General Article What is a ‘climate emergency’?

Topic Selected: Climate Change Book Volume: 357
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The UK has declared a climate emergency for the national government in Westminster and devolved administrations of Scotland and Wales. But what does it mean?

By James Evison

What is it?

The climate change emergency passed by the UK Government is a motion rather than legislation and does not change the Government’s legally binding targets under international accords, such as Paris, or national legislation, such as the Climate Change Act 2008.

This Labour-led motion is a largely symbolic gesture, which makes the UK the first state in the world to make a declaration of an ‘environment and climate change emergency’. It was developed following pressure after the Committee on Climate Change’s report on net zero, weeks of protests about perceived government inaction on the issue, political meetings with global youth climate figurehead Greta Thunberg, and several television documentaries on the BBC and Netflix highlighting climate change.

In his reasoning for putting the motion onto the flo...

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