Examination of Witnesses (Question 140-159)
MR PHIL
WOOLAS MP, MS
JAN THOMPSON,
MR CHRIS
DODWELL AND
MR SCOTT
WIGHTMAN
25 MARCH 2008
Q140 Chairman: Good. We have our
A team here too. This is a fairly broad-ranging inquiry we are
conducting now. Your officials will be aware of the witnesses
we have had in previous sessions. We have also visited both Australia
and China in connection with this inquiry in view of their potentially
important contributions to the Kyoto negotiations and what comes
out of them. I think you described Bali as a "turning point
for the world". Would you like to explain what you meant
by that?
Mr Woolas: At the end of the conference
we had a conversation with Hilary Benn, our Secretary of State
who is obviously the Head of Delegation and we were very conscious
that it was possible, if not probable, in such situations to allow
it to go to your head somewhat. Conversations had been going on
through the night and people were pretty exhausted. We were very
conscious not to indulge ourselves. We looked back at the statement
that we had made trying to describe what we thought would be a
success. The key point was that all countries should be committed
to the process under the United Nations umbrella because the United
States had been outside of that and had come in gradually. I am
very conscious that the content of that will be scrutinized and
is subject to further discussions. We felt the fact that there
was such commitment to that international process under the United
Nations was the turning point. I think we used the phrase "historic"
in our press release.
Q141 Chairman: I am sure people would
recognise that as very important progress. What seems to be happening
in all this is that the science is getting more and more urgent.
Both the scale and the urgency of the threat of climate change
are far greater than would have been understood even five years
ago. I think there is a concern that I and other members of the
Committee feel which is that we are sort of trying to play catch-up.
Although what you describe was an advance, we actually need to
be advancing faster because of the better understanding of the
problem. Efforts by the EU to get more specific dates and targets
for emission cuts into the conclusions were obviously thwarted.
Is that not rather a grave concern for us?
Mr Woolas: I think as we go forward
in the next 18-20 months that will be of grave concern. I think
that is the biggest question facing us. There is a sense of urgency
within the negotiations about the 2012 timetable and not to have
a gap between the Kyoto protocol and commitments in the future.
I think what is sometimes frustrating in those discussions with
colleagues from overseas is that it must relate to the real world
because emissions are cumulative. If there is a gap in action
then the scale of the problem that we are having to solve gets
worse. I think you are absolutely right that that is where we
should be focussed.
Q142 Chairman: I am much encouraged
to hear you make that last point because I think one of the dangers
in focusing on a long-term target like 2050 is that it ignores
the danger that unless progress is front-end loaded the concentration
in the atmosphere will be so high that we might have zero emissions
in 2050 but it will still be too late.
Mr Woolas: It is very important
that all of us point out that this is not a case where you can
do nothing until 2050 and then you have a cliff and you can drop
your emissions because, as I say, this problem is cumulative.
We made the point in Bali and in the other forums—and the
Secretary of State is particularly keen to emphasise the point—that
even if all of the developed countries and specifically all of
the Kyoto ratifiers were to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to
zero tomorrow the temperature would still go up and that is just
the plain science.
Q143 Chairman: How far, particularly
after Stern, is there an acceptance that this is also an economic
issue, that the longer we delay responding to the threat of climate
change the more costly the necessary action is going to be?
Mr Woolas: I believe that governments
across the world accept the logic of the Nick Stern argument.
I think they intellectually accept it. I do not think they emotionally
act on it yet. I think they fall back, and to some extent so do
we, into the comfort zone of the sloppy logic that says it costs
too much to adapt and to mitigate, whereas what Nick Stern has
taught us is that it costs too much not to. I think it is one
of those situations where there is a paradigm change going on
around the world. The scientific paradigm, as you rightly said,
Chairman, has changed in five years. I think there is an economic
paradigm change going on, but we are in the foothills of that.
