Climate change targets: Bold in theory
Whatever other challenges he faces, the energy minister can be pleased by the outcome of cabinet talks on carbon reduction
Fast lane or slow lane, Chris Huhne has been driving climate change policy in the right direction. Whatever else is going on in his career – and the allegation that he asked his wife to take speeding points for him is serious – the energy minister can be pleased by the outcome of cabinet discussions on future carbon reduction. With some important qualifications, the government has decided to accept the recommendation of the independent, advisory Committee on Climate Change (CCC) for a 50% cut in emissions by 2027. Anything less would have been shaming, both for Mr Huhne and the coalition as a whole, just a year after David Cameron promised it would be "the greenest government ever".
The speeding claims against Mr Huhne were understandably on MPs' minds yesterday afternoon, when he turned up in the Commons, under some duress, to make an oral rather than written statement on climate targets. A sniff of scandal draws MPs and journalists into the chamber but, whatever happens next in that story, climate change certainly matters more. In the moments after Mr Huhne's statement, both Greenpeace and the CCC put out statements largely welcoming what he had to say. "This is a world first: no other country has made legally binding commitments to ambitious emissions reduction targets for the 2020s," said the CCC. For such support, Mr Huhne must have given much thanks.
Politically, climate change is no longer the most pressing of issues in Britain. Scientifically, it still is. Politicians of all parties have to balance the immediate need for economic growth against the contradictory demands of tough carbon targets in the future. It is easy but dishonest to pretend that these two things can sit together without tension. Green jobs will provide future employment, but right now it is dirty jobs in manufacturing that are driving exports. Both the Treasury and the business department are well aware that what remains of the steel industry and the ceramics industry, to pick just two, would decamp abroad if Britain imposed costs on them that other countries do not. Exporting carbon pollution is not the same as reducing it, and the debate inside government about the right response to the CCC was not quite the battle of virtue against evil that some have described.
As a result, the fourth carbon budget, which will run from 2023, was announced alongside important (and still undefined) exemptions for energy-intensive industries, which could in the end render the targets hollow. Mr Huhne has also agreed to review progress in 2014, an automatic revision that will align Britain to progress elsewhere in the EU. Until now, this country has been boldly unilateralist on carbon targets, signing up, through a process set out in the Climate Change Act, to an emissions cut to a fifth of 1990 levels by 2050. The review means that if the rest of Europe falters in its task, Britain may do so too. This will dismay green groups. But unilateralism only makes sense to the extent that it encourages others to go further too. A heroic carbon reduction target that cannot be met only breeds cynicism.
It is of course easy for governments to set themselves tests far into the future. Mr Huhne will not be the climate change minister in 2027, when yesterday's target must be met. The greater test of this government's green credentials is what is being done now. Emissions fell heavily in 2009, because of recession. Any economic recovery now would probably push them back up. There are very difficult decisions ahead on energy supplies, and in particular nuclear. If petrol prices stay high, the government will face more pressure to drive them back down. Nonetheless, for all the jokes about speeding offences in the Commons yesterday, a downcast Mr Huhne did have something substantial to announce. Looking to the long term is a sound escape from present woes.
The speeding claims against Mr Huhne were understandably on MPs' minds yesterday afternoon, when he turned up in the Commons, under some duress, to make an oral rather than written statement on climate targets. A sniff of scandal draws MPs and journalists into the chamber but, whatever happens next in that story, climate change certainly matters more. In the moments after Mr Huhne's statement, both Greenpeace and the CCC put out statements largely welcoming what he had to say. "This is a world first: no other country has made legally binding commitments to ambitious emissions reduction targets for the 2020s," said the CCC. For such support, Mr Huhne must have given much thanks.
Politically, climate change is no longer the most pressing of issues in Britain. Scientifically, it still is. Politicians of all parties have to balance the immediate need for economic growth against the contradictory demands of tough carbon targets in the future. It is easy but dishonest to pretend that these two things can sit together without tension. Green jobs will provide future employment, but right now it is dirty jobs in manufacturing that are driving exports. Both the Treasury and the business department are well aware that what remains of the steel industry and the ceramics industry, to pick just two, would decamp abroad if Britain imposed costs on them that other countries do not. Exporting carbon pollution is not the same as reducing it, and the debate inside government about the right response to the CCC was not quite the battle of virtue against evil that some have described.
As a result, the fourth carbon budget, which will run from 2023, was announced alongside important (and still undefined) exemptions for energy-intensive industries, which could in the end render the targets hollow. Mr Huhne has also agreed to review progress in 2014, an automatic revision that will align Britain to progress elsewhere in the EU. Until now, this country has been boldly unilateralist on carbon targets, signing up, through a process set out in the Climate Change Act, to an emissions cut to a fifth of 1990 levels by 2050. The review means that if the rest of Europe falters in its task, Britain may do so too. This will dismay green groups. But unilateralism only makes sense to the extent that it encourages others to go further too. A heroic carbon reduction target that cannot be met only breeds cynicism.
It is of course easy for governments to set themselves tests far into the future. Mr Huhne will not be the climate change minister in 2027, when yesterday's target must be met. The greater test of this government's green credentials is what is being done now. Emissions fell heavily in 2009, because of recession. Any economic recovery now would probably push them back up. There are very difficult decisions ahead on energy supplies, and in particular nuclear. If petrol prices stay high, the government will face more pressure to drive them back down. Nonetheless, for all the jokes about speeding offences in the Commons yesterday, a downcast Mr Huhne did have something substantial to announce. Looking to the long term is a sound escape from present woes.
