Copenhagen Climate Change Conference

Absolutely. That is why we made available £120 million yesterday to support, for example, the offshore wind manufacturing industry. Let me come to the five challenges that we will face between now and Copenhagen. The more consensus that we can achieve in the House on these questions, and particularly on the international side, the better, so I look forward to hearing other hon. Members' speeches in this debate. First, we need to show that the mitigation actions by developed and developing countries are consistent with the 2° benchmark. When it comes to the targets and the commitments made by developed and developing countries, the question is: are they consistent with the actions that the scientists tell us are necessary to meet the 2° target and to contain temperature rises on the planet to below 2°? In Britain we have set an emissions target for 2020 of 34 per cent. below 1990 levels. However, we stand ready to tighten and improve that target as part of a global deal at Copenhagen. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the scientific body in charge of those issues—said in its 2007 report that, for developed countries as a whole, we needed to aim for 25 to 40 per cent. reductions on 1990 levels by 2020. There is no doubt that that is a challenging objective, given the situation in America and elsewhere, but the 25 to 40 per cent. target is still an important benchmark. There may be other scientific pathways to get to the 2° target, but that benchmark is—at the moment, anyway—the dominant way in which we are thinking about such issues, and it indicates that all countries, but particularly developed countries, need to show maximum ambition.