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Climate Change

I am pleased that the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) has secured this debate. He made a thoughtful speech, but he will know from the many conversations that I have had with him that I disagree with most of what he said about the causes of climate change. I am not a flat-earther; I accept Stern and I accept that human activity is leading to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, which are having a deleterious effect on the climate around the world, including in this country. The hon. Gentleman mentioned Antarctica, and I am glad that I am a Canadian citizen, because Canada includes part of the Arctic. I hope, however, that things will not get that bad if we take action in time. Like many hon. Members, I have listened to a lot of debates on climate change on the Floor of the House, and they are dominated to the point of hegemony by those who are concerned about the causes of climate change emissions. The debate in Parliament is totally unbalanced, and we seldom talk about effects, although we talk a lot about causes. Action on causes is important, but so is action on effects, by which I mean adaptation. Let me give one example. On 22 November 2007, we had one of our new one-and-a-half-hour topical debates on climate change on the Floor of the House. Unfortunately, I could not get to the debate, but I read Hansard carefully afterward, and not a single word was said by any speaker about adaptation during that hour and a half. That is a shocking indictment of the politicians of the United Kingdom. I pay tribute, however, to the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling), a Conservative MP who secured a Westminster Hall debate on the issue on 10 July 2007, which I attended. That was thoughtful of him, and he was absolutely right to raise the issue. We should talk a lot more in the House and in society about adaptation to climate change. When I say adaptation, I have in mind the definition used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which states that adaptation is the"““Adjustment in natural and human systems in response to actual and potential climatic stimuli and their effects, which mutually moderates harm and exploits beneficial opportunities.””" The Minister is well aware of my interest in this matter, and one of the things that got me going on it was a DEFRA publication on climate change from March 2006. In round terms, that publication contained 190 pages on climate change, of which a dozen, or 6 per cent. of the total, were on adaptation to climate change. When I went through that publication, I was outraged by that imbalance. As the hon. Member for Chichester said, the UK is responsible for 2 per cent. of world emissions in round terms, and we have 1 per cent. of the world’s population. The intervention by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is the first time that I have heard him say anything with which I agree. He will correct me if I misunderstood him, but he said words to the effect that we must be careful not to end up beating our breast and driving down emissions in this country, while others do nothing. That does not remove from us the moral responsibility to drive down our emissions and to urge that on others, but what, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, if we do it all and others do nothing? If we do it all and others do nothing, and one accepts, as I do, that human activity leads to deleterious changes in the climate, this country will still be hit with those changes. We therefore need to adapt to them, and we need to start adapting now. UK emissions are within the control of the UK, but world emissions are not. Let us therefore have a bit more emphasis on that part of the climate change equation that is within the control of our country, rather than talking almost exclusively about that part that exists at the world level and which is outwith the control of our country. That is another example of imbalance.