Q144 Chairman: Was that one of the
arguments that was used to try and persuade America and some of
the other resisting countries to sign up to specific targets?
Mr Woolas: Yes. The way in which
we see the United States situation is that the United States is
not homogenous with their system of government being as it is.
We always point out to people that the United States did sign
the Kyoto protocol; they just did not ratify it. In the current
debate we try not to portray the situation as being black and
white because it is not. Secondly, I think the major argument
for that point of view on the economics comes from corporate America,
it comes from particularly the energy companies who I think see
the danger of a lost opportunity to European and other corporations
if they are not part of the act. The third thing is the pressure
within the United States from the Congress, the Senate and from
the individual states. I think policy there is in a state of flux.
The answer to your question is yes, we do use that argument.
Q145 Martin Horwood: Obviously you
are right that politics in the United States is in a state of
flux at the moment and we have three possible candidates for the
presidency who have now emerged. Has the Department made any contact
with the three candidates to try and stiffen their resolve in
this while they are still in pledge-making mode rather than presidential
mode because it might be rather late if we leave it to after November?
Mr Woolas: We have taken a policy
decision, which I hope would be supported across the House, to
be open and transparent, to treat all parties equally and to try
to use the UK's undoubted—and I hope this does not sound
arrogant because it is not meant to be on behalf of the Government—scientific
expertise and influence, the undoubted contribution from Lord
Stern's report, from the resources that we have allocated in the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office and to make our influence and
our arguments and our policies available to all organisations,
including presidential candidates' campaigns. I am not aware of
any specific meetings by ministers with campaigns, but obviously
our embassies and our consulates are making information publicly
available. We are relatively optimistic as to the position of
the three candidates, but the Congress and the Senate are equally
important.
Mr Wightman: Firstly, our principal
focus remains on the US administration. They are engaged in the
negotiating processes in various work streams that are going on.
You will have seen last week that the Prime Minister met Senator
McCain in London. That is the typical sort of contact that might
take place between now and November at a political level. The
Embassy in Washington is in touch with the campaign policy advisers
of each of the main candidates across the range of policy issues
and certainly climate will be one of the ones that they are engaging
on.
Q146 Martin Horwood: Can you tell
us if the Prime Minister did actually raise the issue of climate
change with Senator McCain?
Mr Wightman: I think it did come
up, yes.
Mr Woolas: I believe so but I
do not know for certain.
Q147 Mr Stuart: Can you comment on
how big a sea change is possible if the United States administration
changes its position next year?
Mr Woolas: I think that is obviously
a very important question. I urge caution in this analysis because
again one has to look at the fact that any agreement would need
to be ratified by the Senate and by the Congress. I think there
is a policy driver in the Senate and the Congress that is understandably
driven by the interests of individual states. Many of the states
are coal dependent, some of them are oil exporters and the biofuels
debate is extremely high on the policy agenda in the United States
as indeed it is here. I think that the United States will look
at it under a new administration, whatever candidate is successful,
in a more progressive way than perhaps has been the case in the
past. I am conscious of the advice of our counterparts, particularly
the Chairman of the Environmental Council in the White House who
points out that the Senate would look to the self-interests of
the United States of America as it perceived it as well as to
the international forum. I do not see that a change of administration
will be a huge U-turn or a breaking point. This is an evolutionary
situation, I think we should understand that.
Q148 Chairman: Let us move on to
the Major Economies Meetings. I think one of the things that has
concerned me—and we were very forcibly reminded of this
when we met the Australian negotiator—is that the whole
process moving forward to Copenhagen is a pretty complex and torturous
business. It looks to us as though there is a real risk that some
of the negotiations will get mired in process and lose sight of
the urgency and the real objectives. Given that the major economies
are responsible for a very substantial proportion of total global
emissions, there seems to me to be some merit in that actually
if we can get agreement amongst the really big emitters about
what needs to be done you can afford to treat the other countries
fairly generously. Some people have suggested this may be a distraction
from what is going on, that it may complicate things too much
if you have got two parallel tracks. What is your view about that?
