{"id":45967,"date":"2019-05-05T10:06:44","date_gmt":"2019-05-05T15:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45967"},"modified":"2019-05-05T10:07:47","modified_gmt":"2019-05-05T15:07:47","slug":"uk-climate-emergency-is-official-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45967","title":{"rendered":"UK climate emergency is official policy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

UK climate emergency is official policy<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Heathrow\u2019s expansion is now in question. Image: By J Patrick Fischer, via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Major changes in the government\u2019s policy on fossil fuels will be vital to tackling the UK climate emergency that Parliament has recognised.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LONDON, 3 May, 2019 \u2212<\/em> The United Kingdom has taken a potentially momentous policy decision: it says there is a UK climate emergency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 1 May British members of Parliament (MPs) became the world\u2019s first national legislature to declare a formal climate and environment emergency, saying they hoped they could work with like-minded countries across the world to take action to avoid more than 1.5\u00b0C of global warming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No-one yet knows what will be the practical result of the resolution proposed by Jeremy Corbyn, the Opposition Labour leader<\/a>, but UK politicians were under pressure to act following a series of high-profile strikes by school students in recent months and demonstrations by a new climate protest organisation, Extinction Rebellion<\/a> (XR),  whose supporters closed roads in the centre of London for a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Conservative government ordered its MPs not to oppose the Labour resolution, and it was passed without a vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zero carbon by 2050<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hours after the MPs\u2019 decision, a long-awaited detailed report by the government\u2019s official advisors, the Committee on Climate Change<\/a>, was published. It recommends cutting the UK\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. The current target is 80%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report says the government should accept the new target immediately, pass it into law in the next few months and begin to implement policies to achieve it. The committee says that will mean the end of petrol and diesel cars on British roads, a cut in meat consumption, an end to gas boilers for heating buildings, planting 1.5 billion trees to store carbon, a vast increase in renewable energy, and many other measures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UK climate emergency is official policy Heathrow\u2019s expansion is now in question. Image: By J Patrick Fischer, via Wikimedia Commons Major changes in the government\u2019s policy on fossil fuels will be vital to tackling the UK climate emergency that Parliament has recognised. LONDON, 3 May, 2019 \u2212 The United Kingdom has taken a potentially momentous policy decision: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20,72,3193,141,13249,9245,3411,7411,9914,328,386,11911,9054,674,2080],"class_list":["post-45967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-agriculture","tag-biodiversity","tag-carbon-dioxide","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-emergency","tag-climate-news-network","tag-climate-policy","tag-electricity-generation","tag-emissions","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-greenhouse-gases","tag-paul-brown","tag-political-action","tag-renewable-energy","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45968,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45967\/revisions\/45968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}