Geoffrey Cox MP for West Devon and Torridge this week welcomed the Climate Change Bill debated in Parliament last week and has voted alongside the Government to pass it through the House of Commons.

But he warned that the targets for carbon emissions that it sets must not be achieved by ‘an indiscriminate rush’ to build gigantic commercial wind turbines in close proximity to sensitive landscapes and rural communities such as those in his constituency.

The MP, who is a member of the cross-party Environment Select Committee, was a co-author of its 2007 report on the original draft Climate Change Bill.  That report was the first to recommend an urgent reconsideration as to whether the Government’s original target for reducing carbon emissions to 60% of 1991 levels by 2050 should be raised to 80%.

The Bill, which now sets the target for Britain to reduce its carbon emissions by 80% by the year 2050 would also require the Government to publish carbon budgets every 5 years and enable it to set up carbon trading schemes.

Mr Cox said, ‘I am pleased the Government has taken the advice of the Select Committee and amended the 2050 target.  However, the Climate Change Bill still contains some serious weaknesses.  Now the Government’s task is urgently to develop policies that will deliver the change that will let us meet these ambitious targets.  There has been a massive policy failure to provide for a broad range of alternative renewable energy technologies, micro-generation and energy conservation.  It would be a grotesque perversion of the legislation if the Government’s main solution is simply an indiscriminate rush to build gigantic commercial wind turbines throughout our countryside’.