PODCAST · politics

Lord Turner, Committee on Climate Change, answers select committee questions

by greenworld

I listened to Lord Turner of Eechinswell, the Chair of the Committee on Climate Change. This committee has just been created by the Climate Change Bill to define a carbon budget and advise on policies that could deliver said budgets. Turner was answering questions from a select committee. In his comments (on how the UK will reduce CO2 by 80% by 2050) he assumed land transport would become de-carbonised and that electricity would be generated sustainably by the middle of the century and that this could be done at a cost easily borne by the UK (he quoted from the Stern Review). But he also stated that if carbon capture does not become a reality within 15 years, then coal-burning will take CO2 towards and beyond 550ppm, and temperatures of +4degrees C and beyond. Temperature increases of this scale are likely to engender a range of positive feedbacks such as the release of methane from melting tundra and do for human civilization.Turners comments were authoritative (and after all, if he