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Climate Change

I congratulate the Secretary of State on finding Government time, albeit perhaps abridged, to discuss this absolutely crucial matter. I am delighted that it is clear that there is consensus across the House—including even the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), who has left the Chamber—that climate change is accepted science. Forty-eight Nobel prize winners writing to the Bush Administration cannot be wrong. Indeed, the editor of Science was recently quoted as saying that rarely in science is a consensus as strong as it is around the view that there has been man-made global warming. Of course, the intergovernmental panel on climate change has done exceptional work and we look forward to seeing the fourth assessment report soon. As I have examined the matter over the past year, I have been struck, as I know that the Secretary of State has, given several of his remarks, by renewed evidence that the problems created by global warming are accelerating, such as the movement of glaciers. For example, the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland is moving by 113 feet, whereas previously it moved by only inches in a year. In Antarctica we have seen the destruction of a substantial ice shelf the size of Turkey—or the size of Texas, as they prefer to put it in the United States. At home, we can see that the situation is worsening by considering something as relatively mundane as the Thames barrier. The barrier has been raised 55 times in the past five years, but was raised only 12 times in the previous five. We know about the situation affecting the railway line from Dawlish to Newton Abbott in the west country, on which I travelled recently when visiting one of my hon. Friends’ constituencies—and my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) might become the first person in the history of the House to lose his constituency, or a very substantial part of it, to the encroaching sea. We have drought in the Thames Water area. We experience flooding, and rapid downpours lead to water running off concrete and baked soil. Insurance claims are mounting rapidly, which is an increasing source of concern to the Association of British Insurers. On that point, I ask the Secretary of State to consider what to do about the remaining climate change deniers, who include multinational corporations. Although ExxonMobil, for example, no longer denies global warming outright, it funds institutions and websites that do. Judged by its actions, not its words, it is a climate change-denying organisation, and it has been treating some reputable bodies pretty badly. I said recently that the Royal Society had pointed out that ExxonMobil was still funding climate change-denying organisations such as the International Policy Network and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The IPN is the organisation whose executive director, Mr. Morris, popped up so long ago with a poisonous and personal attack on Sir David King, the chief scientific adviser, as having no status in the debate because he was not a climate scientist. I do not know how much ExxonMobil thought that nasty bit of attempted character assassination was worth, but Mr. Morris ludicrously described Sir David as"““an embarrassment to himself and an embarrassment to his country””," and the Royal Society calculates that overall ExxonMobil spent $2.9 million on such outfits last year alone. The Royal Society’s letter says that"““ExxonMobil last year provided more than $2.9 million to organisations in the United States which misinformed the public about climate change through their websites.””" Exxon’s director of corporate affairs, Mr. Nick Thomas, rang me and said that the author of the letter to ExxonMobil had left the Royal Society. I asked whether he had been sacked, and Mr. Thomas said that he could not possibly comment, but it was clearly significant. The implication was left hanging in the air. When I checked, I found that Bob Ward, the senior manager at the Royal Society, had been promoted into another job. The Royal Society is standing by every word that he wrote, as it made clear in a subsequent press release attempting to deal with internet rumours. I ask the House: should we be buying fuel from people such as ExxonMobil? I do not want even indirectly to be helping to fund bodies such as the International Policy Network and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. I do not think that the Government should do so either, if only as a tribute to the sterling work of Sir David King, so I hope that Government procurement of fuel oil no longer uses Esso or Exxon. ExxonMobil is surely the irresponsible and unacceptable face of capitalism, to borrow a phrase. Perhaps Ministers could tell us what they propose to do, if only to protect the reputations of their own distinguished employees. The climate change Bill, which has been mentioned by a number of Members, has been championed by Friends of the Earth, and we are very pleased to give our support to the Bill and to the commitment to annual emissions reductions. We have to watch the average figures and make sure that weather events are not going to blow us off course. I agree with the hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen) that we may well need to be more ambitious than the 60 per cent. cut currently pencilled in for 2050. I agree also with what the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) said about the need for independent monitoring, not, I hope, as a way of deciding policy, but certainly as a way of informing it and making sure there can be no doubt, among Members and policy makers, of the impartial assessment of the scientific community. We must remember always that targets are only the first step to a solution. They have to be credible. Frankly, if targets were the way to better government, this country would be the best governed in the world because one thing with which this Government cannot be reproached is failing to multiply the number of new targets. We need also to talk about practical policies. At an international level I would like to hear more from the Secretary of State and his colleagues about how we will press on with the agenda that they were outlining at Monterrey. For example, was it not disappointing that, as I understand from press reports, the Russians were not present? What can we do as a European Union to make sure that the Russians are on board? Nevertheless, like the Secretary of State, I firmly believe that we can tackle the issue, if only because a mere 20 countries out of nearly 200 in the United Nations are responsible for 80 per cent. of carbon emissions. We can gather the key people around the table, and we can ensure that they address the problem. There is a serious difficulty with the developing world, because of the nature of the problem. Contraction and convergence, to which our party is committed, deals with the flow of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, but not with the stock already there. Of course, the stock is the key factor, as CO2 has a life of 100 years once it has been emitted into the atmosphere. The developing world can legitimately turn round and say that 70 per cent. of all the man-made CO2 currently in the atmosphere originates from the developed world. What proposals do the Government have for dealing justly and equitably with that issue? There is much merit in Jagdish Bhagwati’s proposal for a super-fund, which could help to fund a technological generation jump in the third world and is worth considering. Closer to home, the Government like to talk the talk, but they are far from being effective and joined-up in their own policy actions. I shall give five examples of how disjointed and dysfunctional the Government have become. First, it is universally recognised that green taxes—taxes on fossil fuels and the machines that use fossil fuels—are part of the solution to global warming. The emissions trading scheme is crucial, but it covers only a little under half of all emissions from the UK. Even if we extend it to aviation, as we should—I agree with the Secretary of State, and I would like to know whether the Government are in favour of extending it to shipping and road freight, too—substantial parts of the economy would be left outwith the emissions trading scheme. That is why taxation is the way to bring incentives to bear on people’s behaviour. A Nordic Council report, which I recommend to anyone who needs a little help getting to sleep at night, is excellent on the subject of economic instruments. Under this Government, we have been going backwards since 1999 on green taxes, which have fallen from 3.6 per cent. of gross domestic product to 2.9 per cent. last year—I prefer to use that figure.