Update on the Judicial Review of the C&C rates in the UK Climate Act, as Demanded by Plan B Earth

 

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Supported by poetic readings and music in solidarity with the plaintiff's demand, please do join us at the return of . . .
Plan B Earth to the Royal Courts of Justice (20-03-18) arguing further for a Judicial Review of the Inadequate Carbon Reduction Target in the UK Climate Act.


The key question is not whether any particular goverment or party does or does not like what the structured response using the C&C principle is.
The key question is whether they have anything better?

The sorry answer is they don't. By picking numbers out of a hat for the last 30 years, things have accelerated
from bad to worse as we have resolutely continued to cause this dreadful problem faster than we have reacted to avoid it.


In 2020 the UK revised its rates of emissions reductions in line with its preparations for COP- 26.

Statement from Aubrey Meyer for the 20th of March

Until 1989 all I had ever been was a musician, playing the violin & composing music. It made me happy.

But in 1989, my four-year old daughter asked me, “Daddy, is the planet dying?”
I was horrified that a child could verbalize such a question, so I started searching for a solution.

Music has always worked within a shared universal standard of playing ‘in tune’ & ‘in time’. This makes it possible to play & also to play together in groups.
Musicians have known and lived this for millennia and for this reason music groups, like bands, orchestras and choirs for example, do actually ‘work’.

To avert the worst of climate change, this is the basis of what is needed.
The Contraction & Convergence (C&C) methodology developed from this.

  • Development started in 1989.
  • In 1996 C&C was introduced to UN climate negotiations at COP-2.
  • in 1997 at COP-3, it was largely agreed and it became very, very widely supported thereafter.
  • It became known as, "the intellectually & morally coherent C&C principle" (John Gummer, Chairman of the UK Climate Change Committee).

The C&C Principle is not random. Goal focused, it ‘commutes’ the global carbon-budget & its parts and this integral basis is needed
to underpin any agreement to stop any further rise of global temperature due to rising atmospheric carbon concentration.

  • Contraction is the ‘total global-event' or ‘carbon-budget’ of future CO2 emissions, as they go from where they are ‘now’
    down to zero within 20-30 years to slow, stabilize & even hopefully reduce rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
  • Convergence defines the international shares of this budget. It references these to the declining global per capita average
    of emissions that emerges under this carbon-contraction-event.

The C&C principle was: -

  • formally advocated to the UK Government in 2000 by the UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.
  • In 2008 the UK brought the Climate Act into law, using the C&C principle to define the UK share of the emissions reduction target.

Citing this, the UK have consistently claimed their, "global climate leadership" since that time.

However, in 2015 the UN adopted the Paris Climate Agreement. Due to increased climate-urgency, stiffer limits for temperature control
and carbon reductions were adopted. Th
ough the UK is a signatory to the Paris Agreement, its Government still refuses to revise the
emissions
reduction target it set itself in 2008, to bring itself into line with the Paris Agreement of 2015.

By doing so, the UK is now seizing more than 3 times its share of the small global carbon budget that remains. So unchanged,
this UK target is a global provocation. Faced with the existential threat of global climate change, why should any other country
accept the UK seizing more than three times its share of the much smaller global carbon budget that now remains for 1.5°C?

Plan B argues that for the UK Government's claim to 'global leadership on climate change’ to be credible, its carbon reduction target
requires revision. Without this, HMG's refusal to revise its carbon reduction target completely contradicts the global C&C principle
on which the UK Climate Act is based, so what remains is inadequate, inequitable and misleading. Sadly no longer a credible example
of the global climate leadership as is still claimed by HMG, their offer is now a global recipe for doing too little too late.

Now, guided with great tenacity and skill by Tim Crossland and his superb legal team at Plan B, we are gathered here today petitioning
the Court for a Judicial Review of the Government’s refusal to cut carbon enough & soon enough, to fit in time & in tune.

  • The C&C principle adopts the global equality per capita of future emissions-rights to the global commons,
    subject to the overall limit that saves us.
  • Just as "Well Tempering" equalizes the 12 semi-tones within the ‘octave' or the 'Hertz-doubling’
    that actually makes music possible in the first place.

This remains a simple and effective procedure. It is a derivative of the what Stephen Hawking called ‘the first instance of theoretical physics’.
"‘Well Tempering" shows that playing music in time, in tune, together *but also in any key* is collectively enabling.

In a nutshell, this is why "‘Well Tempering" has become the basis of music-making globally.

Applying the C&C principle is exactly the same. It commutes the global carbon budget and its parts at whatever rates are collectively applied.
"‘Well Tempering" its parts, resolves the politics of inequality that still aggravate and dissipate the truly global response needed.
It makes possible a global agreement that is sane, safe & fair to innocent 3rd Parties.

C&C has been called the “Well Tempered Climate Accord”, as it emulates the “Well Tempered Clavichord” written by Johann Sebastian Bach around 1721,
who years later was described by the great cellist Pablo Casals as ‘The God of music’.

In recognition of the principle and this petition to this Court, please let me play for you the “Ave Maria” melody Gounod added to the 1st Prelude
from the “Well Tempered Clavichord”. With his wife Anna Magdalena in mind, Bach wrote the whole work to establish this seminal principle.

This opening Prelude is still one of the simplest, yet most touchingly innocent and beautiful pieces of music ever writen.