Climate Change Bill [HL]

Perhaps I may act as something of a tiebreaker and speak in general terms in support of my noble friend Lord Lea. If my memory serves me right, in his diaries, Sir John Colville makes the point that the standard of living for the average British family fell by 50 per cent between September 1939 and December 1940. I remember asking my mother when I was a child how she dealt with that. The truth was that she dealt with at least half of that through adaptation—changing the way in which we lived. Our family standard of living did not fall by 50 per cent, it probably fell by, let us say, 20 per cent. I suspect that this might well be the general experience of a great number of people over the next 20 or 30 years. In that diary, Sir John Colville also says that he did not at the time think it would be possible to persuade the British people to accept this level of deprivation. He puts it entirely down to the power of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s speeches to convince the public that there was a common enemy and it was worth it. That is one relatively inexpensive way of dealing with adaptation. I do not know who will make those speeches. No doubt, the noble Baroness, Lady Young, will be among them. As I have said several times during the Committee stage, the pain of adaptation will be very real. To pretend otherwise, is not to do ourselves—and certainly not the younger people who are going to feel the full effects of this—any favours at all. However, it can be managed. The other thing I remember my mother saying over and over was, ““Don’t forget, we were all in it together, and there was a common enemy””. Climate change is a common enemy. Once again, we will be in it together and in that sense I suspect that new adaptation methods will be devised.