Mr Woolas: The major economies
constitute 80% of world emissions, I think that is 17 countries
and that includes the forest countries and it is very important
that we recognise that. My take on this was that it was a welcome
initiative. It provides space and it provides confidence building,
which in all of these issues is extremely important. I think what
it has achieved so far post-Bali is a better understanding between
the countries as to why each country took the policy decision
that it did. In a lot of these international forums one is very
aware of the policy position of one's counterparts but less so
of why that is the case. Precisely because the Major Economies
Meetings are informal, so there is a better understanding as a
result of that. Secondly, in all of these things environment ministers—and
I am one—can forget the wider picture outside of the environment
department. It is presidents and prime ministers that shifted
the agenda that led to the success in Bali. It was about getting
it out of just—with all respect to my colleagues—the
environment ministers' in-trays and into the prime ministers'
and presidents' in-trays and we have to maintain that. I think
the Major Economies Meetings have helped us to do that because
of the focus that it has brought to it because it is a White House
initiative. It would have been wrong to criticise the United States
of America by saying, "You are very late to the game,"
sending a signal that we begrudged that. Our attitude was that
we welcomed the initiative of the United States. There are other
processes other than the MEM. Gleneagles has been very important.
The weekend before last at the Gleneagles final meetings in Japan
the United States representative specifically said that Bali would
not have been possible without the Gleneagles process and I think
that process has done the United Kingdom a real power of good
in these international forums.
Q149 Jo Swinson: How disappointed
were you to come away from Bali without any set targets either
for a maximum atmospheric concentration or long-term emissions
reductions?
Mr Woolas: We would say that we
got the wording in there. Let me just try and be clear. The wording
is in there. It is buried in paragraph 94 on p17!
Q150 Jo Swinson: Not with specifics
of numbers.
Mr Woolas: There is not a consensus
for a specific target. Most countries can claim that the wording
reflects their position. We approach this issue strategically
by trying to use our membership of the European Union in the most
positive way. I believe that the solidarity amongst European Union
countries has been greatest on the issue of climate change above
other issues. I think that is a fair statement and I think it
has been most successful in this regard as well. I think it gives
the United Kingdom a tremendous platform to use additional strengths
that we have. Clearly central to that has been trying to persuade
the world that there should be a long-term goal and indeed, as
the Chairman has pointed out, mid-term goals as well and that
will clearly be a key objective for the Copenhagen round.
Mr Dodwell: What we saw in Bali
was countries coming together and starting to look at the idea
of a long-term goal being part of the discussion that would frame
the level of ambition taking things forward and we did get that
into the Bali Action Plan, the reference to there being a need
to discuss a long-term goal. Until Bali, a lot of countries were
in denial about whether we need to go any further than what is
in the Framework Convention itself, which is a reference to the
need to avoid dangerous climate change but undefined. The Stern
report has been very helpful about taking that debate forward.
You are beginning to get into a debate with these countries about
where that goal should be set. I appreciate the point the Chairman
made earlier on about whether this is all moving too slowly, but
you have to recognise that countries are now beginning to understand
the economic consequences of climate change, they are beginning
to undertake their own research into looking at the costs of adaptation
and they are getting themselves into a position where they can
commit to something. You are not going to force the pace of these
negotiations without countries actually recognising what it is
that they are able to do. In terms of a long-term goal, we did
achieve what we wanted, which was to make sure it was part of
the future negotiations. That was the European position going
in. We would have liked it if we could have got further, but we
have got the concept of the reference to peaking within 10 to
15 years and a global reduction of at least 50% by 2050, that
does form part of the Bali conclusions and that was definitely
a step forward.
