With the Paris climate change summit set to go ahead next week, former Labour party leader Ed Miliband has urged the UK to become the first country in the world to create a law for setting a zero carbon emissions policy.
However, Mr Miliband stated that he did not wish to suggest a date by which the target should be reached by Britain.
Currently, the UK is committed to reducing its carbon emissions by 80 per cent, under the Climate Change Act, and the figure is meant to be achieved by 2050.
Next Monday (30th November) world leaders from almost 200 countries will be asked to pledge their commitment to reducing emissions and an international dependence on non-renewable energy sources like coal, a fuel which the UK has promised to completely phase out by 2025.
The UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change has already announced that emissions across the world must not exceed zero by the year 2100.
This policy also applies to a number of poorer nations that receive financial aid in order to tackle climate change, which has led some experts to claim that a UK law is unnecessary.
Nicholas Stern, who was commissioned by Gordon Brown – the Chancellor at the time – to report on the costs of failing to act on climate change, recently confirmed that he supported a target of zero emissions but would not agree that it should be written into law.
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