The Atmosphere Does Not Have Separate Departments

Britain's government has several opportunities to increase future emissions, conveniently distributed across different policy areas so that no single desk has to look especially alarming.

North Sea oil goes over here. Heathrow expansion goes over there. Electric-vehicle targets have their own discussion, and heat-pump grants have a budget line. Unfortunately, the atmosphere has declined to organise itself around departmental responsibilities.

The Guardian reports that Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have written to Prime Minister Andy Burnham asking the government to consider four pending choices together: approving Rosebank drilling, expanding Heathrow, weakening electric-vehicle targets and cutting heat-pump grants. Their letter estimates that those choices, taken together, would produce 402 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over the next 25 years.

That is the campaigners' conditional estimate, not emissions already released or an agreed government forecast. It is not an annual figure. The decisions remain pending. The useful point is the demand to add them up before approving them separately, a technique also known outside government as arithmetic.

The government's response is that reindustrialisation will not mean abandoning its climate obligations or net-zero goal. A spokesperson points to £110 billion in announced clean-power investment over two years and thousands of jobs supported by renewable-energy auctions. Announced investment is not the same as completed projects, but the statement is a commitment worth holding ministers to, not pretending they never made.

The question is how the pending choices fit that commitment. A list of clean-energy achievements does not, by itself, calculate the effect of a new airport expansion or a weaker vehicle target. The government can build useful things and still face a problem with its next decisions. Yesterday's vegetables do not answer every question about tonight's menu.

The transport issue illustrates why the timing matters. Carmakers have pushed to allow up to half of new sales to remain petrol or diesel in 2030, rather than meeting the current 80 percent electric target. Vehicles stay in use for years. The Guardian cites Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit analysis estimating that the resulting future emissions could equal about 60 percent of Rosebank's.

That comparison makes the less photogenic policy choice visible. A weakened sales target does not require a minister to pose beside an oil rig. It can arrive looking like an administrative adjustment, then spend years travelling down the motorway.

The heat-pump decision has a similar problem of presentation. The Guardian reports that the boiler upgrade scheme is likely to face cuts in Wednesday's budget. That is a reported prospect, not an announced cut. If it happens, the immediate saving on a spreadsheet would have to be considered alongside the effect on replacing gas boilers. A smaller line in one budget is not automatically a smaller climate bill.

We have already examined the proposed bargain linking silence over North Sea drilling to electric-vehicle rules. This letter poses a different question: not what political concession can be traded for another, but what the combined decisions actually do. Heathrow and household heating do not disappear because the negotiation in another room has concluded.

There are economic arguments to assess. The chancellor favours Heathrow expansion in the belief that it could increase growth; campaigners dispute that analysis. Industries are lobbying for their preferred outcomes. Ministers have to weigh those claims rather than simply announce that every decision is individually important and therefore collectively exempt.

The campaigners' calculation can be challenged. Its assumptions can be examined. If the government has a different assessment, publishing it would be considerably more useful than giving each proposal its own reassuring paragraph.

A carbon budget is supposed to describe a total. If every department gets an exception, it is not a budget. It is a group project in which everyone has agreed that somebody else will do the adding.