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Climate Change Bill [Lords]

I am delighted to follow the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack), who has echoed some of the very sensible remarks of his party colleague, the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo). It is interesting that we can have such intelligent cross-party debate on this issue in the Chamber, while at the same time there is an undercurrent theme from the Opposition Benches which is utterly antediluvian—as represented by the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) and the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley). I just pray that the right hon. Member for Fylde and the hon. Member for South Suffolk represent the true position and authentic voice of the Tory party on the issue. Climate change is real. It is caused by human action, and it is already affecting the lives of millions of people throughout the world. If climate change is a fact, it is also important that we outline two others. Economic growth can, will and should continue. Often when I speak with the environmentalists, they seem to regard economic growth as the enemy; it is not, and let me explain why. Over the past two centuries, Europe and North America have managed through economic growth to raise almost one third of the population of this world out of a life of hunger, hardship and disease. In the past two decades, another third of the world's population, mostly in Asia, has found that escape route, and they, too, are transforming their lives through economic growth. In the coming years, the final third will be looking to make their escape as well, and no environmentalist, and certainly no politician, will be able to stop them, and in the interests of justice no one should try. I echo the remarks of the right hon. Member for Fylde when he spoke about the world food summit. For every 1 per cent. rise in food prices, 16 million extra people go to bed hungry every night. That demonstrates the seriousness of the challenge. The second inescapable fact is that there comes a point when the continued emission of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere will so fundamentally affect ecosystem services that human life becomes unsustainable—or to put that into the language of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, we must drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions to stabilise the world climate. Let me explain why I prefer to talk in the language of ecosystem services rather than of climate change. In and of itself, change in climate would not matter. What matters is that the pace of change is so fast that biodiversity cannot keep up with it. As biodiversity declines, ecosystem services fail, and it is the ecosystem services that matter and the biodiversity upon which they are based. I guarantee that tomorrow some ““intelligent”” member of the press corps will quote the UK Prime Minister's special envoy for forestry as saying that climate change does not matter, but I hope that, in this Chamber, I will have conveyed the truth. Those two inescapable facts lead us to one imperative for action: we must raise the level of carbon productivity—the amount of wealth generated per tonne of CO2 emitted. In order to maintain the current global economic growth rate of 3.1 per cent. per annum while reducing emissions to about 20 gigatonnes by 2050 and 10 gigatonnes per year thereafter—that is consistent with a 450 to 500 parts per million stabilisation scenario—carbon productivity must increase by a range of between eightfold and fifteenfold by 2050. Without that major increase in productivity, maintaining ecosystem services will become impossible, for let the rich world take note that there will be no sharing of the environmental space if there is no sharing of the development space—there will be no sharing of the environmental resources unless there is a sharing of the development commitment, and in particular of the adaptation commitment. Achieving an eightfold to fifteenfold increase in carbon productivity will require radical and wholesale changes in the world economy at both macro and micro-economic levels. I would like to go into some of those, but time does not permit that, as colleagues wish to contribute. There are five clear areas of work, however: energy efficiency; decarbonising energy sources; accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies; changing the attitudes and behaviour of managers and consumers; and preserving the world's carbon sinks. Let me end by describing that world in 2050 as it will be when I die, aged 93. Estimated global population projection: 10 billion people. To maintain ecosystem services: emissions limited to 20 gigatonnes by 2050, declining to 10 gigatonnes thereafter to achieve that stabilisation goal. That means an average of 2 tonnes per person per year, declining to 1 tonne—so low that there is no scope for any large group to depart significantly above or below it. Current emissions are about 11 tonnes per capita in the EU, 25 tonnes in the US and already 5 tonnes in China. That gives us three options for the future. The first is to accept injustice, with some developed countries continuing to demand more than an equal share of the world's finite resources, which is possible but—I hope that we all think—unacceptable. The second is to increase carbon productivity still further beyond the fifteenfold increase already discussed. The third is to reduce population—something that politicians in developed countries are very reluctant to discuss, but which Governments in developing countries have already taken on board. People are very keen to accuse China, as we have heard in this debate, over their coal-fired power stations. Such people fail to commend the political initiative that has seen 400 million people not being born to create a carbon footprint in the first place. We need to take the issue of population seriously. It is the third element of the triangle, and it should be incorporated into this Bill.