Q151 Jo Swinson: I was at the UN
a couple of weeks ago and one of the arguments being put forward
there was that, going on from Bali through Poznan and Copenhagen,
the big unknown at the moment is who will be in the White House
and they were posing the suggestion that in the next two years
of this negotiation there is a lot that can be discussed into
2008 but the actual target setting is going to have to be 2009
because it will depend who is in the White House. Do you think
that is accurate, that we will not make a lot of progress this
year?
Mr Woolas: I think it is over-emphasised.
Our policy is that we must keep to the 2009 timetable. There were
suggestions in the preparatory committee for Bali that we should
slip that timetable in order to allow the Americans time to catch
up. We do not agree with that. We believe the 2009 deadline is
an imperative and we have urged other countries to stick to that
so far with success. We met last week with the Congressional Committee
on Climate Change and Energy Security and their view was that
the three candidates have got policies that will be positive towards
the making of an international agreement, but they caution that
the devil is in the detail. I think it is the relationship with
the Senate and the Congress that is of crucial importance because,
with the best will in the world, any agreement has to be ratified.
It is wrong to make the assumption in my view that all Democrats
will support the European Union position and all Republicans will
not. It is much more complicated and sophisticated than that based
on individual states' views and interests and on the fact that
American politics is not quite the same as ours in its adversarial
nature. I make no comment on that, but in trying to guide the
strategy through I think we have to recognise that fact.
Ms Thompson: I do not know whether
your question implies as well that there is going to be a slight
gap between now and when we can really make some progress in agreeing
targets. There is a huge amount of underpinning work that needs
to be done in the negotiations. There is a very intensive schedule
of meetings planned over the next couple of years. The first major
meeting under the UN process will be next week in Bangkok when
all the parties will come together for the first time since Bali
to try to agree a schedule of work over the next year at least
and possibly into the following year. They will begin to look
at questions such as what is comparable effort between one developed
country and another developed country, what sort of actions might
developing countries be taking and having a look through some
of those, how might those actions be monitored and verified and
reported, and also looking at all the various technology processes
that will need to be brought in and how to encourage them, how
to pay for them and what other financial flows will be needed,
whether public or private, to mobilise the necessary finance for
all of these processes. There is actually a huge amount of underpinning
work and negotiations that can be going on over the next year
or 18 months certainly in getting ready for the final crunch of
negotiations which we hope will come in in the run down to Copenhagen.
Q152 Jo Swinson: Just let me pick
up on your point, Minister, that different countries will have
different views. In its presidency of the G8 Japan has seemed
to differ slightly from the UK and EU position by suggesting the
baseline year should be shifted and that this idea of keeping
the rise to two degrees is based on politics rather than science.
How much disagreement is there between the players within the
G8 on what our goals should be?
Mr Woolas: I think there is shifting
sands in this regard. You cannot divorce the public positions
of the Japanese from the political situation there. They have
made some suggestions on sectoral approaches that I think are
extremely important. They have also announced both at the Prime
Minister's level and at the economic and trade department level
investigations and research into the establishment of carbon markets,
which I think is an extremely important signal of policy development
in Japan. I think it goes back to your previous question about
what does the United States administration policy signal and what
will Japan's reaction to that be. There are clearly big differences
in the positions of different G8 countries. You can move the goalposts
wherever you want by looking at the baseline date. One of the
important points that we and the European Union have been trying
to make in this regard is that the world did not freeze in 1990,
that you have got to look at future trajectories of emissions
as well as historic emissions, recognising the moral responsibility
we have as one of the developed countries, but also recognising
the reality of the contribution that other countries must make.
I hope that is a suitably diplomatic answer which (A) answers
your question and (B) is diplomatic!
Q153 Jo Swinson: I think it brings
us on to the issue of it being the atmospheric concentration that
is going to be important rather than what baseline figure we use,
it is about the amount of emissions in the atmosphere. Stern has
argued for stabilising emissions between 450 and 550 ppm but suggested
that the bottom end of that range would be very expensive or too
costly. Equally, the science is suggesting that it is the bottom
end of that range that is going to give us the two degree stabilisation
that certainly the EU were aiming towards. How would you square
that circle? How does that affect the negotiating position that
we take within these processes?
