ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE EMERGENCY

For: Mains
Topics Covered: Climate Emergency, objectives and targets

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News Flash

UK Becomes the world’s first Parliament to declare Climate Emergency (#climateemergency). The motion was called by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The decision marks a renewed sense of urgency in tackling climate change. This action helps to avoid more than 1.5 degrees centigrade of warming, requiring global emissions to be cut by almost half of 2010 levels by 2030.

 

Background

There are now some 49 million people living under national, city and local declarations of a climate emergency around the world. The UK are legally committed to a 80 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 (relative to their 1990 levels) and was recently recognised as one of just 18 developed economies that have driven down carbon dioxide emissions over the last decade.

Some city and local councils have set out their climate emergency policies to become carbon zero by 2030 built around renewable energy supplies, more energy-efficient housing and a host of other measures.

The year 2030 is an important target. In spite of what climate contrarians might voice very loudly, five of our planet’s warmest years on record have occurred since 2010, whilst 2018 experienced all manner of climate extremes that broke numerous global records.

With the planet to experience further warming from the heat held by the oceans, there is increasing international focus on meeting the United Nation’s Paris Agreement which was signed by 197 countries in 2016.

A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) has suggested that meeting this target means annual global carbon emissions must effectively halve between now and 2030, and then fall to zero by 2050. This is a target the UK opposition party Labour are now calling for.

 

Climate emergency

The decision of emergency in Parliament caters to national reductions and investment in the reduction of carbon emissions and saving the planet.

Compared to its 1990 levels, UK (United Kingdom) was later legally committed to a 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 and recently featured as 1 of 18 developed economies to decrease CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions in the last 10 years.

 

For Further Details: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/climate-change-2/

 

Source: Wired

 

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