 House of Commons |
Session 2007 - 08 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Climate Change |
Climate Change Bill [Lords] |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:John Benger, Sara
Howe, Committee Clerks †
attended the Committee Public Bill CommitteeThursday 26 June 2008(Afternoon)[Mr. Peter Atkinson in the Chair]Climate Change Bill [Lords]Clause 2The
target for
2050 Amendment
proposed: No. 2, in clause 2, page 2, line 4, leave out
‘60%’ and insert
‘80%’.—[Mr.
Chaytor.] 1
pm Question
again proposed, That the amendment be
made.
Mr.
David Chaytor (Bury, North) (Lab): I will try to resume
where I left off before we adjourned for lunch.
The precise
targets and dates are not issues on which we should pin all our
ambitions. We need to think about the direction of travel, for which we
need a start point and an end point. We need to think in periods of
time. There is nothing God-given about 2020—2015 is arguably a
better date for the interim target, but it could equally well be 2045
or
2055. The
Minister has said that the 2050 80 per cent. target is becoming
symbolic. It is more than symbolic; it is indicative. I have stressed
the point that we are talking about “at least 80 per
cent.”, and we should not be too hung up on a precise
figure.
What
interested me about the debate—I am conscious of time and do not
wish to detain the Committee for too long, as I know we are behind
schedule—was the way in which some Opposition Members decided to
debate not the relative merits of 80 per cent. or 60 per cent. but a
topic that relates to our consideration of part 2 of the Bill, namely
the status of the Climate Change Committee. That is interesting,
because it suggests that they do not want to debate the relative merits
of 80 per cent. or 60 per cent., which might cause them some
difficulty. It may be that the extent of climate change denial within
the official Opposition is far greater than we were led to believe by
the three Members who voted against the Bill on Second Reading. That is
not an issue to pursue at the moment, but it is a point that I have to
make. I
was impressed by many of the speeches on this amendment. In particular,
I was impressed by the Opposition’s adherence to the importance
of building targets on the basis of science, although I would have been
more impressed had they shown at any point in this Parliament or
previous ones that they form their political judgment on the basis of
scientific advice. Perhaps this is not the moment to remind everyone of
the intricate debate over the Human Fertilisation and
Embryology Bill, but that did not strike me as a classic example of a
political party forming judgments on the basis of
science. Moving
on to the Climate Change Committee, the Minister pointed out the
contradiction between what the official Opposition are arguing today
and what they were arguing yesterday on the independent planning
commission. It is possible to reconcile the principle of establishing
Government policy on the basis of the best scientific evidence with the
need for political judgment and an element of economic judgment to be
brought into play, which is why the Climate Change Committee is not an
entirely scientific
body. We
are talking about the interplay between science, politics and
economics, largely because those issues—the overall issue of
climate change and keeping to the recommended 2°
target—are not just matters for the UK. We have to form our own
policy in the context of what will be most valuable in future
international negotiations.
I reiterate
my point about the critical importance of the finite nature of fossil
fuels. In opening the debate, I referred to the Prime Minister’s
speech to the European Council last weekend. In responding to the
debate, I want to refer to the Prime Minister’s comment at Prime
Minister’s questions yesterday, when he said—this is
perhaps the first time that this has been said—that the
underlying cause of the dramatic increase in the oil price in the past
two years, and particularly in the past six months, is the mismatch
between supply and
demand. For
the first time in history, demand is outstripping supply. That involves
more than speculation or the unwillingness of the Organisation of
Petroleum Exporting Countries to co-operate. It is an inevitable
consequence of economic growth in other parts of the world. Now many
hundreds of millions of people in China, India and other parts of Asia
are demanding, absolutely rightly, the same kind of lifestyle and
privileges from which we in the west have benefited for a century or
more. That is the key fact that underlines this debate, and it is one
of the most powerful arguments for setting a more stringent target at
this stage.
