Climate Change

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Browne of Madingley is to be congratulated on three counts on initiating today’s debate. First, he is to be congratulated on its timeliness, coming as it does just after the Government’s climate change legislation has completed its passage through both Houses and at the beginning of a crucial year for the international negotiations on post-Kyoto arrangements leading up to the UN Copenhagen conference in December. Secondly, he is to be congratulated on steering us away from the already well trampled ground of the scientific and economic cases for early action to slow down and reverse climate change. Thirdly, he is to be congratulated because, in his time as CEO of BP, he gave a notable lead in facing up to the challenge of climate change when many of his colleagues and competitors in the oil industry were still in a state of denial on the subject. The past few months have brought both good news and bad on the prospects for a successful outcome to the post-Kyoto negotiations. The best news is that the last two developed country hold-outs against the need for early action—the United States and Australia—have now, following their 2008 elections, joined the consensus for taking such action. The only slightly less good news is that the European Union, whose leadership is vital if these negotiations are to succeed, has managed to sort out its own internal arrangements, without which its earlier commitments would just have been so many empty words. However, it was a close-run thing and, as was observed after a different battle, we cannot afford many more victories of that sort. Still in the good but not very good news category is the fact that the main developing countries, which had earlier tended to treat this issue either as a developed country fad or as something that these countries would have to sort out on their own, now recognise the need to negotiate seriously about their own commitments. However, this recognition is offset by a notable tightening of their negotiating stance as the time for taking decisions approaches. In the clearly bad news category is the world’s financial and economic turmoil, which is giving rise to siren voices arguing that we cannot now afford to take on serious new commitments over climate change and that we should postpone all that until we have sorted out the mess that we are in. However, the longer we postpone decisions on climate change, the greater the pain will be. The worst news of all, and not yet generally recognised as such, is that time is getting very short if we are to have any hope of achieving a successful outcome at Copenhagen. It would be foolish to believe that 192 countries can come together there and settle matters if the building blocks for a settlement have not been put in place ahead of time. That was the experience at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, when what was achieved—the climate change and biodiversity conventions—was settled in advance, and what was not settled in advance, on desertification and forests, was not satisfactorily sorted out there. We really are in a race against time. I intend to direct my remarks on the international political aspects of climate change to three main issues: burden sharing; research and technology transfer to developing countries; and institutions. Of these three, burden sharing is far the most complex and most likely to cause the shipwreck of the whole enterprise if it is not satisfactorily resolved. It can relate, of course, to a regional grouping such as the EU or to a sharing of the load with the other developed countries, such as between the EU, the United States and Japan. Most sensitive of all, it can relate to the balance between the developed and developing countries. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister about the Government’s thinking on the second and third aspects of burden sharing. How do the Government foresee negotiations with the new United States Administration, who are still in the process of working out their policy on climate change? How do they see it moving ahead? Does the Minister agree that the burden sharing between the two largest carbon emitters—the United States and China—will be crucial to the outcome of the overall negotiations? How does the UK intend to square the circle of burden sharing between developed and developing countries more generally? Can he assure the House that the Government will not flirt with the dangerous concept of threatening the imposition of trade barriers on emitters that do not accept a share of the burden? Surely that would be a most risky and unwise approach at this time, when general protectionist pressures are on the rise. Possibly every bit as important in achieving a balanced outcome between developed and developing countries will be the question of technology transfer. For technology transfer to work, you need to have something to transfer, which will surely require a major increase in the energy-related research expenditure of this country and the EU, as well as of other developed countries. Do the Government agree that narrowing the gap between the much higher amount of energy needed to achieve a unit of production in the developing countries and that needed to do so in developed countries is at the heart of the effort to handle climate change? We hear a lot about the creation of green jobs, but we do not hear an awful lot about the specifics of it. How do the Government intend to put some flesh on the bare bones of their rhetoric? Are we really doing enough to boost research in the key areas? The whole question of carbon capture and storage is central, offering as it does a potential key to using the massive coal deposits in China, India and eastern Europe without driving a coach and horses through our carbon emission objectives. Are we devoting enough resources to that crucial area of research and bringing enough urgency to the matter? No one who heard the recent Question Time exchange in this House on that point can confidently answer that in the affirmative. Then there is the matter of institutions, which is probably not on most people’s priority list at this stage, but which is essential if commitments entered into at Copenhagen are to be creditably maintained, equitably implemented and monitored properly. One thing is certain: the present UN institutional arrangements for handling environmental issues will be completely inadequate for that task. The UN Environment Programme, known as UNEP, has neither the mandate nor the resources and capacity to do that. There will need to be a fully fledged UN agency of the sort that we have to handle health or refugees to manage the post-Copenhagen follow-up. If a more robust and wider mandate with more resources is to be agreed, would it not make sense to bring issues relating to energy within the ambit of any new agency? At the moment, energy issues, which are more and more closely related to environmental ones, have no real home within the UN system. Will the Government give the House some idea of their thinking on these institutional matters? None of these issues will be easy to resolve and none will get any easier if the international community procrastinates or becomes deadlocked in the negotiations. Quite the reverse—the longer we postpone taking effective action, the costlier it will be. The Government have an important role to play both within the European Union and more widely and I hope that the Minister will be able to assure the House that they will continue to give a lead, as they have done hitherto, and bring to these negotiations all the energy and imagination that they can muster.