The government’s 2050 net-zero target will set us up for guaranteed failure

The climate column: We’re not tackling the crisis with enough energy, writes Donnachadh McCarthy. If have there’s any hope of a decent future for humanity, we need radical change and fast

(Getty Images)

A couple of weeks ago, a historic event took place, although, from the lack of media coverage, you would not have known it.

On Friday 11 September, the UK’s first climate assembly issued its report on how the UK should achieve a net-zero economy by 2050. 

Its most important recommendation was that the government should summon a second assembly to decide on whether a much earlier net-zero carbon deadline is needed.

The assembly was set up by a coalition of six UK parliamentary committees last year, following the mass protest arrests by Extinction Rebellion outside parliament calling for a citizens assembly to produce a report on a net-zero Britain by 2025.

Parliament chose instead to request to extend that deadline to 2050, despite the science indicating that we are on the cusp of or have already passed irreversible climate tipping-points.

Climate Assembly UK’s membership was chosen by sortition to reflect the UK population in terms of class, race, age and views on the climate emergency.

It then spent several months liaising with various experts across a range of sectors, later producing a 556-page report that goes into depth on each sector, listing recommendations and summarising the debate.  

The assembly format, including as it does the full range of the public’s views on the climate emergency, ranging from those opposing any action, to worried activists, produces a mixture of some radical proposals, a lot of compromises and some impossible contradictions.

To be frank, the report reads like a composite of the major political parties recent manifestoes on climate action.  

The most radical proposals were on aviation, which make up 7 per cent of UK emissions and where they proposed a ban on private jets, air-miles, first-class seats and helicopters and supported increased taxation on frequent flyers and long-haul flights.

But on the grounds of our right to “freedom and happiness”, they supported an expansion of aviation of up to 50 per cent, while advocating for the promotion of staycations.

The assembly also rejected nuclear power as too expensive, in part owing to the fact that there aren’t yet any disposal solutions for radioactive waste. There was almost unanimous support for wind and solar energy, but less for biofuels, due to biodiversity impacts and a rejection of carbon capture and storage for fossil-fuelled power stations.

On surface transport, which is responsible for 23 per cent of territorial emissions, they backed cycling and public transport and a ban on new fossil-fuelled cars by 2035. They supported a pretty pathetic gradual reduction in car-usage of 5 per cent per decade.

They recognised the large emissions associated with the manufacturing of consumer products and called for greater sharing and repair of products and the phasing out of single-use products. They floated a ban on advertising for high-energy products and sectors.

On home-energy usage, which makes up 15 per cent of emissions, they advocated a ban on new gas boilers from 2030, which would mean putting new ones in for another decade.

Farming and land-use comprise 10 per cent of emissions and the assembly supported a 20 to 40 per cent reduction in meat and dairy consumption but on a voluntary basis. Interestingly, it also called for more allotments across the country, recognising the low carbon emissions from grow-your-own food.

In addition to that, it was suggested that farmers should produce more wood for buildings and be paid to restore forests, peat and wetlands, all of which help to recapture carbon from the atmosphere.

Still, the report, like the recent one from the Committee on Climate Change (who were chief informants for the assembly) failed to address the role of UK banks financing fossil fuel industry expansion and did not call for a ban on new oil, gas or coal-fields in the UK.  

I confess, I was deeply disappointed when I read the assembly’s assessment. Missing was any sense of urgency driven by the apocalyptic fires burning across the planet as I write, or the latest news outlining the catastrophic collapse in wildlife numbers with another 8 per cent lost in the last two years.

The report was riven with calls for voluntarism and gradualism – not to be economically disruptive. It opposed personal carbon allowances and it literally called for taxes on manufacturers, while opposing any increase in costs to consumers.

This exemplifies the impossible contradictory demand that the public is making on politicians: cut carbon emissions radically but do not impinge on our freedom to do as we please or impose any extra costs on us.  

So, why the complacency and lack of radical proposals?

The answer is simple. The assembly’s members consume the same media and advertising as the rest of us. A media that constantly pours out articles and advertisements promoting high-carbon lifestyles and corporations. Despite calling on the government to provide the information needed to reduce emissions, there were no recommendations calling on the media, marketing industry and education system to do the same.

One of Extinction Rebellion’s recent demands has been to encourage the government and media to be transparent about the climate emergency. Decades-long failure to do this is evident in the complacency of the assembly’s report and its exhortation not to do anything that could disrupt the economy, despite it taking place during the Covid-19 crisis, with its devastating economic and health consequences due to the government’s failure to heed the World Health Organisation’s 2019 warning that they were unprepared for a global pandemic. 

There was overwhelming backing from the assembly for the government’s post-covid economic recovery to be invested in the transition to a zero-carbon economy, a recommendation that the government has already failed to implement.

But there was one glimmer of hope. In the final chapter of the report, there is a call for another climate assembly on whether the government target of 2050 is too late, perhaps the most urgent and important in the whole document. In my view, 2030 should be the absolute latest.

As a top priority, the climate movement must press the six parliamentary committees who commissioned the assembly to immediately implement this recommendation. Our future and what is left of nature depends on it.