Climate change: Ministers should be ‘sued’ over targets
By Paul Homewood
Ministers should tighten the UK’s official climate change target – or face the courts, the government’s former chief scientist has said.
Prof Sir David King is supporting a legal case forcing ministers to shrink carbon emissions to zero by 2050.
He says the current government goal – an 80% emissions cut by the same date – is too weak to protect the climate.
Ministers have promised more ambitious climate policies in their forthcoming and long-delayed Clean Growth plan.
But Prof King told BBC News the government knew the 80% target cut behind that plan was too weak.
Some 18 months ago, Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom promised a 100% emissions reduction to keep the UK on track with its obligations under the 2015 Paris climate deal.
But ministers have failed to enshrine that 100% cut within the Climate Change Act.
Potential catastrophe
"This is crazy," Prof King told the BBC. "The government knows very well what needs to be done – but it isn’t doing it.
"If it takes legal action to force ministers to behave properly, then so be it – I’ll support it."
Prof King is backing a preliminary legal action by a tiny group, Plan B, run by former government lawyer Tim Crosland.
It argues that Business Secretary Greg Clark is obliged under the act to tighten targets if the science shows it is needed. This is the basis of the case.
Mr Crosland has written to Mr Clark and says if there is no satisfactory reply after 14 days, he will take the case to the High Court for judicial review.
"The science has clearly hardened since the Climate Change Act was agreed," he said.
"If scientists are telling us our current course of emissions potentially takes us to catastrophe, then to stick to the current course is irrational.
"The best available science tells us the risks of crossing tipping points rise very sharply between 1.5 and 2C. And that means the UK cutting emissions to zero."
Counter-productive?
His case would be argued in court by Jonathan Crow, Attorney General to Prince Charles, and a former senior Treasury lawyer.
Mr Crosland says his co-claimants are a rabbi "who learned not to ignore a humanitarian crisis"; young people fearing for the future; and a supporter from Mauritius representing island states at risk from rising sea water.
Other groups are similarly frustrated with long delays in the government’s climate strategy, and some are also considering legal action.
There are fears, though, that pushing for a zero emissions strategy when the government cannot yet reach its lower target may be counter-productive.
ClientEarth, one of the UK’s most successful environment groups over the past decade, has pioneered the use of the courts to deliver environmental policies.
Jonathan Church, a climate lawyer with the group, said: "We hope that Plan B’s claim will help draw attention to the urgency of the challenge we face and ensure that our government keeps its eye on the goals agreed in Paris.
"But targets do not on their own reduce emissions."
He added that the focus now should be ensuring that the Climate Change Act fulfils its purpose.
The government said it would consider Plan B’s letter and respond in due course, adding: "The UK is a global leader on climate change".
A spokesperson said the forthcoming Clean Growth plan, which will outline how reduce emissions will be reduced, would be "ambitious and robust… and build on the economic opportunities across the country".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41401656
Trust Mr Harrabin for failing to point out the elephant in the room!
Prof King of course lost most of the little credibility he had years ago. One can only hope the High Court uses a bit of common sense and tells him exactly where he can stick his legal action.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“One can only hope the High Court uses a bit of common sense and tells him exactly where he can stick his legal action.”
… What those same judges that organised a Global warming Alarmist conference at the high court buildings !
NASA climate “guru” James Hansen has said the same thing about the Paris Accord. He has called it wishful thinking and worse..BS!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud
The claimed “tipping points” are utterly ludicrous. To say that they are the “best science” available is delusional. So no doubt we will end up going with delusion.
If Corbyn gets in, we should be able to meet a zero emissions target easily – no industry, no jobs, no economic activity.
Shouldn’t we be suing ministers for damaging our interests by imposing the constraints they have done instead? Mr King should join them in the dock.
Check out the video on Tony Heller’s site showing what the hurricane did to wind turbines and solar farms in Puerto Rico.
https://realclimatescience.com/2017/09/puerto-rico-windsolar-destroyed-by-maria/
I’ve seen that. I think that it is pretty unfair to single out windmills and solar panels in this particular case. Pretty much everything gets wrecked when this kind of storm passes through. Much better to focus on things like tiny, feeble and unreliable output, even in ideal conditions.
