---

Climate Change Bill [Lords]

I welcome the Bill and I accept that human activity is affecting the climate adversely. I am not a flat-earther and I welcome the Government's leadership, especially that of the then Deputy Prime Minister at Kyoto. However, I do not accept tonight's cosy consensus. The cuts in CO2 emissions are measured against a 1990 baseline up to 2050. We are 30 per cent. of the way into that period, and there has been roughly a 30 per cent. change in CO2 emissions on a world level in that time. However, it is a 30 per cent. increase, not a 30 per cent. cut. United Kingdom per capita emissions are up since 2000. According to the National Audit Office, the Government have increased their emissions. Between 2003-06, the Department for Transport showed a 50 per cent. increase in emissions; between 2000-06, the Department for Constitutional Affairs showed a 66 per cent. increase; and the Department for Work and Pensions—the second biggest consumer of energy in the civil estate—increased its emissions by 14 per cent. between 2000-06. Oil prices have increased massively, not because production has decreased but because demand has increased—we are burning more of the stuff. We need to consider what has to be done to get anywhere. The Paris-based International Energy Agency told the Bali conference on climate change that, in the world, we need 30 new nuclear power plants, 17,000 wind turbines, 400 biomass power plants, two hydroelectric dams, each the size of the Three Gorges project in China, and 42 coal or natural gas plants using carbon capture or storage if we are to cut emissions by 50 per cent. by 2050. We need all that by 2013, and we need it every year from 2013 until 2030. We have heard arguments in the Chamber and outside about an 80 per cent. cut. They are presented with the best intentions. However, it is not a piddling up the wall contest, but reality. I say to hon. Members, ““Wake up and smell the coffee.”” We are not going to achieve 80 per cent.—it will be hard to reach 60 per cent., if we consider the number of air trips our constituents make or the simple fact that most Members and their staff will not even turn off the lights in the toilets in Portcullis House. I learned about greenhouse gas effects at university in 1974. By that token, many hon. Members are speaking with the zeal of recent converts. The 80 per cent. figure represents gesture politics, albeit from the best intentions. As far as I know, the youngest Member is the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), who was here earlier. In 2050, she will be 70 years old. It is unlikely that she will be an active politician then. There has been an over-emphasis in this debate, with 17 Back-Bench speeches before mine, on causes. Of course causes are important, but in opening the debate, the Minister almost spent longer on plastic bags than on adaptation, which many hon. Members know I have a thing about. It was the same with the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Front Benchers. The under-emphasis on dealing with the effects is nonsense, because the effects will come anyway, almost regardless of whatever we do, because we are responsible for only 2 per cent. of emissions. Yes, we need to show leadership, but the effects are coming anyway. Amazingly, I have a lot of sympathy with the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) on the unilateralist approach, which could mean that we take our eye off the ball on the adaptation that we need to engage in. Various agencies and others are getting their teeth into adaptation, but not the Government, or at least not enough. They include the Environment Agency, the Association of British Insurers, the European Union, which has produced an excellent report, the Met Office, the British Beekeepers Association, the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership, the Wildlife Trusts, the Local Government Association, the Oxford Research Group and so on. Lots of people are doing stuff on adaptation, but the Government have just one clause on it, following my private Member's Bill. That clause, which was clause 37 in the draft Bill, has, thank goodness, been expanded to 14 clauses, after what was inserted in the Lords, in order to adapt to the climate change that has already started and which will get worse, whether we on this small island go for 50, 60 or 80 per cent. Those effects mean the effects on wildlife, plants, food production and pests and of diseases such as malaria coming to this country, and they will affect issues such as building design and planning regulations; roads and railways, with rails buckling in the heat; water supply, with a need for new reservoirs; what we have to do about coastal defences with rising sea levels; inland flooding, which we saw dramatically last year and which will only get worse; possible civil unrest and its security implications, which other countries and, potentially, we will face; and international development. That is an entire adaptation agenda, which has been almost completely overlooked not only in this debate, but for all the time that we have been talking about climate change. I have been campaigning on adaptation for two years. The Government are starting to get it, but like Dickens's Oliver, I want a bit more. Specifically, I want a bit a more than the Minister spending 35 or 40 minutes opening the debate, but spending just two minutes on adaptation. There needs to be a whole lot more on adaptation, because adaptation is within our control. World emissions are not within our control, and only a complete ostrich or fantasy altruist would think that they were. Of course we try to show a way, but adaptation is much more important, because it is about what happens on these islands. It would be much better if the relevant clauses in the Bill asked for three-yearly reports, not five-yearly reports. I do not want five-yearly reports on adaptation; I want three-yearly reports. I want the first report within one year, not within three years. And for goodness' sake, why do we have a sub-committee of the Committee on Climate Change dealing with adaptation, when it is at least as important to deal with the effects in this country as it is to deal with the causes? I say this to the Minister here now: it is complete nonsense to have a sub-committee dealing with adaptation. We need the full membership of the Committee on Climate Change to deal not only with causes, but with effects.