Climate Change

I beg to move,"That this House calls on the Government to set targets for carbon emissions informed by science and not political convenience which will help to hold global warming to within two degrees of pre-industrial levels; recognises that the best current estimate is that this requires stabilisation at between 400 and 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere; and urges Ministers to inject a new sense of urgency into efforts at home by setting out an annual action plan to curb the UK’s own carbon emissions, establishing a climate change committee of the Cabinet to ensure joined up government, tackling quickly the most rapidly growing emissions in the transport sector by a more steeply graduated vehicle excise duty and a rebasing of air passenger duty onto the emissions of each flight, offset by other tax cuts, speeding up the effort to curb the waste of energy and the high emissions from buildings not just by raising thermal efficiency requirements in new homes but also by renovating existing homes, changing the incentives on energy companies so that they make more money by saving and not selling more energy, providing comprehensive insulation packages funded mainly by energy mortgages repayable through utility bills and setting an example by ensuring that all future buildings on the Government’s own estate are built to the highest energy efficiency standards." It is good to see that Conservative Members are not too ashamed of their party’s manifesto in the Scottish elections. At least some of them are attending the debate, despite the fact that their party scored nought out of 10 for its environmental commitments, according to Friends of the Earth. The toxic Tories north of the border reminded me of the analysis undertaken by Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace of the voting record of Conservative Members of the European Parliament on environmental matters during the last Parliament, which found that they were not merely the worst of all the British political parties, but the worst in the whole of the European Union. Clearly, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) has some sins still to repent. He has been leader of his party for 16 months and has yet to put on the table a single firm proposal that would have any impact on greenhouse gas emissions. I hope that his party will be able to support our motion as a first step to rectifying that omission. That would also fit with the ambitious agenda revealed in The Times today by the Conservatives’ policy chief, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), who assures us that"““Cameron conservatism, so far from being merely a set of attitudes, has a specific theoretical agenda. It aims to achieve two significant paradigm shifts.""First, a shift from an econocentric paradigm to a sociocentric paradigm. Secondly, a shift in the theory of the state from a provision-based paradigm to a framework-based paradigm.””" No doubt that is deep stuff, but I think that he would perhaps do better were he to speak in English. I wish that I could argue that the Government’s record on climate change has been good, but it has not. There is real concern that their aims are not being informed solely by the science of climate change, which must surely be the starting point. I think that we are agreed across the parties that a rise in global temperature of 2° C above the pre-industrial average is at the limit of what should be tolerated if we are to avoid dangerous climate change, with rising sea levels, drought, floods and extreme weather events. However, the Government have been less than open about what that temperature limit means for our behaviour. They have drifted towards a figure of 550 parts per million of carbon dioxide alone as the aim of our emissions policy globally. We now know what that would mean according to the latest—the fourth—assessment report of working group 3 of the United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change, which was published yesterday in Bangkok. The working group is responsible for assessing what we need to do to limit global warming. It finds that a range of 485 to 570 parts per million of carbon dioxide alone—in other words, what the Government have been suggesting—would lead to a global mean temperature increase of not 2° C, but 3.2° to 4° C. The top end of that range is nearly double the 2° C that the Government specify. The same report shows that holding global warming to 2° to 2.4° C would require a CO2 equivalent concentration of 445 to 490 parts per million. Clearly, there is a great disjuncture between the Government’s rhetoric in saying that they want to avoid dangerous climate change and the reality of the targets that they set. On the basis of the evidence of the report, if the Government continue to believe—as they should—that 2° C of global warming is the danger threshold, they must also accept a revision of their international aim and, indeed, a revision of the 60 per cent. reduction in emissions in the draft Climate Change Bill. I hope that Ministers can tell the House exactly where the Government stand on the matter, as the United Nations IPCC report makes it clear that their current position is no longer tenable. No doubt there will be much hand-wringing in parts of British business at the prospect of a more ambitious target, but we have much to gain by being ahead of the global pack. The countries that establish first mover advantage will have the proprietary technology to give their exporters an edge in new global markets. Energy saving does exactly what any sensible business does anyway: it saves costs. The Stern review has already stated that we would benefit by moving more quickly rather than allowing higher costs to build up later. The UN IPCC report reaches similar conclusions. The costs of the most radical stabilisation proposal are put at no more than 0.12 per cent. of GDP each year, or less than 5.5 per cent. of the GDP level in 2050.