{"id":1451,"date":"2015-07-25T10:05:23","date_gmt":"2015-07-25T10:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinanderson.info\/blog\/?p=1451"},"modified":"2016-01-06T16:24:55","modified_gmt":"2016-01-06T16:24:55","slug":"response-to-decc-ministers-amber-rudd-speech-on-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinanderson.info\/blog\/response-to-decc-ministers-amber-rudd-speech-on-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Response to DECC Minister’s (Amber Rudd) speech on climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Minister’s speech was given on the 24th July 2015; the full transcript is available at:\u00a0secretary-of-state-speech-on-climate-change<\/a><\/p>\n

___________<\/span><\/p>\n

The Secretary of State\u2019s eloquent speech is long on rhetoric but short on coherence. Let\u2019s be blunt, whilst the Minister has chosen to view her Department\u2019s responsibilities solely through a parochial financial lens \u2013 many poor people living in climatically more vulnerable parts of the globe will face the life and death repercussions of her Government\u2019s increasingly weak stance on climate change.<\/span><\/p>\n

In evoking the legacy of Margaret Thatcher in support of her Government\u2019s position the Minister demonstrates the contortions she and her Department are having to go through to comply with the Chancellor\u2019s austerity diktat. Since Thatcher\u2019s 1990 speech, global emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, have risen by over 60%. For the UK, consumption-based emissions (including CO<\/span>2<\/sub> associated with imports and exports) were up 12% prior to the economic collapse, with the latest post-collapse data still putting UK emissions 1% higher than they were in 1990. All this points towards a future with catastrophic levels of climate change. Only an urgent rejection of the incremental escapism that dominates the UK and international policy arena can now deliver the necessary rates of emission reduction. Yet the Minister\u2019s speech acknowledges no such urgency \u2013 instead she chooses to focus on how responding to climate change dovetails with the Chancellor\u2019s drive for short-term financial growth.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Minister closes with an assertion that the 2\u00b0C goal remains an imperative for her Government. Yet her own policies are premised on the UK\u2019s receiving a hugely inequitable share of the global 2\u00b0C carbon budget, alongside the large-scale uptake of highly speculative negative emission technologies sometime in the far distant future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Behind the eloquence of the Minister\u2019s rhetoric lurks a UK Government\u2019s position on climate change increasingly informed by a muddled blend of policy machinations and Dr Strangelove technologies, rather than by rigorous analysis. Ultimately there is something deeply concerning about the most vulnerable communities\u2019 being forced to pay the cost of the ineptitude of the banks and the spinelessness of the legislature. Yet it is exactly this approach that informs the scientifically illiterate basis of the Minister\u2019s speech.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Minister’s speech was given on the 24th July 2015; the full transcript is available at:\u00a0secretary-of-state-speech-on-climate-change ___________ The Secretary of State\u2019s eloquent speech is long on rhetoric but short on coherence. Let\u2019s be blunt, whilst the Minister has chosen to view her Department\u2019s responsibilities solely through a parochial financial lens \u2013 many poor people living in climatically more vulnerable parts of the globe will face the life and death repercussions of her Government\u2019s increasingly weak stance on climate change. In evoking the legacy of Margaret Thatcher in support of her Government\u2019s position the Minister demonstrates the contortions she and her\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":5}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinanderson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinanderson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinanderson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinanderson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinanderson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1451"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kevinanderson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1458,"href":"https:\/\/kevinanderson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions\/1458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinanderson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinanderson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinanderson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}