Climate Change Bill [HL]

Like the noble Lord, I could have made my remarks on the previous group debated, but perhaps chose not to because having added a slight word of disagreement with my noble friend on the Front Bench, I did not want to do so immediately again. I turn to the emphasis put on the importance of science by my noble friend the Duke of Montrose, with which I do not disagree. However, I also emphasise that within the list there are other important matters to be taken into account. In that context, I want to round-off my remarks made earlier this afternoon. These are not negative matters. After all, going back to Clause 8, those matters are taken in account with the object of setting a carbon budget with a view to meeting the target—in Clause 1—for 2050. The Climate Change Committee and the Secretary of State will have to have that objective clearly in mind. When debating the various matters that have to be taken into account, my noble friend the Duke of Montrose referred to economic, political and social circumstances and then moved on without mentioning energy policy—one of the most important factors to be taken into account and to which I referred earlier. I want to make what is far from being a negative point. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, is not in his place, because during the second day in Committee he said he felt that the sense of urgency was beginning to seep out of our debates. I want to introduce a way of getting some urgency back, not into the debates, but into the achievement of what we are all setting out to do. That is not to set a lot of targets and prepare a lot of budgets, but to change the conditions created in the world by carbon emissions. I again refer briefly to a remarkable and completely relevant contribution in a book written by my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford and Carole Nakhle. My noble friend was saying that these issues are hugely important but the problem in trying to persuade people to do something about them—and to accept the burdens that the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, suggested were going to be put on them—is going to be quite difficult. You are being asked to do something that may be quite painful in the short term and will not produce any results until many years later. My noble friend Lord Howell points out that in the short term we have a potentially very serious energy crisis facing us. He therefore suggests that: "““It ought to be possible to combine the urgent needs for energy security, as well as the urgent needs of the developing world, with the long-run fight against global warming. Together the twin goals of energy security and climate security ought to provide a truly motivating worldwide story which the prophecies of disaster some decades ahead lack the persuasive power to convey or turn into action””." Later, he writes: "““Harnessing these two causes—of energy security and climate security—would be to create a grand alliance, a grand unity, or at least harmony, of purpose which the world so conspicuously lacks at present””." I shall make one final quote from the book. My noble friend writes that, "““what is crystal clear is that, starting from here and now, long-run targets for checking further carbon growth, however ‘demanding’, or backed by stern-sounding laws, stand not the slimmest hope of being achieved unless they are seen as necessary to protect people and industry against violent price movements, against power cuts and supply disruption, or against more oil shocks, as the Middle East and the Islamic world continue to boil. Nor will they do much to prepare the world for, or help it adjust to, the big climate changes which are already in the pipeline, and which no amount of carbon curbing will now avert. That will require expensive adaptation on a major scale””." I produce those quotes because I want to emphasise that it seems to me that far from being negative, some of the matters that have to be taken into account are entirely and completely positive. I hope that the Climate Change Committee and the Secretary of State will not only think of scientific knowledge about climate change and the economic and social issues which have been referred to but will pay a great deal of attention to Clause 10(2)(f), which relates to energy policy. I hope that by combining a realistic energy policy with the climate change policy they will seek to get something that is not only effective, but is also saleable to a doubtful and dubious world. In their book, my noble friend and his co-author set out a series of proposals for achieving greater energy efficiency and for saving the vast amounts waste that now occur in our oil, gas and energy supplies. They are all relevant to what we are debating in the Bill, but they are all equally relevant to dealing with the energy crisis that my noble friend fears may get much worse in the short term. As we go through the Bill, with all the importance that is being attached to the scientific input, I hope that those who have to implement these policies will pay as much attention to the energy issues and to the way in which, by combining those two things, we can achieve the results we all want.