Drastic action is needed if Britain is to have any chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change, a ground-breaking environmental report warns today.

In the first big study of what households, business and government may have to do to cut carbon emissions, the leading climate change research body has revised upwards by 50% the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that need to be achieved by 2050.

The government-funded Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research says this is necessary because successive governments have failed to include aviation or shipping emissions in their calculations.

 
At the moment, the government's estimate is that a 60% cut in emissions is needed to avoid a 2C increase in temperatures by 2050. But the authors of today's study conclude that a 90% cut in emissions is needed. Their data suggests that when aviation and shipping is factored in, UK carbon emissions have not fallen at all since 1990.

In a scathing report commissioned by Friends of the Earth and the Cooperative Bank, the Tyndall Centre academics lambast successive governments for misleading the public on what has been achieved and what needs to be done.

Read complete Guardian article at:

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1873071,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=11