In praise of… Abdo Khal
Acclaimed author shines a light on life at the bottom of the heap in Saudi Arabia's often forgotten villages
As anyone who has picked up One Thousand and One Nights is aware, there is a venerable tradition of Arabian storytelling. Before sky-scrapers shot up in the Gulf, the heart of the culture was found in the tales shared around evening fires, and perhaps that is what organisers of this week's Book World Prague jamboree had in mind in making Saudi Arabia their guest of honour. Or, just perhaps, they grabbed the petro-dollars without stopping to think. Conditions in the kingdom are dismal ones for creating literature of any quality. With no cinemas, youngsters can grow up missing out on the great tales of the times, and there are ludicrous new strictures on literary clubs, even before we consider the heavy scrawl of the censor's black pen. The Prague delegation arrived with just one obscure writer, deliberately leaving behind novelists whose sheer gift has overcome all of the barriers to win international acclaim. Foremost among them is Abdo Khal, whose Spewing Sparks As Big As Castles won a $60,000 prize dubbed the Arab Booker. A modest man stemming from the Hijazi west, he shines a light on life at the bottom of the heap, in Saudi's often forgotten villages. His voice blends image-rich poetic classicism with contemporary patois, which makes for an unmistakably Arab mix, but it reliably sets to work on universal themes. Spewing Sparks casts an unflinching eye on those seduced by the glamour of palace politics. Needless to say, it is not easy to get hold of in Saudi Arabia.
Irish state visit: The Queen in green
Although no one is naive enough to think that all passions between Ireland and Britain are spent, this visit is a powerful attempt at achieving a sort of closure between the two states
The phrase used by the BBC's Ireland correspondent yesterday morning said more than he intended. This was one small step for the Queen, observed Mark Simpson, as Elizabeth II stepped on to Irish soil, but one huge moment in British-Irish history. The echo of Neil Armstrong's famous comment prompts a striking thought. The Sea of Tranquillity is about a thousand times further than the centre of Dublin is from Buckingham Palace. Yet for much of the Queen's long reign, the thought of a royal visit to Ireland was almost as improbable as the thought of a royal visit to the moon.
Yesterday, though, the previously unthinkable happened at last. Good. Inevitably, the first hours spent by a British monarch in Ireland since George V a century ago generated a potent array of British-Irish symbolism. Some of it was discordant. Most of it was not. The Queen wore green – though jade, not emerald. Her plane arrived at Casement aerodrome, named after a man executed for treason against her grandfather. Soldiers of the Irish Republic saluted as she drove up to what was once the Viceregal Lodge for lunch with President McAleese. Then, particularly freighted with meaning, the Queen drove along Irish history's most iconic thoroughfare, O'Connell Street, to the garden of remembrance where, after the playing of the British national anthem, she bowed her head in memory of those who took up arms against her ancestors in 1916 – and before and since.
All this is long overdue. The Irish and British peoples have no transcending quarrel with one another. Nor, nowadays, do the two states. On both sides, there is a craving for normality. A minority, of course, continue to fight old battles. Central Dublin was locked down for the Queen's visit yesterday because of security fears about those who might protest, as a few did. But the barriers to normality are not on the Irish republican side alone. Perhaps the Queen, driving up O'Connell Street, paused to reflect that Catholic emancipation remains unfinished business as long as the Act of Settlement remains unamended. It is high time, if so.
Ireland is changed utterly since the Easter Rising. So is Britain. Yet the history still resonates, and rightly. Some still take all these symbols too seriously, and cannot think outside them. Others do not take them seriously enough, and fail to understand them. Yet while formal events and wreath-layings are the stuff of all state visits everywhere between former adversaries, and although no one is naive enough to think that all passions between Ireland and Britain are now wholly spent, this visit is a powerful and proper attempt at achieving a sort of wider closure between the two states that the two peoples mostly made long ago.
Yesterday, though, the previously unthinkable happened at last. Good. Inevitably, the first hours spent by a British monarch in Ireland since George V a century ago generated a potent array of British-Irish symbolism. Some of it was discordant. Most of it was not. The Queen wore green – though jade, not emerald. Her plane arrived at Casement aerodrome, named after a man executed for treason against her grandfather. Soldiers of the Irish Republic saluted as she drove up to what was once the Viceregal Lodge for lunch with President McAleese. Then, particularly freighted with meaning, the Queen drove along Irish history's most iconic thoroughfare, O'Connell Street, to the garden of remembrance where, after the playing of the British national anthem, she bowed her head in memory of those who took up arms against her ancestors in 1916 – and before and since.
All this is long overdue. The Irish and British peoples have no transcending quarrel with one another. Nor, nowadays, do the two states. On both sides, there is a craving for normality. A minority, of course, continue to fight old battles. Central Dublin was locked down for the Queen's visit yesterday because of security fears about those who might protest, as a few did. But the barriers to normality are not on the Irish republican side alone. Perhaps the Queen, driving up O'Connell Street, paused to reflect that Catholic emancipation remains unfinished business as long as the Act of Settlement remains unamended. It is high time, if so.
Ireland is changed utterly since the Easter Rising. So is Britain. Yet the history still resonates, and rightly. Some still take all these symbols too seriously, and cannot think outside them. Others do not take them seriously enough, and fail to understand them. Yet while formal events and wreath-layings are the stuff of all state visits everywhere between former adversaries, and although no one is naive enough to think that all passions between Ireland and Britain are now wholly spent, this visit is a powerful and proper attempt at achieving a sort of wider closure between the two states that the two peoples mostly made long ago.
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