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Climate Projections

My Lords, I will start with an institutional question. For some months now, we have had a Department of Energy and Climate Change. Yet today the Statement, which is entirely about climate change, is being made by the noble Lord’s department—the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Could he just say a word about how the responsibility for this is divided between the two departments? More specifically, how far is this latest report leading to a change in the pace at which we are approaching these problems? I draw the distinction here between prevention and adaptation. The point has been made by the Minister and others that prevention takes much longer because of the time lag and because of the evidence from some of the biggest emitters—particularly China and India—that they are not yet signed up to the measures that will be necessary to achieve prevention. In the medium term, surely we are going to have to principally concentrate on adaptation. I am not suggesting for a moment that we should abandon the longer-term policies of prevention. I want to mention two examples. First, I heard a talk upstairs in one of the all-party groups from Thames Water. We asked when we are going to have to have the second, lower barrier across the Thames. The answer was, "We are not going to have to have that for 100 years". Does this report change that? Secondly—here I am relying on what I read in the press this morning, and I am not sure whether it was in the Statement—one of the things picked out by the press was that this was going to have an effect on the siting of nuclear power stations. A large number of the sites are beside various parts of the coast, which is right, both for keeping them away from centres of population and also for the use of cooling water. Is this going to change? Is there going to be a different planning approach to the siting of nuclear power stations? If so, I suggest to the noble Lord that that needs to be made abundantly clear very soon. As the noble Lord’s colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, constantly reminds this House, a huge programme is going ahead on that, which is needed urgently. One needs to know whether people are going to have to change the basis on which they are devising their plans for the new nuclear renaissance. Those are some important questions on which there needs to be much greater clarity.