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Climate Change

I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman, if he will forgive me, because I think that I have the shortest time slot in the entire debate and I want to try to develop my argument. That division of political opinion makes me suspicious. My point is this: if even President Bush, who presumably has no real incentive to believe all this stuff on climate change—he certainly had no real incentive to believe it when he became President—has started to believe it, and is now one of the people talking about India and China and international co-operation on tackling climate change, surely that is prima facie evidence that the scientific and economic evidence is quite striking. Otherwise, why would someone coming from that political perspective have moved so far? Clearly, one could say that, once someone is not fighting for re-election again, they can just indulge in rhetoric. However, I am struck by the fact that, although this is an uncomfortable political message, many politicians are accepting the need to make it and many of us would not do so if we were not convinced of the need for it.