Climate Change Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 1: 1: Before Clause 1, insert the following new Clause— ““Objective of the Act It is the objective of this Act that the United Kingdom play a fair and equitable part in the international effort to limit global average temperature rise to not more than 2 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels.”” The noble Lord said: The Climate Change Bill is the most important Bill in this Session of Parliament. It raises large issues on carbon reductions well into this century and a number of global issues, all of which have been subject to a great deal of discussion and debate, not just in the United Kingdom and Europe, but in the global community. However, a key area not covered by the Bill is why it exists and why we should have the various targets, measures and frameworks that it will bring into action. We all know that there is a consensus among the international community, climate change scientists and the political community that there is a considerable need to keep the temperature increase above pre-industrial levels to 2 degrees centigrade. If we do not have that in the Bill, I do not understand how the other major figures and items that we will come on to debate in Committee make sense. We from these Benches feel that it is very important that at the beginning of this Bill we have the objective that global warming should not be more than 2 degrees centigrade and that the United Kingdom should play its fair and equitable part in making sure that that objective is reached. I remind the Committee that the Defra statement of 19 November on the post-2012 framework for tackling climate change said: "““To avoid the dangerous impacts of global warming, global temperatures must rise no more than 2 degrees above those of pre-industrial times””." If that is not authoritative enough, the Prime Minister said on the same day in what was seen as a keynote speech on the Government’s climate change policy: "““But our mission is in truth historic and it is world changing—to build over the next 50 years and beyond a global low carbon economy … Our vision has one overriding claim: holding the rise in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees centigrade””." The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes it clear that if that objective is not achieved, among very many other consequences there is a risk of some 30 to 40 per cent of species becoming extinct—a risk, not a certainty, as in many of these areas of climate science. For those reasons we believe that the Bill should do exactly what the Government say it should do; it should lay out without doubt the context in which the Government and this nation will pursue the problem of climate change. This target should actually be in—