Climate Change

I am not giving way; I am going to finish. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said as he opened the debate, we need an agreement that is ambitious, effective and fair. We have worked consistently here and abroad to advance such an agreement. We have accepted our own responsibilities by putting in place the first carbon budgets in the world, accepting ambitious binding targets and being willing to go further in the event of a deal. We have driven ambition across the EU. We have intervened on finance at a critical stage. We have worked with forest states to get deforestation into the agreement, and we have provided funding to get the adaptation fund operational. Our officials have worked around the clock to add their expertise to this massive endeavour. No one should be surprised if at times frustration leads to pessimism when more than 100 nations sit down to grapple with more than 200 pages of negotiating text. However, few doubt that this is a deal that the world must have. I know, because I have had the privilege of going to Greenland and seeing for myself the melting Arctic sea ice. I know, because I have met Ursula, from the disappearing Carteret islands, who said:""For leaders it is only a lifestyle change; for us it is life and death"." I know, because last week I heard the urgent plea of Vice-President Waheed from the Maldives when he asked assembled Ministers what he would tell his people if no deal was forthcoming. We need a deal to save the land, lives and livelihoods of millions of people in the developing world, and we need a deal because climate change affects us too, with a cost to our economy, our environment and our security. However, climate change is not just a message of threats and potential disaster, although we must take that to heart. It is also a positive message—a call to a global transition to a low-carbon economy. It is a call to a world in which unprecedented co-operation will have to come about, to a world in which technologies are shared for mutual benefit and resources are properly conserved, and to a world that respects nature and provides us all with a safer, cleaner and greener place to live and work. I thank hon. Members for the good wishes that they have given us today, because all that is what is at stake in the Copenhagen talks, and it is why we in this Government will do everything that we can to achieve the ambitious agreement that this world so desperately needs. Question put and agreed to. Resolved,"That this House has considered the matter of climate change: preparation for the Copenhagen climate change conference."