Carbon budgets ‘gambling with our future’

Climate campaigners today (1 February) criticised the UK Committee on Climate Change’s proposed carbon budgets for being ‘simplistic’ and ‘gambling with our future’.

The Committee today acknowledged that Scotland will have to cut carbon emissions faster after 2020 if it is to deliver a fair and safe contribution to global emissions budgets.

However, Friends of the Earth Scotland said that the committee’s proposals were ‘neither fair nor safe’.

Friends of the Earth Scotland’s Chief Executive Duncan McLaren said: “The Committee has taken a simplistic approach to calculating a fair and safe budget. Its figure of 1250 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent between 2010 and 2050 is more than 50% bigger than we would conclude, based on analysis by the respected Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. The Committee’s proposed budget is neither fair nor safe.

“The most likely outcomes of the Committee’s recommendations, globally, are CO2 concentrations of 450 parts per million (ppm), and temperature rises in excess of 2 degrees Celcius. Even a concentration of 350-400 ppm would mean a 50% chance of exceeding 2 degrees. You wouldn’t board a plane which had a 50% chance of failure – it’s reckless to accept a greater chance of failure to control global warming.”

ENDS

For media enquiries, please contact:

Per Fischer, Press Office, Friends of the Earth Scotland
t: 0131 243 2719

Notes to Editors

Reckless Gamblers, Friends of the Earth EWNI report
www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/reckless_gamblers.pdf

Lord Turner letter to Roseanna Cunningham MSP, Minister for Environment and Climate Change, on advice on a cumulative emissions budget for Scotland bit.ly/hwpvC5

Friends of the Earth Scotland exists to help people in Scotland look after the planet for everyone’s future. We think globally and act locally in Scotland, delivering solutions to climate change by enabling and empowering people to take both individual and collective action. We offer help to people with the big things in life – helping to sustain a healthy society and environment. We believe that all of our children’s futures will be better because of what we do. www.foe-scotland.org.uk