BE PREPARED TO PLAY YOUR PART IN REDUCING GLOBAL WARMING GAS EMISSIONS – we are all a part of this do need to act NOW.

The UK Government has now published it’s UK Low Carbon Transition Plan (available free through http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/publications/lc_trans_plan/lc_trans_plan.aspx). For concerned people, it makes exciting reading with it’s 5-point plan, setting out the issues and plans for action.

The Government believes that climate change is a huge threat (and provides evidence) and that the UK can lead the way in protecting us all, preparing for the future in order to limit negative impacts and helping us do our bit. A cynic might say that it was a shame that quite a number of T.Blare’s inspired pronouncements in the 90s were not actually turned into policy or action and 10 years later we are still producing white papers.

I’ve started to read the 228 A4 pages and like the emphasis on getting ground-up movements going, as well as looking at the big picture. It’s also good to see the urgency of the language. A cause for concern is that a great deal of emphasis in the early pages is put on carbon capture and storage as a means of mitigating the effects of burning coal and other fossil fuels. This is because:

A. Carbon capture and storage is not yet an industrial reality and

B. We shouldn’t be burning all that fossil fuel anyway. When you think about it, if this strategy is enacted, we are going to leave a World for the next generation that has CO2 dumps instead of coal, oil and gas and toxic nuclear waste in huge quanities instead of uranium ore.

What is good about this, however, is that the paper does seem to think through how we will get our energy. Let’s hope that it IS acted upon this time, unlike the Energy White Paper of 2001.

By on July 22, 2009   /   Doug Kennedy Blogs