Climate Change

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, on initiating this debate. Like him, I draw attention to the expanding population of the planet and, indeed, of this country. We should remind ourselves that nature has a rather brutal way of dealing with any species that either outstrips its own resources or so pollutes them as to make their appropriation difficult or impossible. It is always timely to have that in mind. However, I intervene in this debate to talk about the science and technology role as opposed to the personal change role, as I believe this important point underpins the discussion. I intend to mention aviation only tangentially but I declare an interest as the campaign director for Future Heathrow. Many years ago—I think it was in the 1970s—the BBC broadcast a wonderful programme, "The Weather Machine", which was really the first alert to the dangers of climate change. I remember being very struck by that programme. At that time we were more concerned about the planet cooling rapidly and triggering a new ice age. Certainly, in the 1980s I wrote articles expressing acute concern about that. In some ways I suppose that I was doing what some people are doing now as regards being in a slight panic mode about it. We have to draw back a bit and understand that this problem is one of serious pollution but that it can be resolved. We have to get right the balance between science and technology and the need for individuals, societies and communities to change their behaviour. I stopped supporting Greenpeace about 10 or 12 years ago following the mistakes it made in the Brent Spar incident and in one or two others. During the past 10 to 15 years I have been troubled by a sense that an anti-science role is rapidly emerging, which is profoundly dangerous. A good example of that was touched on by other speakers; namely, the very successful lobby group which slowed down, and almost stopped, the development of nuclear power. No one is suggesting that nuclear power is the ideal solution to climate change. However, it has been known for a very long time—many of us have been worried about this issue for a long time—that nuclear power is an essential part of the medium to long-term answer. I remember listening to someone only a couple of years ago boasting proudly of how they had taken their family on holiday to north Africa entirely by train, and thus avoided polluting the planet, because otherwise they would have flown. They were also anti-nuclear. It seemed almost cruel to point out that 80 per cent of the electricity for the high-speed rail network in France is produced by nuclear generation, and it would have been even crueller to point out that it would probably have been better if they had flown directly to north Africa. I left them alone on that occasion, but I will not promise always to do so. This is the difficulty, in a way. If we lurch into a slightly anti-science and anti-technology mode, we begin to not only make people think that there are simplistic solutions which can be achieved simply by changing our behaviour, we also, importantly, stop some of the progressive things that can and should be happening. This is very true when people get into this mode of saying, "We must stop people doing things", whether it is stopping them flying, developing nuclear power and a whole range of things. The real message is that in all walks of life—our personal lives, communities, social, leisure, work and everywhere—we have to drive down carbon emissions. We need to look at that in a positive way, rather than in a "let’s stop everything" way. There is a lesson from history, in that Thomas Malthus believed we would all end up starving because were going to outstrip our food sources. If it had not been for science and technology, he might well have been right. However, just as science and technology were allowing people to live longer and healthier lives, they were creating the facility for increasing food supplies. There are ways of addressing this issue, and we have to get the balance right. I emphasise that we should put right up front of any debate about climate change the argument that although science and technology on their own cannot solve this problem, they are vital ingredients. It would be infinitely more difficult and almost certainly lead to a dramatic loss of life if we tried to tackle climate change without science and technology. They are part of the answer. The key is to ask: what are we doing now that we can do better? When people say, for example, we must stop flying, I say: "You pick on flying, but let’s say you stopped everyone in this country flying. Even if it had a significant impact and never mind stopping people flying in other countries, what then do you turn on?" There are a number of things. For example, you could turn on the media, which might please some people in the political process. The production of television and programmes, their distribution and broadcasting, have a massive impact on climate change; but we do not say, "Let’s stop watching ‘EastEnders’ or ‘Big Brother’", even if it might push people back into their communities where they sat on the doorstep and talked to each other, which might please the right reverend Prelate. You would not need to set up a neighbourhood watch because you would not be watching telly all the time. You can get into all sorts of arguments about stopping people from doing things in order to solve climate change, but the answer is more sophisticated. We have to do these things in a more environmentally sensitive way and make sure that we are not doing them in a way that increases climate change. There is a core problem about the population issue, and the noble Lord and my noble friend Lord Bhattacharyya touched on it. There is no way that India, China, South America and so on will hold their standards of living down. Any lectures to them about not developing industry, not flying and so on, would be seen for what, in some cases, they are: western countries and organisations telling them not to do what we have already done and not to expect the living standards that we expect. There are all sorts of moral traps in this issue. The key is to drive down emissions. I try to do that in my personal life and I hope and expect other people to do that in theirs. It is more difficult when we start to think about the community activities we involve ourselves in, because, very often, they involve a considerable degree of climate-changing activity. Which is why—and it is right that in all walks of life we address this issue—you need to say in those organisations, "What are we doing to reduce climate change?". I often walk into this place and find the lights are on, and I cannot think why. The daylight is pretty good—that will please the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw. Even given the hours we work, we still have pretty good daylight and do not need to have the lights on. Also, in older buildings such as this, we ought to use electricity only from renewable sources, because it is much more difficult to make old buildings carbon-friendly. I will give another example, which is drawn from Heathrow. I visited the new scheme that will serve Terminal 5, initially from the business car park, but will spread wider in November this year. What happens at many airports around the world is that people park their cars, go to a bus shelter and wait for a bus, which is very often empty. It trundles around and around all the time, picking up a few people and taking them to the terminal. On the new system which is already functioning at Terminal 5, you go to a very modern-looking bus station, you press a button, a small vehicle without a driver approaches you, it takes up to six people and suitcases and so on, you step inside, you press a button and the vehicle takes you to the terminal. Work is under way on a model which, in a few years, will allow you to insert your flight ticket, and then take you to wherever you need to go for your flight. That sort of clever technology—driven by a professor from Bristol who set up a company—is interesting local authorities. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, with his knowledge of local government may be interested in looking at that and perhaps trying to persuade some local authorities to take a risk on this technology. I gather that one local authority in the Midlands is interested, because if you can personalise your transport in that way, you reduce the need for large numbers of vehicles trundling around semi-empty. It is that sort of clever, long-term technology that we need to develop to deal with the crisis. There is no simple solution and there certainly is no quick one, but it is a manageable problem, as long as we combine the science and technology with the necessary social changes. The Government’s role is to do what they are doing rather well by trying to drive the science and technology forward and, at the same time, raising people’s awareness of what they can do in their personal lives. That is a core message for dealing with this problem. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, for bringing it to the attention of the House.