Government urged to commit to ‘real and measurable’ climate targets

The Government needs to commit to “real and measurable” climate targets, MPs have been told.

Liberal Democrat MP Dr Roz Savage urged colleagues to support the Climate and Nature Bill, which she said “addresses the most important existential challenge of our generation”.

The Bill would compel the Government to help achieve climate and nature targets, including “limiting the global mean temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels”.

Ministers would also need to draw up a strategy with yearly targets, in a bid to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, halt oil and gas exploration and imports, and reverse nature decline in a way which is “visibly and measurably on the path to recovery”.

“Enormous support”

Ms Savage said the Bill had garnered “enormous support” from “campaigners, trade unions, scientists, faith leaders, NGOs, businesses and especially young people”.

She told MPs: “I believe it addresses the most important existential challenge of our generation, the intertwined climate and nature crises.

“This country has signed up to various international commitments, but we still have work to do to fully connect them to real and measurable action.

“We need to close the ambition gap between what is needed and what is promised, and the delivery gap between what is promised and what is actually happening, and that is what this Bill aims to do, because too many metrics are still heading in the wrong direction.”

Ms Savage said Labour members would claim the “Government is already doing everything that is in the Bill”.

She said: “But looking at the metrics, we are still far adrift of where we need to be, ultimately, our future will be determined not by our strategies and intentions. Nature cares only about results.

“The Office for Environmental Protection published their progress report on the Government’s environmental improvement plan. Recently, it found that the Government is largely off track in achieving its legal environmental commitments.

“Now I acknowledge, of course, that this Government has only been in power for less than seven months, so I certainly do not hold them entirely responsible for this state of affairs, but I struggle to see how expanding our airports by approving two new runways is going to help them get back on track.”

Conservative former minister Sir Christopher Chope intervened to ask if it is “true that the Government is intent on kicking this Bill into the long grass because they do not really want to be seen to be opposing it, but they do not really support it?”

Ms Savage replied: “That is not my interpretation of the Government’s position, and we have had some fruitful conversations.”