Debate on the Address

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, not only because I agree with a great deal that he said but because he brought our attention to the impact that climate change has on developing nations. What he said about Lake Chad, Lake Tanganyika and Mount Kilimanjaro are good indicators of that escalating problem in developing countries and the noble Lord’s background of knowledge will help us to understand—and I welcome that. I also note that he is chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. That is a particularly important role when we are trying to get as many Muslims as possible involved in the political system. It is also important because this is a very difficult time for Muslims: at one end, they feel scapegoated by the actions of a tiny minority and, at the other end, they are struggling with an argument about the future direction of Islam. In future, we will listen to the noble Lord’s views with great interest. I also want to refer to my old colleague, my noble friend Lady Jones, whose incisive and accurate comments I was used to hearing and I shall be hearing them again. I also want to mention the noble Lord, Lord Bruce-Lockhart. We have probably always agreed that over the years both major parties have failed to get local government back to the influential position that it held in economic and social development in the 19th century. However, I believe that that situation is changing, and the latest proposals in the Queen’s Speech are a good indication of moves in the right direction. We all also look forward to the last in today’s foursome relay of maiden speeches—that of my noble friend Lady Ford, who should at least get four credit points for being the last in the line. I, too, want to address the subject of climate change. It may be significant that so many of us have done so today—perhaps at long last this issue has moved to the centre stage of political debate. It is very welcome that all the political parties are focusing on it, as are the media, to whom congratulations are due on highlighting it over recent years. The attention given to this matter by the various groups within the green movement is also welcome, although in a few moments I want to say something about the stage that some of their tactics have reached. One of the biggest and most severe dangers here is that we are pushing people into a position where either they feel powerless and that they cannot do anything and therefore they give up and say that ““they””—usually they mean the Government but sometimes they have large organisations in mind—must do something, or they lurch to the other extreme and say, ““It’s panic stations. We’re all going to die. They””—again, the Government or large organisations—““must do something about it””. I found myself in that position some 10 or more years ago when I travelled the length of Britain looking at smoke columns rising up from the fields as a result of stubble-burning. I am not sure that I was right. I do not think that stubble-burning is necessarily as bad for the environment as I considered it to be at that stage due to the recycling process, but I am not knowledgeable enough scientifically to be sure. However, it led me to write a series of articles saying that we were in danger of following the dinosaurs into extinction if we did not get to grips with this problem. I felt that we were not paying serious attention to the matter. I moved on from that panic mode some years ago and am now convinced that the problem is perfectly solvable without taking the bottom out of our current economic and social activities. If there were scientific evidence to show that things were so dire that we had to act overnight, it would be no good to pick on one or two industries: every single one of us would have to see our lives change so dramatically that it would be hard to envisage how normal society could continue to function. However, the scientific evidence does not suggest that. As many speakers have already said, it suggests that we all have to act both in our individual lives and in our corporate lives—that is, our everyday work and social lives—to drive down carbon emissions. That is a very important part of the battle. I want to spend a few moments looking at some of the things that we could do to move away from saying either, ““You cannot do anything because it’s too big for you””, or, ““You must panic””. At this point, I shall be critical of some of the green groups which put out advertisements attacking usually the aviation industry but not that industry alone, when it would be better to use those resources to tell people what they can do now. Everyone knows about putting less water in the kettle or, as someone has already mentioned, changing the light bulbs and so on. All those issues are important and I do not want to play them down, but I should love to see advertising, whether from the green groups or the Government—I recommend this to the Government—saying what more people can do. There are many examples but I shall refer only to a couple. If, for example, you buy your energy from a green energy producer, that is as good as, if not better than, changing your light bulbs, although you should change your light bulbs as well. An awful lot of people do not realise that most of the big energy companies now enable them to buy their energy from a green producer. They can buy only part of their energy from those companies, although some provide all the energy from green resources. I have been doing that for the past year or two. People also need to know that they can now buy generators that enable them to use energy from a wind turbine or solar panels on their roof and put that energy back into the system. They also do not know that they can be paid for doing that. One company—the one that I use—will pay you 4.5 pence per kilowatt for every kilowatt you put back into the system. A lot of people will say, ““I don’t want a wind turbine on my roof”” or ““I don’t like solar panels””. I understand that but they do not look any worse than telephone wires or other cables. People need to know about that and we need to get the message across. I say to both the green movement and the Government that we should try advertising these things. Another example concerns water. When I was a Member of Parliament for the Acton area, I was struck by the flooding that occurred every time there was a mega-storm, which are more common now. The sewer system built in the 1880s was not good enough to take the overflow from the