Climate change

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What is the council doing to tackle the causes and effect of climate change?

The ‘Energy, Change and Opportunity (ECO) strategy’ is a framework strategy which sets out the council’s ambitions for reducing its carbon emissions as an organisation and preparing for unavoidable climate change. It links to other council strategies to ensure its objectives are embedded across the entire organisation. It will be supplemented by detailed action plans to set out more specifically how we are going to deliver our climate change ambitions, including:

• Carbon Management Plan for the council’s emissions
• Climate Change Adaptation Plan for Wiltshire
• Low Carbon Transition Plan for Wiltshire
• Renewable Energy Action Plan for Wiltshire

Together, the strategy and the action plans will enable the council to deliver against the key themes of waste, transport, water, purchasing and procurement, biodiversity and natural environment, energy, planning and communicating environmental issues.

Read the Energy Change and Opportunity Strategy 2011 - 2020

What is climate change?

The word climate is used to describe the average weather experienced over an extended period of time. It includes such things as average rainfall, temperature, wind speed and hours of sunshine. Over the millions of years since the earth was formed, the global climate has naturally fluctuated.

The earth is kept warm by the energy from the sun. Some of this energy is reflected from the earth’s surface back into space while the rest is absorbed by the land and the oceans. The energy absorbed by the land and oceans is not enough to keep the surface of planet at a habitable temperature for humans. The global temperature we experience now is only possible through a natural phenomenon called the greenhouse effect. This is where some of the energy that would have been reflected back into space, is absorbed by greenhouse gases. This energy warms the greenhouse gases and is then reflected back to earth and helps warm the planet. These greenhouse gases act like a quilt that traps heat and keeps the planet warm. While the greenhouse effect is natural and essential for life to exist on Earth, the level of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere has been increasing.

Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) is one greenhouse gas which has been increasing as a result of the burning of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal etc). Evidence has shown that it is highly likely this increase in CO₂ has caused this rise in temperature over the last 100 years and that if left unchecked, global temperatures are likely to increase and the climate become warmer (Global Warming). Further details and information about the science of climate change can be found on the website of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Why should I care?

It is now recognised that climate change and global warming is a reality and that whilst climate is subject to natural fluctuations, the recent acceleration of temperature is due to human activities, mainly the burning of fossil fuels. This releases large amounts of CO₂, which is a key greenhouse gas. Projections show that the smallest likely effect in the UK by 2030 (under a ‘least emissions scenario’) will be a mean summer temperature rise of 0.7 to 2.7 degrees C.

Winters are likely to be wetter and summers drier; extreme weather events will be more common. Worldwide food and water shortages could cause mass population migration. Locally, symptoms will include damage to infrastructure and increased strain on services such as health provision.

What is the government doing?

The 2008 Climate Change Act set legally binding carbon targets and aims to cut the country’s carbon emission by 34% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. A wealth of information about the UK governments approach to climate change can be found on the Department of Energy and Climate Change website.

Last updated: 9 March 2011