Mr Woolas: The debate in this
country assumes that the best option is two degrees and that the
bad guys are above that. When you talk to the small island states
and the least developed countries you find that two degrees for
them is a huge problem. I think we have already got 0.7 degrees.
The second point is that I do not think Nick Stern's report said
that it was too expensive; he said it changed the economic decisions.
I do not think Nick Stern saw a cut-off point. In our view one
has to have a long-term goal. You cannot start to talk about the
important points, mid-term goals and cumulative emissions and
the 450 ppm goal and what the science of that is unless you have
got a long-term goal. Jan mentioned the meeting next week. That
is the first formal meeting under the formal Convention rules.
The situation is that the United States is saying, "Well,
we will act if other countries act," and China is saying,
"We will act if the United States act," but we will
have to break that logjam, that is the urgency of the goal. That
is a superior goal to the actual debate about the figures.
Q154 Jo Swinson: If we do need a
long-term goal agreed by different countries and we have already
seen the difference between Japan, the UK and the US, if we cannot
get that agreed within the G8 fairly easily then what hope does
the UN process really have? If it is going to take us two years
just to agree the goal without actually agreeing what needs to
be done to reach the goal, is this just not out of sync with the
timescale and the urgency which is required?
Mr Woolas: I think we are still
in the pre-crunchy negotiation period. I think that countries
will restate their positions. I have been encouraged by the formal
discussions that we mentioned through the MEM and Gleneagles where
people are starting to recognise the need to address the point
you make.
Mr Wightman: An objective analysis
would say that left to its own devices there is not sufficient
momentum within the negotiations at the moment to deliver the
sort of agreement that the UK Government and the EU governments
believe will be necessary to address the problem by December 2009.
That is why the focus of our activities in the Foreign Office
is very much on the political conditions in some of the key negotiating
countries. We need to shift the political conditions in those
countries. As the Minister said, we will need to get it addressed
by heads of government and heads of state. We need the finance
ministers to be thinking about climate as a key economic challenge
for them, as an economic prosperity imperative for them. That
is where the focus of our effort is going to be over the next
18 months, to try and get the political conditions right so it
creates an environment in which the negotiators can then unlock
the agreement.
Q155 Jo Swinson: I am intrigued and
pleased to hear that, but what exactly is the FCO doing? What
does that mean, having efforts to create the political conditions
in other countries that will help the negotiations?
Mr Wightman: We are developing
a number of mobilization campaigns in the key countries. We are
engaged in a pretty systematic effort to map influence around
climate policy in the key countries, understand who the key decision-makers
are, how they are influenced and who influences them, which constituencies
influence them and then we are trying to build alliances with
those constituencies to try and exert leverage over the decision-making
process in those countries. In some countries that means working
with faith groups in the US, for example. In the case of Japan
it means very much a focus on the Keidanren, the business organisation.
It varies from country to country.
Q156 Mr Hurd: If we are serious about
the two degree goal and we should be, why do we continue to indulge
the 550 ppm outriding target? On Stern's own analysis of the models
that are available the probabilities of 550 ppm being consistent
with two degrees are very low indeed. In his own words he says
that 550 ppm is not a place where we want to be. Why does the
British Government continue to run with that riding target? If
the answer is that the models are all too vague, we cannot be
sure, what are we doing to refine those models and develop more
robust models that give us a better idea of whether this 550 ppm
has a real part to play or is just a fantasy?
Mr Woolas: This is a very fair
question. The answer is that we are not indulging ourselves. We
have an open mind. We base our strategies obviously on the international
considerations and the need to maintain European Union solidarity,
but we also have a Climate Change Bill before Parliament. We have
the establishment already in shadow form of the Committee on Climate
Change and I am sure their advice will be robust and objective
and scientific. I look forward to receiving that in December.
