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What would GENUINE climate leadership look like?
A document to assist the briefing of UK MPs on the Climate Emergency
What would GENUINE climate leadership look like?
GENUINE climate leadership means telling the truth, facing up to the choices we have, and making good decisions based on the science, on our international commitments and on our commitments to human rights. We need to have answers to:
- How bad is the situation? & Where are we heading?
- What did we promise to do? & What have we actually done?
- Why have we done so little? & What choices do we have now?
- Which options would we recommend?
How bad is the situation?
Very bad
- the global average temperature rise is now at about 1.3°C (estimated longer term trend in 2024)
- it is rising at 0.1°C every 3 years
- some individual years are now around 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average
- global total CO2 emissions are still rising
- each year's CO2 emissions from the UK will result in around 150,000 climate deaths, mostly in the poorest parts of the world (using the figure of 1 death per 4000 tonnes CO2 emitted [1][2]).
- the climate-related deaths, the even greater number of people whose lives will be wrecked by unprecedented heat and other climate effects, and the biodiversity loss make continued use of fossil fuels morally indefensible.
Where are we heading?
If the current trend continues:
- the 1.5°C target in the Paris Agreement will be reached in around 2030
- 1.7°C (the "well below 2°C" rise in the Paris Agreement) will be reached in around 2036
- a 2.0°C temperature rise will be reached in around 2045 - at which point almost all of the world's coral reefs will have been destroyed
- each 0.1°C temperature rise will lead to additional climate deaths, extra people exposed to unprecedented heat, and sea levels rising at a faster rate, bringing forward the date at which costal cities become uninhabitable
- there will be a steadily increasing risk of abrupt and catastrophic tipping points, e.g. changes in ocean currents.
What did we promise to do?
Because of the scale of harm from fossil fuels, we promised
- in the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2.0°C (often taken to mean 1.7°C) and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C
- in effect, to limit further CO2 emissions to within carbon budgets determined by the climate science, since most CO2 emitted into the atmosphere stays there, and so steadily builds up, and the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the higher the global temperature
- in the Paris Agreement to cut emissions faster in developed countries than developing countries (Article 4), 'on the basis of equity between nations', which is often taken to mean an equal per-capita share of the residual global carbon budget
- in effect, to halve by 2030 the total global total CO2 emissions compared to the 2020 level - this is needed to keep the total of further global CO2 emissions within the carbon budget for 1.5°C, which the IPCC reports give as 400 billion tonnes CO2 [3]
- in effect, to halve emissions in developed countries even sooner than 2030 on the basis of equity between nations e.g. by 2025 in the UK (halving emissions in half the time because the UK's emissions are double the global average)
- in effect, to radically change society and radically reduce energy use until sustainable alternatives are developed, which requires the ending of leisure aviation, and much reduced vehicle mileage achieved by e.g. the doubling of fuel duty, and then doubling it again.
What have we done?
The UK Parliament declared a Climate Emergency in 2019, and Ed Miliband in 2019 called for "a wartime mobilisation" [4], but the promises of radical change have been ignored in policy making, and instead a non-emergency gradual decarbonisation plan of Net Zero 2050 has been adopted in the UK.
What's wrong with the UK's Net Zero 2050?
The UK's Net Zero 2050 pathway of emission reduction is not in line with the scientific consensus on what the Paris Agreement means for the UK's carbon budget (how much more CO2 the UK can emit). The chart shown is from a Surrey University report [5]. The upper line (Option 1) is a simplified version of the UK Net Zero 2050 pathway. The reduction is far too slow, and the UK's fair share (equal per-capita) of the global carbon budget runs out in 2025. The pathway would in fact take three times the UK's fair share of the global carbon budget [5]. Unsurprisingly, developing countries such as India have shown no inclination to give up any part of their share of the global carbon budget to the UK. The lower line (Option 2) is an indication of what the UK promised to do via the Paris Agreement, i.e. urgent radical reduction in emissions (27% per year). Other UK academic reports give similar figures [6][7].
It is extraordinary that there is such a wide gulf between (a) the UK emissions strategy, and (b) the scientific consensus on the implications for emissions of our signing the Paris Agreement, even though it is such a fundamental point and despite the maths being really simple and easily checked. It is a phenomenon referred to by climate psychologists as "implicatory climate denial" [8]. This means acknowledging the information but denying its psychological, political or moral implications, and is distinct from literal climate denial (which means denial of facts e.g. the denial that climate change is happening) and distinct from interpretive climate denial (which means re-interpreting the facts, e.g. acknowledging that climate change is happening but claiming that its consequences are exaggerated).
How does the Climate Change Committee justify its Net Zero 2050 plan?
The UK Government's Climate Change Committee claim that the Net Zero 2050 pathway is in line with the UK's international commitments. They do this via accounting procedures that many see as deeply flawed. Firstly they ignore the UK's commitment to more rapid emission reductions with equity between nations that is a part of the Paris Agreement (Article 4), with the result that they plan to reduce emissions no faster than the global average - this doubles the UK's carbon budget, at the expense of unspecified developing countries. Secondly they include only some of the UK's CO2 emissions when deriving a total, namely emissions generated within the UK (territorial emissions). They omit emissions generated in the manufacture of imports - as if it is reasonable to count Dutch cheese, a German washing machine, or a pair of jeans made in Thailand as zero carbon - and omit aviation and shipping emissions. This inflates the carbon budget by a further 50%, so that the pathway would take three times the UK's fair share of the global budget [5].
