“I am sad to report that, so far, this country has only reduced its greenhouse gas emissions to 52% on 1990 levels when our target was 80%,” Jim began the first speech the party had invited him to deliver since arriving in Newcastle. “Why is this? Well, a lot of it is individual behaviour. People travel 7% more than they did and cars and vans still account for 80% of mileage. We should see a reduction in journeys and a significant shift to public transport, but we are not.”
The audience appeared to be waiting for him to get to the point, as if the country missing its climate target by 28% was not enough.
“Only 54% of our vehicles are plug-in hybrids and only 11% are zero emission. Among these, 80% use batteries and 20% use fuel cells. All of our vehicles should be zero emission using fue