I am concerned to hear the word indulge. We do not think we are
doing that.
Mr Dodwell: I just wanted to pick
up on the 550 ppm point that you were making. We think the two
degree target is sound. As you said, it is not risk free and,
as the Minister has already pointed out, it will have major impacts
on small island states. The question is how you achieve it because
a two degree target is something you cannot control. What is the
action that is necessary in order to achieve that target? Where
we go to in terms of temperature range will be dependent on atmospheric
concentrations and it will be dependent on the stock of emissions.
What we can control are actually those emissions. That is why
we have shifted the discussion quite deliberately over the last
year or so to look towards the long-term goal being viewed as
an emissions target because that is what countries can control,
that is something that is meaningful to individuals in terms of
individual action and it provides more certainty to businesses
in terms of the direction of environmental policy. The 50% by
2050 against 1990 levels we consider is consistent with a two
degree target. We would like to go further than that and say it
has got to be at least a 50% reduction, but there is consistency
there. We have seen some progress on that. We have seen discussions
on it in the G8 last year. It did not get agreed at the G8 last
year, but it is one of the issues that are being discussed through
the Major Economies process as well. We think that moving away
from an atmospheric target and more towards an action orientated
emission reduction goal—You need to know the pathway that
is going to get you to that target as well and that is why we
have been saying global emissions must peak within the next 10
to 15 years, but this is all consistent with the IPCC position.
Q157 Colin Challen: Is not the real
answer in the Stern report and that is that if we aim for a more
stringent target we have to spend more money to achieve it? He
settled on 1% of GDP and suggested we should try and stay within
a target of between 500 ppm and 550 ppm and then later on, in
further articles, he has written 450 ppm, so that is there and
well-established. Obviously it would cost more to be tougher.
Are we spending that 1% now? Is that an extra 1% of GDP or is
it what was already being spent at the time that Stern published
his report? Are we monitoring this money? Are we trying to achieve
it? Surely the best way to try and convince others that we are
serious is if we are going into negotiations and we can prove
that we are doing it and we are abiding by our own report that
we commissioned. If we are not meeting even 1%, which is at the
low end of expectations, then surely nobody can take us seriously.
Mr Woolas: The point that the
United Kingdom's credibility overseas in these negotiations must
be matched by a credible performance domestically, is of extreme
importance. This is why we place so much emphasis on pointing
out the United Kingdom's progress in the reduction of greenhouse
gas emissions. There has been a debate in recent weeks about the
UK's performance and the confusion of CO2 and greenhouse
gas emissions is more than just a semantic point; it is a very
important point. The creation of the carbon budgets as required
by the Climate Change Bill and the work that we are doing with
the Committee—this is one of the reasons why we wanted to
get it established and up and running in shadow form and we are
very grateful to the House that that has been permitted—and
the analysis of the expenditure, revenue and capital in that regard
is clearly very important. The honest answer to your question
is that at the moment we are not able to do that as robustly as
we will be able to do. The second point is that we act in co-ordination
with the European Union. The European Union's package is a very
important part of the equation and where we can point to specific
goals. The honest answer to your question is not yet.
Q158 Martin Horwood: Can I just re-ask
the question that Mr Hurd asked because I did not hear an answer
to it? On the very specific issue of concentrations, which is
part of your pathway, do you accept the risk factors set out in
Stern which suggest that 550 ppm is an extremely dangerous and
high risk scenario that is best avoided?
Mr Dodwell: Yes.
Mr Woolas: Yes, we do. I looked
at this last September/October in the run up to the IPCC report
because I shared that concern. You can see all sorts there. If
you read that then you come to the conclusion that it is dangerous.
Q159 Martin Horwood: The percentages
in Stern are from the IPCC and the Hadleigh Centre.
Mr Woolas: It was the fourth assessment
report—
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