Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, I agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach. There is a duty on us legislators to make legislation clear and obvious to the public—the electors and citizens of this country. One of the best quality ways to do that is to state in plain language what the legislation is about. The amendment would do precisely that; it says what the Bill is about. Considering what the Government have said about the Bill, they are in many ways selling themselves short in how it has been presented not only to us but to the world community in terms of its objectives and what we are trying to achieve. It is not as if the Government are not absolutely clear about what the degree change should be. The Prime Minister, in his speech on 19 November when he comprehensively laid out for the first time his environmental credentials, described the 2 degree target as one that was an ““overriding”” mission. That was the word he used. If that is the case, what better place to put it than at the beginning of the Bill? For all those reasons, that objective should be at the front of the Bill. Will the 2 degrees cause problems to the Committee on Climate Change, which has to take that into account and which will give it greater clarity in its own work? Is it too small or too large to ask for? When I was travelling here on the train, I went through the fourth IPCC assessment report for policymakers, which describes the sort of changes that can happen with just a 2 degrees centigrade change. Perhaps I could remind your Lordships’ House of some of them. The first is aridity—greater dryness and desertification—on the globe. The one that really struck me is the much greater risk that 30 per cent of species could become extinct; that there will be an increase in malnutrition and infectious diseases; and that cereal growth will be retarded at mid and low latitudes. The factor that really came over to me was one that the IPCC coolly describes as water stress. That sounds very innocent, but the IPCC says that hundreds of millions of people on this planet will suffer more from water stress. Is that as a result of a 4-degree, a 5-degree or a 10-degree increase? No, it is a result of this 2-degree increase. Another thing has changed almost since the start of Committee some time ago. I was quite sceptical about the scare stories of discontinuities as a result of climate change, whether in relation to ocean currents, whole ice sheets disappearing or major extinctions of species. Even since then, it is quite clear from reading the scientific press that there is a great deal more uncertainty about when those things, the effects of which we can never reverse, will happen. That is why 2 degrees is so important, and why it needs to be stated clearly in the Bill, for Britain and the global community, where we, and I hope the Government, stand.