floods, and Thames Water is now installing new pipes. Many householders could install underground tanks to take rainwater, which could be recycled to water the garden or wash the car or whatever. In many cases, subsides are available for all the things that I have mentioned. If local authorities and water boards work hand in hand on this, there are few reasons why many new buildings—whether blocks of flats, factories or whatever—should not be designed and built in this way. I commend my ex-colleague in the House of Commons, Joan Ruddock, MP, who ran a very good event in the Houses of Parliament the other week demonstrating what is already being done by many companies to enable ordinary citizens not only to save but to produce energy, whether it be ground emissions heat or solar. All those things can be done. We should remember that people’s housing and social lives are the biggest causes of carbon production in countries such as Britain. It is important to do something about that and to do so without causing great problems for the economy. The Stern report rightly says that the opportunities here are enormous. I repeat what I have said in this Chamber before: a British company won the contract to build two new cities in China, each of 1 million people and each designed to be carbon-neutral. This is where Stern is absolutely right about the way that the new economy is moving. As someone said earlier, China is very aware of its problems, not least because of the growing drought around Beijing caused by the increasing desertification of the area. The issues there are big and important. If companies such as the one I mentioned can rise to the challenge there, then we can do so here. That brings me to the other point that I want to raise. Here, I take slight issue with my noble friend Lady McIntosh. I also declare an interest as the campaign director of Future Heathrow. One danger in picking on individual industries—be it the aviation or the car industries—is that we feed into the psychology that I described in my opening remarks: we make people feel that someone else has to do something or that cancelling a holiday flight will in some way solve the problem. I want to flag something up because it is very important. The green movement is guilty of saying that we should not fly as it is the biggest growing cause of climate change in Britain. By next year, the new civil airliners that are coming into operation will be more efficient than high-speed trains in terms of carbon output. What will we do? Will we suddenly say to the public, ““Don’t go by high-speed train; either fly on one of the newer aircraft or go by an inner-city train””, which will still be more carbon efficient than a newer aircraft? The danger is that we make people feel that matters are beyond their control or influence. The technology in this area is a vital part of the solution. Science and technology, as well as behavioural change, can get us through this problem. We can expand behavioural change—the kind of things that I have described—in many ways. I do not know whether the Houses of Parliament buy electricity from a renewable source but they should. It would be very hard to convert this building in an acceptable way, considering its history, in order to contain energy as one would with a new building or a recently modified building. If we start targeting renewable resources on the energy-consuming buildings that one cannot convert and at the same time try to convert or modernise the others, that will make a big impact. One can also do much more with the science and technology as it stands. As we all know, the big challenge is to find a replacement for oil. If one listens to one group at the Tyndall Centre, as my noble friend said—I do not know whether they would all say this—there will not be an alternative to aviation fuel for 50 years. I have spoken to several scientists who have said the exact opposite: that we can have it in five years. It all depends on the price of a barrel of oil and one or two technical and scientific changes which is not, as one scientist said to me the other day, Nobel prize-winning stuff, such as stopping biofuels from freezing when at high altitudes. Biofuels offer us a great way forward. They can be adapted to the existing systems in aircraft, in cars or anywhere else and they can be grown in large mass. Referring to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, a very real possibility for the North African countries is growing large amounts of biofuels. The technology already exists. Israel is a classic example—although it is not the only one—of converting virtually desert land into land that produces biofuels. There are very real possibilities here. I believe we have moved beyond the point of saying to people, ““You are not taking this seriously””. Some adverts and other things have had the effect of pushing people into not doing anything, or feeling it is all beyond them, or whatever. I think we have moved beyond that. Most people want to do something, but they do not know what to do. They do not know whether to stop flying, to stop driving their cars, to put less water in the kettle and so on. All those things could help but the bigger drivers that I have tried to talk about are infinitely more important. The offices of at least one local authority are almost all carbon neutral already. There is no reason why we cannot continue that across the board. I hope that that becomes the tenor of the debate. Although others have focused on individual industries—motor cars or aviation—I could make a better case for focusing on one of the fastest-growing industries in the world which produces a great deal of carbon; that is, the media. I can make a very good case for saying that programmes such as ““Big Brother”” do not do much to help society. Indeed, I could make a very good case for saying that if we got rid of ““Big Brother””, family and social behaviour such as visiting neighbours might improve. I do not want to say that this industry produces too much carbon, therefore we must stop it doing what it is doing and therefore we must regulate what people watch and whether they fly or whatever. We should say that whatever one does, whether flying in aeroplanes or driving cars or producing television programmes or heating one's home, we have to do so in as carbon-minimal a way as possible. That is the way forward. This problem is resolvable. We do not need to panic about it. The science says that this is a time not for panic but for focused action. That is what we need.