By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982
Last night, only a small handful of Labour MPs voted in favour of the government signing up to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions from public buildings by 10% in 2010.
The Opposition Day Motion, submitted by the Lib Dems, called on government buildings to adhere to the 10:10 proposals - as 51 councis, 850 schools, 1,200 businesses and 35,000 individuals have already done. It was defeated by 297 to 226 after the government whip was applied.
On first glimpse, this seems like an incredibly regressive step, and the media reports have subsequently painted the vote in a negative light.
I, too, was initially confused by the vote, so contacted Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, who has explained the government's position in more detail:
Ed tells me:
"10:10 is a campaign which Labour supports: all Cabinet ministers have signed up to try to reduce their CO2 emissions by 10% in 2010. It's a great motivator of public action to cut carbon emissions through individual and collective behaviour change and I hope it helps to build public support for action by governments to agree an ambitious, effective and fair deal at Copenhagen.
It’s also true that signing up can be an important step to sustaining long term emissions cuts. That’s why Labour-run councils and Labour groups are signing up to 10:10; we want local authorities to have local carbon budgets, and signing up to 10:10 is an important step towards that goal.
But as a government we have a much bigger, long term goal that we set out in the framework of Climate Change Act last year. Five months ago we put flesh on that framework when we agreed - with the support of the Lib Dems and the official Opposition – the first three carbon budgets for this country. Those budgets are 3 five year cycles moving from last year to 2022.
So every government department is committed to a long term reduction in carbon emissions – not just in 2009, not just in 2010, but through to 2022 and beyond. The public sector has already reduced its emissions by a third between 1990 and 2007 and the Government is on track to meet and exceed its carbon emissions target of 12.5% reductions from across its estate by 2010-11.
Se're now allocating £20 million pounds to cut CO2 emissions from both the government estate and its transport to achieve those goals."
If only the rest of the cabinet could explain the government position as quickly and clearly as Mr Miliband, we might get some good press occasionally.
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The frontman to all of this, the man hailed as some sort of climate change guru who will save the world in what is it? 45 days now? The man is a fraud and ignorant. He uses arguments to prove the flawed man made climate change theory which the very scientific community he quotes disagrees with such as blaming the relatively recent floods in the UK on climate change. The increasing deserts in China, apparently not a natural event, its man made climate change.
When you have a frontman who is incapable of presenting factual evidence, who totally ignores what environmental scientists have told him and continues to push forward what can only be described as blatant lies, what you have is a publicity exercise with 10:10 and the upcoming Copenhagen farce.
If politicians really wanted to engage the public in this they might try listening for a change rather than insisting that its the end of the world as we know it. They might attempt real world solution to the real climate change that is happening and do something about our eroding coastlines - perhaps a simple solution of coastal defences which they continue to ignore. And maybe, just maybe, politicians could come up with solutions that don't give big business the excuse to increase already ludicrous energy prices or whatever else they feel like increasing in price using the ridiculous arguments as an excuse.
I really am getting tired of all this, its pathetic, transparent and frankly I'm getting annoyed as being branded as a denier, being linked in some tenuous way to the views of Nick Griffin and I'm getting more and more distant from the Labour Party with their every uttering of man made climate change. My grandchildren will look back on all this and laugh, but in the meanwhile my family have to listen to all this rubbish while real issues are completely bypassed and ignored.
But given that Govt is already committed to more ambitious targets than 10:10, surely it would be a backward step to vote for it.
This isn't a vote in a bowling club AGM - the motion would have become legislation - weaker legislation than already exists!
Perhaps the LibDems would like to stop playing politics with the issue. I'm also disappointed in the 38Degrees Campaign for being hoodwinked in this way. It seems they might need people working for them who have a little more nouse.
For example, has Baroness Scotland got rid of her XJ12 yet? What does it do around Central London, about 9mpg?
I'm sorry this explanation is opaque in the extreme.
Is Ed really saying that the government is going to do this anyway, but won't support a vote to emphasis the general support for these targets?
As for the £20million budget for cutting CO2 from the government estate and transport. It's a meaningless statement without any explanation of what the money is being spent on and merely plays into the hands of those who claim the government's answer to any problem is to smother it with tenners.
They are not 12.8% but 8.5% - the difference comes from the CO2 politics equivalent of sub-prime loans (aka carbon credits).
The growing reality is we, the tax payers, are being rooked by Government and the EU for additional taxation, for a pseudo scientific theory that does not bear any real scientific enquiry, scrutiny or peer review. That is CO2 is 'the' cause of climate change is a political and not a scientific theory.
We're all doomed, d'y'hear, all doomed!
But anyone who believes any Government minister is proven by past history to be a deluded fool.
See latest episode on crime statistics:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8320000.stm
I really like Ed Miliband, but I don't agree that he is shedding any light on this issue here.