Positive thinking

 Rebecca Willis, Lancaster University The UK’s climate change targets are world-leading. Yet there is no clear plan in place to achieve them. That is the stark message of a new progress report from the government’s official advisers, the Committee on Climate Change. The Committee is forthright in its criticism of government . On its report card, assessing progress against 25 policies needed to meet carbon targets, there is just one green tick. But, beyond asking for the prime minister to set up a “climate cabinet”, the Committee has much less to say about how government – at both national and local level – should be reconfigured to make climate action a priority. The stark truth is that no one is in charge. Under the UK’s Climate Change Act, there is a statutory requirement on the government as a whole to meet targets. This leaves the prime minister with ultimate authority, but no clarity about which department should do what. The Department for Business, Energy and I...

Richard Kingston, University of Manchester and Ransford A. Acheampong, University of Manchester Since the 1920s, the car has revolutionised the way people travel; eliminating the constraints of distance while offering a personal, fast and convenient way to get from one place to another. Cities have been designed and built to make space for cars, and many cities which existed centuries before the advent of the car reshaped their streets to accommodate it. The car, along with investments in major road infrastructure, has allowed people to live further away from city centres. The result has been that residential settlements can sprawl out over large areas – a perfect example is US suburbia. Yet people’s dependence on cars poses a major threat to public health and the environment. It is estimated that there are more than a billion cars in the world. As well as driving up energy use, contributing to more than 70% of C0₂ emissions in the transport sector and reducing air qual...

Pip Roddis, University of Leeds Subsidies for onshore wind power were cut by the UK government in 2015. Then the main reasons given were that it was too expensive and that the public didn’t support it. Amber Rudd MP, then head of what was the Department of Energy and Climate Change, said in a statement to parliament : “We are reaching the limits of what is affordable and what the public is prepared to accept.” Fast-forward to 2019: onshore wind is the UK’s cheapest form of electricity , and our newly-published academic research shows that public support for renewables is high and getting steadily higher. Support for nuclear and fracking, on the other hand, is low and decreasing. These trends are demonstrated by the government’s own data: the UK Energy and Climate Change Public Attitudes Tracker (PAT). The PAT has been running quarterly since 2012, meaning there is a huge amount of data to show how attitudes have changed over the past seven years. In total, more than 50...

Marcelle McManus, University of Bath   It will be very difficult to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by enough to halt global heating at 1.5°C – the threshold at which catastrophic climate change becomes more likely – according to a new paper published in Nature. If the Earth warms by more than 1.5°C , millions of people could be displaced by sea level rise and global crop yields could decline. Fortunately, the political will to prevent this seems more widespread than ever . The UK recently became the first major economy to pass a commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 into law . Sounds positive, so what’s the problem? Well, the new study has shown that if the world continues to use its existing power plants, it’s likely that the target of 1.5°C will be exceeded. If all the fossil fuel plants and other carbon-emitting infrastructure that’s currently planned are built, this target will certainly be exceeded. There is a significant number of fossil fuel plants curr...

Benjamin Neimark, Lancaster University ; Oliver Belcher, Durham University , and Patrick Bigger, Lancaster University   The US military’s carbon footprint is enormous. Like corporate supply chains, it relies upon an extensive global network of container ships, trucks and cargo planes to supply its operations with everything from bombs to humanitarian aid and hydrocarbon fuels. Our new study calculated the contribution of this vast infrastructure to climate change. Greenhouse gas emission accounting usually focuses on how much energy and fuel civilians use. But recent work , including our own, shows that the US military is one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries. If the US military were a country, its fuel usage alone would make it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, sitting between Peru and Portugal. In 2017, the US military bought about 269,2...

Rick Stafford, Bournemouth University and Peter JS Jones, UCL Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greta Thunberg claims we need system change to save the planet, and the majority of experts, from the IPCC , through to our own research , would certainly agree with this. But for most people, it often isn’t clear what changes actually need to be made to address environmental problems. And ideas that are presented can be seem as extreme to some . This is despite the fact that many experts agree that to really tackle climate change, the focus needs to be on changing the capitalist system to make it more environment-friendly. System change can sound scary, but as the current system drives social injustice and environmental destruction, a new approach to address both is called for. These are some suggestions to help build that new system which also aims to improve people’s lives in the process. 1. Less focus on economic growth The suggestion that GDP is a good measure of a country’...

Nicholas Beuret, University of Essex   Those least responsible for global warming will suffer the most. Poorer countries – those that have contributed far less to climate change – tend to be situated in warmer regions, where additional warming causes the most devastation. Extreme weather events such as Syria’s prolonged drought , South Asia’s catastrophic monsoon floods , and Cyclone Idai in South-East Africa, the third deadliest cyclone on record, are becoming more likely and more severe. These events are disproportionately bringing death, displacement, and crop failure . As a result of this, projections estimate that the economies of poorer, warmer countries will be gravely harmed by climate change over coming decades, while the cooler, richer countries responsible for the vast majority of the extra CO2 in the air may even benefit in the short term. But as new research reveals, this is not just a future concern – the economic injustice of climate change has alread...

Nicholas Beuret, University of Essex American congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently shook up environmental politics by releasing a broad outline of a Green New Deal – a plan to make the US a carbon-neutral economy in the next ten years, while reducing both poverty and inequality. Lauded by many as a radical and necessary step, president Trump responded in typical style: "I think it is very important for the Democrats to press forward with their Green New Deal. It would be great for the so-called “Carbon Footprint” to permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military - even if no other country would do the same. Brilliant!" 15:21 - 9 feb 2019 - twitter The Green New Deal doesn’t directly call for people to consume less meat. But the argument that solving climate change means changing our diets is widespread, and Ocasio-Cortez herself has made the link . Yet Trump’s tweet was actual...

   Rupert Read, University of East Anglia The world is witnessing an increase in the number and severity of hurricanes, droughts, floods and famines. A significant part of this is attributable to the temperature rises and disruption to the weather systems that human industrial activity has triggered . Yet at this very moment, when the world needs new protections to mitigate dangerous climate change more than ever, Britain faces a struggle to maintain its current levels of environmental protection. Britain’s vote to leave the European Union has set in place a process that, if it continues, jeopardises the future of many of the country’s most important environmental protections. In a recent briefing to MPs , my colleague Tim O'Riordan and I focused on the threat to what’s called the precautionary principle , and why it matters for the future of environmental law after Brexit. The precautionary principle is present in UK law mainly by way of its presence in ...