
Climate change has the capacity to reshape our lives dramatically. The vastness of the challenge underlines the importance of cooperation between nations and the need for dynamic leadership across the globe.
Conservatives: Shadow environment secretary Tim Yeo
The prime minister has continually paraded his personal commitment to climate change as "the world's greatest environmental challenge" and now pledges to make it a key priority for Britain's presidency of the G8 and EU. However, after nearly eight years in power, the government's actions have not lived up to the rhetoric.
Despite Labour's pledge to eliminate fuel poverty, the government has reduced insulation standards in social housing, causing extra emissions of CO2 and leaving nearly two million people in cold homes and fuel poverty.
The government's notion of a green transport strategy consists of trying to tax people out of their cars. Fiscal support for alternative fuels and cleaner cars has been so limited that the greenest fuels and cars still have less than 0.2 per cent of their respective markets.
Meanwhile, aviation emissions have risen 85 per cent since 1990 and are set to double again by 2020.
Despite all the prime minister's rhetoric about the urgency of dealing with climate change, he has shown himself to be all talk and no action. Industry is looking for transparency, long-term certainty and fairness. What they have got is delay, short-termism and a disincentive to act.
Meanwhile other international players, including many US states are striding forward into a brave new world of environmentally friendly technologies and carbon trading – sadly, Britain is being left behind.
Liberal Democrats: Environment spokesman Norman Baker
Despite the need for radical action to tackle climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, national governments, including our own, seem rooted to the spot. New Labour has now been in power for seven years, yet during that time carbon emissions in the UK have actually risen marginally. Indeed, CO2 levels have risen in three of the last four years, and since 1997 those emanating from power stations have risen by nine per cent.
It is scandalous that this government continues to eschew the opportunities presented by the abundance of renewable energy resources with which this country is blessed. We have some of the best wind, wave and tidal resources in the world and yet the puny Renewables Obligation requires energy suppliers to provide only 10 per cent of their total sales from such sources by 2010. Worse, the over-reliance on wind is strangling development of the basket of technologies we are going to need to make a real step-change.
Under Labour road traffic volumes, which it pledged to cut, have actually risen by eight per cent and are predicted to rise by up to a quarter in England by 2010. How can this situation then be improved when over the same period of time the relative costs of travelling by train have risen by three per cent and bus by eight per cent, while that of travelling by car has actually fallen?
[The prime minister] has committed himself to making "significant progress" on tackling climate change by making it a priority for the UK's simultaneous presidencies of the G8 and EU, also this year. For the sake of the millions across the globe whose livelihoods are threatened by climate change we must hope there is some substance to this.
The above texts are edited versions of articles which first appeared in the Parliamentary Monitor magazine.
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