IPCC Report: Political will essential to deliver on 1.5C Paris target

Today’s stark report on the devastating impacts of climate change should make us all sit up and commit to urgent action.

Politicians need to do the right thing and we must make them, including ensuring a fair and just transition to a zero carbon future.

The warning from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes it very clear that without urgent and unprecedented changes to energy, transport and land use, the world risks catastrophic temperature rise.

The Guardian report said today: “The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.”

The good news is that the scientists – including the head of Scotland’s new Just Transition Commission - believe it is affordable and feasible to keep to the 1.5C Paris Agreement target, but they point to the need for political will to make sure that policies are put in place in time.

Top priority in Scotland must be to strengthen the climate change Bill currently going through the Scottish Parliament to a target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 at the latest, with 77% by 2030.

It’s good that the Scottish Government will now seek new advice on meeting 1.5C from the UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC), but it’s clear from the IPCC report and the recent CCC report on Scottish progress that we must have a step change in cutting emissions, particularly in transport and agriculture.

UNISON wants to see massive investment in public transport, including renationalisation of rail and reregulation of buses, as part of the move to greener transport - and much greater public ownership of energy, including municipal energy.

We are campaigning with the Stop Climate Chaos Scotland coalition and the Just Transition Partnership (JTP) to strengthen the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Bill.

As well as stronger targets, we want Scotland’s new Just Transition Commission to be set in statute in the Bill and to report to Parliament on progress.

The JTP welcomed Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham’s appointment last month of Professor Jim Skea as Chair of the Commission.

Dave Moxham, Deputy General Secretary of the STUC and co-chair of the Just Transition Partnership, stressed that Scotland’s trade unions see tackling climate change as a moral, social and economic imperative. However, in meeting emissions reduction targets, we must ensure a just transition for the workforce and communities which currently extract or depend on the use of fossil fuels.

Just transition includes both measures to support retraining and new jobs for those in affected industries, with support for workers and communities, and measures to produce new, green and decent jobs and livelihoods as well as healthy communities. It aims to address environmental, social and economic issues together.

There are clear economic opportunities if we are ahead of the game in building a greener future, but we must ensure no-one is left behind and so climate plans must be integrated with an industrial strategy.

Professor Skea, is co-chair of the working group behind today’s IPCC report. His comments today are reported in the Guardian:

“We have presented governments with pretty hard choices. We have pointed out the enormous benefits of keeping to 1.5C, and also the unprecedented shift in energy systems and transport that would be needed to achieve that.

“We show it can be done within laws of physics and chemistry. Then the final tick box is political will. We cannot answer that. Only our audience can – and that is the governments that receive it.”

That’s where we all come in. There are no jobs on a dead planet.

Let’s make sure Scotland’s politicians continue the unanimous commitment in 2009 of support for world leading legislation. We need them now to agree stronger targets and decisive policy action to protect the planet for future generations, with public sector action crucial in leading the way.

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The case for a radical Transport Bill

The Transport Bill is an opportunity to take a radical look at integrated transport in Scotland. Sadly, the Bill as introduced falls somewhat short of this aim.

The Scottish Government has introduced a Transport Bill to the Scottish Parliament. The main provisions are summarise in the UNISON Scotland briefing.

Tackling the appalling air quality in our cities should be a government priority, given it could be contributing to around 15,000 early deaths in Scotland every year. The Bill puts the regulatory structure in place to introduce low emission zones. This is welcome, but the key challenge is to put in place real action to cut emissions. We don't need more plans about plans.

Other provisions on integrated ticketing, ending (some) double parking and another go at regulating road works are worthy measures, but they are unlikely to make a significant difference.

A key issue in the Bill will be the regulation and delivery of bus services. The Bill extends the powers of local authorities to run buses and develop bus partnership plans. The aim is to allow councils to act more flexibility to improve services, either by working with bus companies or by stepping in and running services themselves.

Local buses are the most frequently used mode of public transport in Scotland. With 393 million passengers on local bus services, more journeys are made by local bus than by rail. However, there has been a dramatic fall in the number of journeys, down from 487 million in 2007. There has been a 10% reduction in past five years, which is double the reduction in Great Britain as a whole. Part of the reason has to be that bus travel is 65% more expensive in 2018 than in 2008, at a time when real household incomes have been falling. There has also been a 16% reduction in the number of buses in operation.

So something is going seriously wrong in Scotland.

While bus passengers are losing out the companies are not. They have just raised prices to cope with the decline in services and in any case 43% of bus company revenue comes directly from local or central government through grants and concessionary travel reimbursement.

Bus companies argue that they offer competition. However, the Competition Commission’s 2011 report into local bus services said, “head to head competition between bus operators is uncommon", because of “customer conduct”. The worst, most irrational thing these difficult customers did was to ignore the choice of operators the free market had to offer, opting instead “to board the first bus to their destination that arrives at their bus stop" - there's a shock!

While the Bill talks about the role of local authorities, the companies view it as an opportunity. That's because the Bill will allow private operators to cherry pick the profitable routes, leaving councils to pick up the bill for the rest. Ironically, the Scottish Government is following the English Tory policy in the Bus Services Act last year.

In contrast, the public want government to go in the opposite direction. A recent poll shows clear public support for buses to be run by public operators - only 15% of Scots believe they should be run by private companies. Interestingly, almost half of Tory voters support public ownership.

So, we don't need local partnerships, we need local public ownership. Publicly owned Lothian Buses is the best operator in Scotland, even getting the middle classes onto the bus. Levels of customer satisfaction for Lothian Buses are the highest in the industry and the publicly owned company recently returned £5.5 million to the public purse.

This is one of the models we could adopt in Scotland, together with other non-profit initiatives like co-operatives. As the Co-operative Party's 'People's Bus' campaign shows, across the UK, co-operative, social enterprise and other forms of not-for-profit bus operators are proving that it’s possible to run bus services that are affordable and responsive to the needs of local people. Most recently in David Cameron's constituency of Whitney.

If we are really serious about cutting vehicle emissions, how about free transit? This is an idea being piloted in Germany by “the end of this year at the latest”. Five cities across western Germany are involved, including former capital Bonn and industrial cities Essen and Mannheim. It won't be easy, but has some links to a new industrial strategy given the demand it would create for electric or hydrogen buses.

It is difficult to accurately cost free local transit because a key element would be funding increased demand. Based on current funding and demand, it could be somewhere between £200m and £300m per annum and that doesn't take account of the savings from not having to pay for dividends and expensive borrowing. Not an impossible ask by any means and we should account for the preventative spending benefits from the emission reductions.

Scotland needs a more integrated public transport system that results in a meaningful shift away from car use. Re-regulating buses and more public and community ownership would be helpful in doing this. In addition, we need green travel plans at work, with incentives for lower energy transport, cycling, car-share, public transport, walking and the use of lower emissions vehicles.

We need a radical transport policy, not another dabble with market mechanisms.