Wind and aolar have three big issues. 1. They are not directly cost competitive without subsidies and preferences. 2. They are intermittant yet there is no viable storage option, forcing grid backup capacity costs not borne by wind and solar. 3. They provide no grid inertia, increasing grid instability unless synchronous condenser capacity is added, another potential cost not borne by wind and solar. None of the three are fixable in the foreseeable future. Renewables with current technology are a fools errand.
The ‘normal’ generation plants survived largely unscathed, the distribution network was wrecked.
But then the distribution network should have been designed to survive a hurricane – it wasn’t. Simply laying cables in the ground rather than stringing them around!
A perfect example of how money should be spent on resilience instead of appeasing the CAGW prophets of doom.
Stringing electricity and telephone cables from posts causes much more difficulty not only in hurricanes but in earthquakes and ice storms when the posts fall.
After the long year or two of earthquakes in Canterbury NZ much of the electricity and phone infrastructure is being laboriously put in trenches along the roads and streets. The drains are underground and so the ability to put cables in trenches is easily available ..you can use pick and shovel if basic tools only are available..
It all goes into a department called infra structure..
cf
http://www.rebuildchristchurch.co.nz/Infrastructure/Home
Speaking from personal experience laying telephone cables under ground is not entirely problem free. In the 1960s the couple of miles of cable to our house was laid underground beside the road, it was cheaper than poles to a single dwelling. At various points moles used to bite the cable, then when it rained water would get in through the punctured insulation and the telephone would fail.
Professors and journalists should be sued for making unsupported statements. Scientists should be sued for making experiments before they know the results.
Suimg worksGood point, there’s the legal action against oil companies in California.
If people are to be sued for failing to act properly on actual facts they knew it would end up very messy for DramaGreen activists , they end up bankrupted and in jail
..whistle-blowers need to be protected.
typo there : Good point, there’s the legal action against oil companies in California. Suing works both ways ..So
If people are to be sued for failing to act properly on actual facts they knew, it would end up very messy for DramaGreen activists; they end up bankrupted and in jail
..whistle-blowers need to be protected.
Electric emergency vehicles to the rescue!
My first hope was that ministers were going to be sued for their damaging decisions on unreliable energy sources and closing first class coal fired power stations: must have had a beer too many! Tipping points, the science has hardened, clean growth plans etc ….. show the need to be very afraid of this lot: they know how to manipulate governments, we don’t!
A picture is worth 1,000words:
As I posted in the “About” thread:
An interview on the Today programme this morning (about 2hrs 40min in) with Sir David KIng (former government Chief Scientific Advisor) about why the UK Government should revise carbon reduction targets to achieve net zero carbon emissions.
Unfortunately, the question not asked was, what difference the UK contribution would make to global temperatures and “climate change”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b095ptpk
What madness
Surely, when it comes to matters of science, legal action is the last refuge for the one who has lost the argument.
“One can only hope the High Court uses a bit of common sense and tells him exactly where he can stick his legal action.”
I’ve just sat through a Clive Anderson “discussion” (cult meeting) on radio 4 about the deployment of “The Law” to ensure … the political and financial objectives of the cult. The BBC politburo achieved its token gesture at balance by having a carefully selected voice from industry, who of course said all the right things, and not a single word to challenge the cult.
Sueing could be a great idea. It would motivate the government to repeal the law. The popular appeal of repeal will be directly proportional to the price of electricity. And while they are at it, perhaps they can sue over carbon policies that do harm to the environment. I suspect there are many biofuel / biomass projects that will never pass muster.
Somebody should raise some flash cash, are there any realists – billionaires out there who enjoy a fight?
A counter actio to sue the beeb and the likes of Harrabin et al and St Attenborough for the greatly aiding the imposition on the UK taxpayers of the CCA 2008, the more than useless ruinables policy agenda and primarily for helping propagate and propagandizing: the great global warming scam, which relentlessly bent the ears of the Westminster establishment has and in no uncertain terms shoved the nation to the brink of economic catastrophe via deindustrialization………….Right to the rub, this prospective counter suit, it should beg, just whose really responsible for the enforced ruination wrought by the great green scam?
