The UN has just published its latest Human Development report, and it makes for scathing reading on Britain’s record on climate change. Here are some of its findings.

First of all, we are on course to miss even our more conservative targets:

The European Union and the United Kingdom … are both likely to fall far short of the [“Kyoto-plus”] goals set unless they move rapidly to put climate mitigation at the centre of energy policy reform.

Secondly, the targets in the UK’s climate change bill are next to useless:

If the rest of the developed world followed the pathway envisaged in the United Kingdom’s Climate Change Bill, dangerous climate change would be inevitable. It would lead to approximate atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases in excess of 660 ppm CO2e, and possibly 750 ppm CO2e. These are outcomes that would correspond to a rise in average global temperatures of 4–5°C, well beyond the dangerous climate change threshold. The overarching requirement for keeping within the 2°C threshold is a stabilization of greenhouse gas stocks at 450 ppm CO2e.

Emission targets in the Climate Bill are not consistent with the objective of avoiding dangerous climate change.

Thirdly, these targets do not even take into account our true overall carbon output:

Moreover, the current framework excludes aviation and shipping. Factoring them in would raise the cumulative United Kingdom carbon budget to 2050 by around 5.5 Gt CO2, or 27 percent.

Fourthly, the onus is on us, as heavy per capita emitters with “deep carbon footprints”, to be extremely proactive in making the necessary cuts:

If every person in the developing world had the same carbon footprint as the average person in Germany or the United Kingdom, current global emissions would be four times the limit defined by our sustainable emissions pathway, rising to nine times if the developing country per capita footprint were raised to Canadian or United States levels.

The United Kingdom (population 60 million) emits more CO2 than Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Viet Nam combined (total population 472 million).

This last point is devastating for those who still cling to the “nothing can be done” school of thought, and relentlessly point to China’s rising levels of carbon emissions to exempt us from action. According to the report, our per capita carbon footprints are over two-and-a-half times those of China. While China have shown willing, the UK’s bosom buddies the United States remain “totally opposed” to a global deal on climate change. And historically (see page 40 of the report) we are not so far behind China in terms of the “cumulative emissions account” – not bad going considering the comparative size of our respective populations.

Evidence collated elsewhere contributes to an even more damning picture. As reports from Christian Aid, the New Economics Foundation/Open University and most recently the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research have pointed out, a substantial part of China’s carbon output is attributable to the manufacture of cheap goods for Western consumers, inluding, of course, Britain. This, write the Tyndall Centre, “suggests that a focus on emissions within national borders may miss the point” – and, moreover:

“it lends further weight to the view that OECD countries should take the lead in reducing emissions. Their historical responsibility for the majority of the carbon emissions is joined by some responsibility for more recent emissions growth in the developing world.”

We’ve tried denial; we’ve tried delay; we’ve tried evading responsibility. The vast moral bankruptcy behind all these approaches could hardly now be more clear. So when are we going to try honestly to deal with the problem? It had better be soon.