It is ludicrous to have a Net Zero 2050 strategy and claim that it meets the UK's international commitment to 1.5°C when the 1.5°C limit will be passed in around 2030, 20 years before the end of the strategy - it is completely at variance with reality.
Advocates of the Net Zero 2050 pathway appear to be unable to defend the maths of it when challenged, e.g. the exchange between Prof Kevin Anderson and Chris Stark [9].
How has the flawed Net Zero 2050 Strategy become so accepted in the UK?
Despite its serious flaws, the Net Zero 2050 timescale has become widely accepted in the UK, possibly due to
- the contoversial accounting choices being not stated explicitly - they are obscured within reports that are several hundred pages long
- groupthink (a phenomenon by which people in a group tend to think about the same things in the same way) - which has been identified in other situations as a major impediment to good policy making e.g. by the Covid Inquiry with regard to covid policy failures [10] - together with the lack of Red Teaming (independent scrutiny) [10]
- other cognitive biases such as wishful thinking, overconfidence, and the Dunning-Kruger effect (overconfidence is worst in those who know the least about a subject)
- failure of the media to scrutinise Government policy
- failure of climate advocacy groups to challenge the Government timescale, e.g. Friends of the Earth (FoE) has a court case that criticises the UK Government Net Zero climate proposals - this endorses the timescale of cuts despite FoE knowing that the timescale is too slow
- the difficulty of advocating radical change, e.g. phasing out leisure aviation within a few months, and the temptation to campaign instead for much lesser measures such as the introduction of frequent flyer taxes, curbs on private jets, and curbs on airport expansion - so grossly understating the urgency of change
- the changes to the law on protests, which mean that those who have protested that Government policies are inadequate have been denied the opportunity to explain in court the reasons for their protests, with the result that they have been treated as trouble makers rather than being treated as whistle blowers highlighting government malpractice
- the failure of other climate advocacy groups to speak up and support protesters in saying the Government's timescale of cuts is grossly inadequate
- the geographical imbalance between those who are creating the CO2 emissions (the developed countries), and those who are suffering the consequences - so climate change is wrongly seen in developed countries as a low priority.
What are our choices now?
None of the options that we have now are easy options - we can choose to organise urgent radical change and reduce emissions rapidly, or we can have disorganised radical change forced upon us by a deteriorating climate.
- Continue to aim to limit global warming to 1.5°C - this is increasingly looking very difficult.
- Accept a higher limit to global warming of 1.6°C - this is easier to achieve, because the global carbon budget is larger [3], but it comes at the expense of an estimated 40 million climate-related deaths, with additional refugees and biodiversity loss. A possible pathway in the UK that is consistent with 1.6°C is a linear decline in emissions to zero in 2035, as in the chart. The chart has been generated by an online carbon budget calculator [11] - other scenarios can be explored there.
- Continue with the UK Government's flawed Net Zero 2050 Strategy. This would be delaying the ending fossil fuel use despite knowing about the deaths and misery that will result - rather like the ending of slavery was delayed by UK politicians on the basis that it would be bad for the UK economy.
- Ignore climate change altogether. The same comments apply.
There are choices in how to try to achieve this. The changes that must be made are enormous ones, because fossil fuels have been exploited without considering all of the costs. No one group and no one political party can force the changes needed on to the rest of the population. Rather than campaigning for particular policies, it seems better to explain the dire situation, explain the pros and cons and trust citizens to come to reasonable decisions. This is akin to the Shared Decision Making model in health care, where decision making is a partnership between patients and health care professionals. People routinely make enormous sacrifices for the benefit of their children. It seems likely that they would do the same with energy reduction, once they understand the situation, and contribute to the building of a sustainable future.
References
| [1] | The mortality cost of carbon (2021) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24487-w |
| [2] | The Human Cost of Anthropogenic Global Warming: Semi-Quantitative Prediction and the 1,000-Tonne Rule (2019) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02323/full |
| [3] | https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf |
| [4] | https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/23/ed-miliband-calls-for-wartime-mobilisation-to-tackle-climate-crisis |
| [5] | Jackson T (2021) Zero Carbon Sooner: Revised case for an early zero carbon target for the UK. CUSP Working Paper No 29. Guildford: University of Surrey. https://cusp.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/WP-29-Zero-Carbon-Sooner-update.pdf |
| [6] | Tyndall Centre The Tyndall carbon budget tool (2019) https://carbonbudget.manchester.ac.uk/reports/ |
| [7] | Vogel & Hickel (2023) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00174-2/fulltext |
| [8] | Wullenkord & Reese (2021) Avoidance, rationalization, and denial: Defensive self-protection in the face of climate change negatively predicts pro-environmental behavior. Journal of Environmental Psychology https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494421001365 |
| [9] | https://x.com/KevinClimate/status/1786041171170529483 |
| [10] | UK Covid-19 Inquiry Module 1 report (2024) https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/documents/module-1-full-report/ |
| [11] | https://www.carbonindependent.org/carbonbudgets.php |
Started: 2 May 2025