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Climate Change

I am grateful for that intervention. The simple answer is that we are afraid of being booted out and replaced by a Government who are not prepared to confront that issue. We must have framework-based markets. I agree with the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) that capitalism is the most powerful force for change in the world. Whether that should be the case is another matter—I shall not go down that route. We must tell capitalism how to respond and not simply try to replace it because we do not have the capacity to do that. Some of the issues must be tackled through a global framework. Contraction and convergence has already been mentioned and I want to dwell on that for a little because I introduced a Bill on it last December. Contraction and convergence form the framework in the articles of the United Nations framework convention on climate change—UNFCCC—that I mentioned earlier. There are many objections to a single global framework for tackling climate change. A recent Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs report, which responded to the continuing Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into the post-Kyoto frameworks, stated that we could not have a single framework and that it was impossible to achieve. There are one or two samples of attempts to understand the reason for that sort of psychology. The Prime Minister said at a G8 climate change conference in November last year:"““It is because people fear some external force imposes an internal target that is going to restrict your economic growth.””" That could be an objection to some sort of global framework on which we all agree. Some people, perhaps especially in the United States, believed that it would be a straitjacket on the development of their economies.