Greenpeace Executive Director, Peter Melchett said,
''Prescott and Meacher have done a good job sticking to the 20% target and in stressing the need for much deeper future cuts in fossil fuel emissions to protect the climate. Now the Government has to deliver - wind, wave and solar industries will have to supply all our electricity - but in the UK these big businesses of the future are being ignored while New Labour worries about the needs of the declining oil industry" Significantly, the Government has outlined its long-term strategy in the following two areas:
- The draft programme suggests that developed countries may have to reduce emissions by up to 90% in order to stabilise CO2 in the atmosphere and that achieving such cuts "would almost certainly require a major shift away from fossil fuels". (Page 17)
- On HFCs the Government believes it must give a strong signal to industry and users so that they can make investment decisions with more certainty. "HFCs are not a sustainable technology in the long term". (Page 51)
