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Climate Change

Absolutely. We are seeing an extraordinary change in weather patterns. With global warming, we could see a 2° rise, which sounds very boring and quite slight. However, the real impact of climate change is an increase in extreme weather patterns, which is why Africa’s worst floods in three decades hit 23 countries from Senegal to west Somalia, and affected 2 million people, in 2007; why Nepal, India and Bangladesh were hit by their worst floods in living memory affecting 41 million people; why two category 5 hurricanes and unusually heavy rains in central America and Mexico affected more than 1.5 million people in 2007; and why, at the height of the flood in Mexico, more than 80 per cent. of the state of Tabasco was under water. With climate change, we are seeing not just a steady, manageable, predictable rise in temperatures, but violent, global weather patterns and, of course, fluctuations, which explains the hurricanes and catastrophic losses recorded by the insurance industry. If my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) goes to the City of London and asks about pay-out rates from insurance companies 20 years ago, compared with today, he will find an extraordinary seismic shift. That is why the capital markets and business are taking climate change very seriously. Those who doubt the scientists and cannot come to a consensus, should consider what the most progressive businesses, nationally and internationally, are doing. My hon. Friend should go and ask his old employer, Asda, or Wal-Mart, what they are doing about climate change. He will find that his old employer, whom he cites quite frequently, is taking climate change extremely seriously. The chief executive of Wal-Mart has signed up to a massive reduction in its carbon emissions and is not waiting for the Government to tell it how to do it. Progressive, responsible, private-sector organisations, such as HSBC, BP, RTZ, Marks and Spencer and Tesco are not waiting to be told by the Government what they should be doing, but acting now. They are doing that not just because of the imperative of climate change or because that is what their consumers and customers are telling them to do, but because they realise that it makes good business sense. They also realise that squeezing out fossil fuels and decarbonising their production costs makes sound economic sense. Companies such as BP, GlaxoSmithKline, RTZ and General Electric have all managed to reduce their overall operating costs by hundreds of millions of pounds—BP has saved about $500 million over seven years. That money has gone straight to the bottom line. It is never wrong to get rid of waste and inefficiency, to bear down on the cost of energy and to squeeze out manufacturing costs. I worked in the oil industry. In 1999, the cost of a barrel of oil fell below $10; at times, it now reaches nearly $100—an extraordinary rise in the cost base. I can tell hon. Members what the single biggest threat to poor people is: it is the spiralling cost of fossil fuels. Never mind climate change—in the short term, the fuel- poor and those dependent on fossil fuels for heating and cooking will be the ones to suffer. They are the ones being squeezed the most by fossil-fuel dependency and who will benefit the most from actions that we should take to reduce that dependency, to tap into the potential of renewable energy and to ensure the long-term, cheap, predictable cost of renewable energy. The world’s poorest people, in places such as south-east Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, will be hit the most if we do not tackle the causes of climate change, and adapt and mitigate. They are the people who require adaptation—never mind us in the UK, who will probably be among the last to suffer the ill consequences of climate change, which are being felt already by people in Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa. They suffer already from drought and flooding and feel now the direct consequences of 200 years of industrialisation. We cannot sit back and wash our hands. We have a moral responsibility, not only to our own people in the UK and those abroad, but to future generations. We cannot sit here complacently.