by Andrew Miller
27. July 2009 05:38
Jonathon Porritt spoke on The Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast strongly questioning whether politicians were taking the threat of climate change seriously enough (you can listen to the full podcast here).
He recently stepped down as the chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission after 9 years of service, accusing the UK government of ‘failing to develop a green economy for the 21st Century’, according to a report on the BBC News website entitled Porritt parting shot at ministers. He is quoted as saying that there has been ‘a massive failure of political leadership, with elements of 'deep hypocrisy', and that the UK was 'a world leader in green rhetoric.’ He added that Labour ministers should feel an ‘abiding shame’ on key issues such as fuel policy and social justice.
A spokesman from the UK Department of Energy and Climate defended the UK government’s record on climate change, citing Ed Miliband’s 80% reduction target for all UK emissions by the year 2050. However, as Earthscan director Jonathan Sinclair Wilson points out in his article What will have been the world's most important resource, according to research published in Nature earlier this month, for any hope of avoiding a catastrophic 2 °C rise in average global temperature time is very quickly running out…
Jonathon Porritt is the author of Earthscan best-seller Capitalism as if the World Matters
