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Climate Change (Political Response)

The Liberal Democrat motion deals with climate change leadership, but I think that by any standards the Government’s record in this area is pretty good. The UK is the first country in the world to set up rolling carbon budgets, and to have set a carbon emission reduction target of 80 per cent. by 2050. The Government are the first to have set up a prestigious and independent Climate Change Committee to advise them, and they also included aviation and shipping in the Climate Change Act 2009 and introduced feed-in tariffs. So far, so good. Of course there are still problems, as there are in every country in the world. We should acknowledge those problems. Yes, we have not done anything like enough in carbon emissions reductions to meet the 60 per cent. target, let alone an 80 per cent. target. We have committed ourselves to trebling airport capacity by 2050, which would have the opposite effect. It would neutralise most, if not all, of the carbon reductions in virtually every other sector. The commitment to building the first coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent is not very wise, when carbon capture and storage is highly unlikely to be available commercially for at least 15 years. On this island with enormous renewables capacity, we have a great deal more to do, as we still generate only 4 per cent. of electricity from renewables, compared to 10 to 25 per cent. in the other big European countries and 30 to 50 per cent. in Scandinavia. I shall mention briefly three other areas for the forthcoming Copenhagen summit, where I believe it is necessary to make significant further advance and, above all, to get the developing countries on side. Without that, we will make no progress at all. First, substantially slowing the rate of deforestation worldwide, which is causing something like 20 per cent. of global emissions, should be a major objective of the Copenhagen negotiations—not by giving enormous sums of money to the major countries involved, because all that money would certainly be filtered off into the pockets of corrupt officials, but by tough international action against illegal logging corporations, which should be held to account and prosecuted in the courts of the metropolitan countries. Secondly, we should champion a drive towards a worldwide carbon tax and show that we mean it by looking to introduce it ourselves, to be fiscally neutral by corresponding offsetting on VAT. That could do more than any other single measure to green the international economy and to arrest the spread of climate catastrophe. Thirdly, we should reverse the current policy on carbon offsetting, which is allowing 50 per cent. and perhaps as much as 70 per cent. of carbon credits to be purchased from abroad, which is a sort of "get out of jail free" card and removes the pressure for major qualitative change within the UK. It is flawed by the additionality problem, but more particularly, the big countries—China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and Mexico—will co-operate only if they see that we who, in their view, caused the problem are taking sufficient action. If they think we are simply buying our way out abroad while doing too little at home, they will not co-operate. Then the global problem will be insoluble. The Government’s record on combating climate change is not perfect, but it is arguably the best of any country in the world. I am pleased and proud to support them in the Lobby tonight.