Fifteen years ago, on this day, November 26, 2008, the UK Climate Change Act got royal assent.
The UK now had a Committee on Climate Change, carbon budgets and a reduction target of 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2005.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Change_Act_2008
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was the issue of climate had been moving steadily up the political agenda (with climate and energy policy becoming entwined in the period 2000 to 2009). In 2000 the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution had recommended a 60% emissions reduction target by 2050. As public agitation (Climate Camp, Campaign Against Climate Change, Transitions Towns etc) got going, the NGO Friends of the Earth led a civil society charge for a Climate Change Bill. Though they shared the credit with the broader “Stop Climate Chaos” coalition, it was really their victory. At this time there was bipartisan support for action, because opposition leader David Cameron had been using environmental issues to detoxify the Tory brand.
What I think we can learn from this
You can have all the bipartisanship you like. It won’t last, and unless you have social movements and civil society monitoring the promises and putting pressure on the decision makers to make it happen, ‘business as usual’ will re-assert itself.
What happened next
David Cameron became Prime Minister, thanks to the connivance of the Liberal Democrats. And then within a couple of years it was ‘cut the green crap’…
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong?