September 2020

UK Climate Assembly reports

Did anybody notice?

A recent email from Greenpeace notes that the UK Citizens' Assembly set up to discuss climate change - Climate Assembly UK - produced its report in September, and gives a summary of its conclusions with numerous links to related topics.  There was an online BBC News item, but The Guardian seems to have been the only mainstream newspaper to have thought this worthy of mention.  Unbelievably, both the full and summary report PDFs are undated.

The assembly was set up by several Parliamentary committees and treated as a 'House of Commons project'.  Extinction Rebellion, which campaigned for the setting up of an assembly, gave a cautious welcome to the report, with reservations about the 'insufficient publicity given to the Assembly by the government and by the press' and restrictions placed by Parliament on the scope of their discussions and on advice given to the assembly by expert witnesses.

The relative non-independence of the Assembly and the rather bland nature of its recommendations seem likely to ensure that it will have little effect in modifying the hugely inadequate climate policy of the UK government.

Assembly report in full

Assembly report summary

Greenpeace Assembly report summary

Guardian news report

Extinction Rebellion response