. On this day, the United Kingdom government, led by John Major, released its “Sustainable Development Strategy”, which was going to return the UK carbon emissions levels to 1990 levels by the year 2000. And this was achieved, yep, great… except it was all part of the dash for gas and de-industrialization (off-shoring production).
What happened next? The UK government, by this time had already killed off a European Community-wide carbon tax proposed by the Danes for two reasons (at least) – because of the political difficulties around Maastricht and also pit closures.
And the incoming Blair Government, set itself a 20% reduction target by 2010 because it thought this would be relatively easy.
However, by 2000 it was obvious (or rather, the late-lamented Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution pointed out) that emissions reductions weren’t going to continue, and would in fact increase. Cue much talk of nuclear and CCS. Of course.
HMG still not doing nearly as well as it would like to say that it is doing. We have been making bold promises about climate action, taking credit for accidents, and dodging the blame for everything else.