Coventry And Climate Change In 2025

I'm fascinated by a series of articles in the media supplement of The Guardian today.

We have only had a full-blown Internet since 1995/1996, and sites like YouTube have only become huge in the last few years.

It makes forecasting the future very hard, especially when you realise that life expectancy could be 90+ years, for well-off folks in industrialised countries, over the next 100 years, and when China's projected oil demand in 2025 is more barrels of oil per day that the entire world consumes at present!

As such, I'm perplexed by the lack of short-term dates in the draft climate change strategy from Coventry City Council.

They have set a target of 67% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 (using 2003 as a baseline), and an interim figure of 25-30% by 2025.

There are absolutely no benchmarks set for the interim period (i.e. 2008 until 2024). None. Nada. Zilch.

Will it be 1.5% per year? If so, why not say it?

If David Cameron wants to sign up to FOE's The Big Ask, why can't local Tories commit to yearly carbon audits and yearly targets for greenhouse gas reduction?

What happens if we get to 2010, and we have had a rise in greenhouse gases? Will there be any penalty imposed on the city council?

I think that the local Tories are just making life hard for themselves.

If they commit to year-on-year targets, they can focus the minds of all council employees and managers, and give the city targets to work towards, targets to fuel a sense of accomplishment.

If they don't, they're creating a political time-bomb for future Tories in Coventry, "We've only reduced emissions by 10% by 2020, our backs are against the wall, why'd didn't that damned Gary Ridley set year-on-year targets, now what are we going to do?"