Tim Yeo, chairman of the United Kingdom's Energy and Climate Change Committee of MPs, has written a letter to ministers in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Department for Transport, and the Treasury calling for the inclusion of shipping and aviation emissions in the nation's official carbon budgets, business news website Business Green reports, Ship & Bunker reported.
Britain's Climate Change Act, passed in 2008, calls for emissions cuts of 80 percent by 2050, but some of the country's leaders are fighting to keep shipping and aviation from being included in official tallies.
Emissions from these industries are harder to track than most others because much of their emissions occur outside national borders.
Some leaders on the British right argue that demanding emission reductions from the shipping industry would result in higher prices for imported goods.
"The aim of the Climate Change Act was to demonstrate British leadership in the international effort to avoid a global temperature rise of 2°C, widely regarded as a dangerous potential tipping point for the climate," Yeo said in a statement.
"Although we are talking about percentages and degrees here, we must not lose sight of the fact that the ultimate cost of failing to keep temperature rises below 2°C could be measured in floods, mass migration, economic disruption and chaos."
Shipping emissions are also a major political issue nearby in the European Union (EU), where leaders have called for measures to reduce pollution from vessels including a strong system for monitoring and reporting.
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