Climate Change

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend for correcting me. That helps to put in context the fact that, while in international climate negotiations and diplomacy Britain has taken a leading role of which it can be proud, when it comes to our domestic performance, again and again we lag behind the countries that are typically portrayed by many as the barriers to progress. There is no point in just talking. We heard a reference to cobra-like speed on one hand and a sloth-like performance on the other. The reality is that we are a tiger when it comes to talking about climate change abroad, and a sloth when it comes to implementing changes at home. Chinese cars have already reached the level of efficiency that the United States has set as its target for 2016 under President Obama's newly established fuel economy standards. Of course, if one were to take into account measures to control population—a significant factor in determining future emissions trajectories, notwithstanding the Secretary of State's rightful point that growth in incomes can be a contributing factor to controlling populations—the Chinese are estimated to have averted 300 million births since the 1970s, perhaps using methods that we would not universally support, thus saving an estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of CO2, which is equivalent to the entire emissions of Japan. When one considers the relative capacities to act on climate change—a factor that is quite rightly a central principle of the UN framework convention on climate change—the Chinese actions look even more impressive. China's GDP per capita is about $6,000. In the US and the UK, the figure is about $45,000. CO2 emissions per capita are under 5 tonnes, against almost 10 tonnes in the UK and 19 tonnes in the US. Moreover, since 1990, which we can perhaps mark as the date when the world finally accepted the problem of man-made climate change, the UK has emitted four times more CO2 per capita than China. Clearly, China has a particular responsibility on climate change because it has a population of 1.3 billion—about a fifth of global population—but I firmly believe, having visited China with the Environmental Audit Committee, as well as meeting legislators, that China understands climate change better than most Governments around the world. It understands that it will suffer hard in an insecure climate, and it is doing all that it can to mitigate its impact on the climate within the constraints that it faces. As I mentioned in an intervention, 250 million people live on less than $1.50 a day in China. Those people are in abject poverty—nothing relative there—and China's focus is rightly on reducing poverty, but its efforts to date deserve praise, especially given the context in which it operates.