Count me in- obviously I’m not a millionaire/billionaire, because I’m not a rich landowner, raking in subsidies from solar/wind, nor a green bankster….
The defense would be in recent studies that say we don’t have a current catastrophic threat – the latest CO2 budget paper for instance. Forcing the issue could kill the appearance of imminent disaster and undo years of shrieking.
Oops.
The High Court will find that the “greenhouse gas” hypothesis is a load of nonsense and that the effect of CO2 on the climate is immeasurably small.
Eh ? Is this ironic or literal ? I thought the UK Supreme Court had already done an investigation and (however absurdly) proclaimed that “AGW” was a proven fact and could therefore be cited as a “question of fact” in litigation.
Another way of pointing out the “elephant in the room” is through looking at the Policy Gap. That is the difference between the aggregate impact of all policy proposals and the desired 1.5°C or 2°C emissions pathways. The biggest problem with the Millar/Grubb/Allen article published in Nature Geoscience last week was not the tacit admission that climate sensitivities were lower than has been claimed for decades. It is that in aggregate proposed climate mitigation policies will get nowhere near the aims. Nor is there any prospect, under the Paris Agreement, of cajoling more countries to follow Britain’s lead and having their Governments impose great harms on their peoples for in return for virtually no impact on global emissions.
The red arrows show the climate mitigation policy gap.
We know the ‘science’ behind this is nonsense. The BBC needs to be pressed on
1. Why do they employ a specialist reporter who provides material with such comic detail but carefully omits any context – which presumably he must now?
2. Whoever passed this as fit for publication, and why?
By the way, King seems to be arguing on the basis of the wording of the Act.
Only one crazy thing here.
“Professor” King.
“This is crazy,” Prof King told the BBC.
– – –
Cut!
This threat is based on the so-called Frankovich case in EU law. This line of attack on the democratic process is being nullified in the Brexit Repeal Bill before Parliament.
We should be protected from errant claims and biased reporting. Is this sort of allowance that the BBC makes to a Teflon coated insider any worse than falsified emails believed to emanate from Russia? That a man like this can survive in the rarefied atmosphere of the public broadcaster is rather as though the means of broadcasting has been taken over in a putsch and the rebels are transmitting their own version of the truth.
Let ’em sue. What we need is the nonsense subjected to cross examination, and a court of law would seem to be the ideal venue – well packed, of course, with media poltroons.
‘Paris’ is already a complete bust as all ‘carbon’ emissions targets are voluntary, unenforceable and thus pointless. As if that’s not enough global CO2 emissions under ‘Paris’ are set to increase not decrease! For this we’re all paying dearly. Talk about pointless.
Quite patently Harrabin is away with the fairies and yet……….as are some judges and lets face it, what we once knew as the western world is being force marched into a very dark place and descending by the day.
Remember this speciously farcical defence and even worse the judgement? yeah! the end of Coal, thanks to a yellow labour party and a daft as a brush judge, verily do the green tosserati never stop celebrating the case.
Green justice and further ‘pollution’ litigation [subtext Paris accord] will doubtless bring about the widespread closure of industry, transport and consequently obliterate the manufacturing base of the nation – selling intangibles [services] and turning Britain into a theme park to cater for rich Chinese tourists won’t be enough to save our ‘bacon’ – mind you in the caves, we’ll need open fires to cook it.
Sorry, no bacon will be allowed, there is also a well-funded planet saving department devoted to the eradication of meat, guaranteed success via its marketing slogans about the impact of meat farming on the climate.
Should not Prof King be sued by every diesel car owner, and by every person living in the major cities over his failed advice given with respect to the promotion of diesel cars over petrol cars?
It is about time that these advisors are held accountable for their sub standard advice.
Professor from the school of ‘Cretinous public insanity’. Another idiot who won’t admit the ‘global warming’ silliness has become no more than a massive fund-raising HOAX.