ritain may have to abandon its climate change targets if other countries failed to cut emissions, the chairman of the government’s advisory body has said.
Lord Deben (formerly the Conservative Environment Secretary John Gummer) said: “There is no point in you doing your bit for climate change if no one else is doing it.”
However, the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change also insisted that Britain “was not acting alone” and dismissed concerns that countries were already backtracking on their emission targets. The committee warns ministers in a report today that Britain’s carbon targets “should not and cannot be changed under the terms of the [Climate Change] Act”.
Manufacturers last night accused the committee of trying to keep Britain on a “unilateral trajectory” and