Sir Nicholas
Stern has been incredibly helpful not only because of the publication
of his original report two years ago, but because of his speech to the
Carbon Rating Agency yesterday, when he said that he is now convinced
that climate change is happening more quickly than had previously been
thought. He said that it is happening faster than he thought even two
years ago, and therefore emissions need to be reduced even more
sharply. He went on to
say: “I
now think the appropriate thing would be in the
middle”
of the range of 450 to
550 parts per million. He also
said: “To
get below 500 ppm ... would cost around 2 per cent. of
GDP.” The
significance of this is twofold—first, it illustrates how fast
the reality of climate change is coming on us, and, secondly, it
illustrates that we are discussing not only scientific judgments but
economic judgments. All Governments will have to consider the impact on
their GDP of the cost not only of mitigating climate change, but of
adapting to it. Sir Nicholas’s speech yesterday further serves
to justify the importance of a more stringent target in the long term
as well as for 2020.
In
conclusion, if we want the Climate Change Committee to be the final
arbiter, that undermines any case for having a figure in the Bill at
all. We all understand the need for a figure, and of course it can be
amended in the light of the Climate Change Committee’s advice.
As the Minister has said, it is difficult to think of circumstances in
which any Government would not accept that advice, but at the end of
the day, we need a balance of science, economics and politics if we are
to secure international agreement. We need a higher target if we are to
send the right signals about the urgency of making the transition to a
low-carbon economy not only to our own people, but to the nations of
the developing world. There is no realistic possibility of the
developing world coming on board and seriously addressing reductions in
their rate of growth in emissions if the rich countries are not
prepared to set high targets,
too. I
ask the Minister to consider a point that has not been mentioned yet.
The current position is that the interim Climate Change Committee is
charged with producing its first report on 1 December. Report stage for
this Committee is unlikely to take place before the recess, so the Bill
will be on Report in October or November. In one sense, that highlights
the absurdity of having a target in the Bill that could become obsolete
within a matter of weeks or even days. The Minister should think
seriously about the timing not only of Report but of the Climate Change
Committee’s first report. I know the chair of the committee has
a lot to consider at the moment, but it would not be unreasonable to
bring forward the date of the first report from 1 December
to 1 November, or at the very least to request an interim report from
the Climate Change Committee for publication before Report. In view of
the fact that that perhaps provides the basis for a way forward and a
consensus, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Question
put, That the amendment be made:—
The
Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes
10.
Division
No.
2] AYESNOESQuestion
accordingly negatived.
Clause 2
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause 3Amendment
of 2050 target or baseline
year Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
David
Maclean (Penrith and The Border) (Con): I want to make a
few comments, and ask the Minister a couple of questions. I will not
attempt surreptitiously to move the clever amendment in my name, which
you wisely did not select for debate today, Mr. Atkinson.
However, I would like the Minister, in responding to the clause stand
part debate, to give me firm reassurances about subsection
(2).
If the
Secretary of State is going to consider scientific knowledge about
climate change, biodiversity loss will be among the many things that he
will consider. According to Dr. Rodolfo Dirzo, who is a world expert on
biodiversity at Stanford university, the most critical global
environmental change is biological extinction. For one thing,
biological extinction is the only irreversible global environmental
change. Climate change, given enough time and if we do the right things
over a period of time, can be reversed, but if we lose certain species,
it will be impossible to recover them. Environmental damage and
biodiversity loss in forest ecosystems cost between $2.1 trillion to
$4.8 trillion per year—I think that was the figure given at the
conference in Bonn, which the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs attended last week or last
month.
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs (Joan Ruddock): Last
month.
David
Maclean: Even if the $4.8 trillion figure is an
exaggeration, the lowest figure is $2.1 trillion per annum according to
a report to the UN convention on biological diversity in Bonn. The
report, entitled “The Economics of Ecosystems and
Biodiversity”, was commissioned by the European Union and the
German Government. For the first time, I believe, the report attaches a
monetary value to the services provided by species and ecosystems. The
report says that those systems are often undervalued by humanity. That
is an important new piece of scientific knowledge relating to climate
change that none of us knew about and which scientists have generally
not taken into account in the
past. Mr.
John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal) (Con): My right hon. Friend
is right to point to those figures. I hope that he also agrees that,
even if the figures were not so overwhelming, we have a fundamental
moral duty to hand on the planet in a better state than we received it.
If we handed on to our children, with every year less rather than more,
then we are doing something fundamentally immoral. Contrary to what the
hon. Member for Bury, North has said, some of us based our decisions
about the science on very strong moral arguments, which is why we took
a different view from him—it has nothing to do with our
scientific judgment. We simply put morality
first. 1.15
pm
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2008 | Prepared 27 June 2008 |