Climate Change

The right hon. Gentleman makes the exact point that I have made in my remarks. The final essential element of any outcome at Copenhagen is an urgent agreement on deforestation. Some 15 million hectares of tropical rainforest are lost every year to deforestation. To put that into context, that is an area larger than England. We must secure a deal at Copenhagen to protect the global rainforests, without which it will be impossible to keep warming under a dangerous threshold. From the beginning of his leadership, the leader of my party has made it clear that Britain must take a position of leadership on our global as well as our domestic environment. We have talked about that already in our exchanges, and it is nothing new. British Governments throughout the ages have seen it as Britain's role in the world to be a force for progressive change. In a remarkable speech this summer that I commend to all hon. Members, my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary said:""The citizens of Britain have always been restless in trying to improve the wider world and global in our outlook."" That must characterise our ambition in Copenhagen. As we get close to Copenhagen, we know that significant outstanding issues remain. The Secretary of State alluded to the question whether the deal would trigger higher contributions from other EU member states. If the deal is to be genuinely global, it is essential that it triggers that pan-European 30 per cent. emissions reduction target and ensures that it is brought into effect. Moreover, we have talked about the temperature requirement, but it is also important that we encourage—as the Secretary of State has said he will—our European partners to rise to the challenge as we have and respect the scientific view of what is required. When it comes to the flow of funds for adaptation, it is important that we understand that the numbers used in the agreement must be rigorous. I agree with the Secretary of State that those numbers must not be made up and used just because they sound round and can be easily communicated. The numbers used in the agreement must have some substance to them. It is clear that much work remains to be done on important aspects of the problem before Copenhagen begins. With a little more than a month to go, it is right for people to be apprehensive about the task ahead. It is not in anyone's interest to be over-confident, but I began my speech by saying that a number of people are making a parallel with the Bretton Woods conference of 1944. On the eve of that conference, John Maynard Keynes, one of the architects of that historic agreement, said that it was""better that our projects should begin in disillusion than…end in it"." I think that we start off from a stronger position than he did, in terms of our optimism about what might come out of the negotiations. I wish the Secretary of State much success in the weeks ahead.