Climate Change

Yes, there are different views on peak oil. I do not want to embarrass the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal by quoting him again, but whether or not people say that will happen on a certain date, we must make the low-carbon transition. I find that the peak oilers get very exercised about this question, for reasons that I understand, but whether we care about climate change or peak oil, the basic message is in a sense, "Let's diversify; let's move to low carbon." Let me move to the second part of my remarks. What kind of agreement are we looking for? It is important to say, as I did during questions earlier, that the UN negotiations are moving too slowly and not going well, as anyone reading the newspapers or seeing walk-outs and so on will know. That is partly because there is a history of mistrust in the negotiations between developed and developing countries, as hon. Members on both sides of the House will know, and partly because people are stuck in entrenched positions, and it is very hard to get out of them. In a sense, that feels intrinsic to those negotiations. The paradox is that if we look around the world at what has happened in the past year—this is not to try to put on rose-tinted spectacles—we see that lots of things have changed and happened that should give us cause for hope. The new American Administration have got a cap-and-trade Bill through Congress if not through the Senate, and I will come to that later. The new Japanese Government have found much greater ambition in their emissions reductions. For the first time, a Chinese President went to the UN—again, this has been underestimated in the debate—and announced a change in his domestic policy by saying that China would make substantial cuts in its carbon intensity by 2020. As I said to the Chinese Minister on Saturday, we now await the numbers underlying that announcement. India has also been moving on this. Therefore, there is cause for hope, and I do not think we should be too negative.