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We need not be negative about that. The European Union as a whole, of which we are a key and leading member, accounts for some 13 per cent of emissions. Clearly—I am sure that the Government entirely agree with this—we have to make sure that, whatever we deliver here in the United Kingdom, we take our
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Last year, perhaps, we had an example or simulation of what the future might be like. Towards the end of the summer, a Government had been told very strongly that a disaster was coming, that defences needed to be made, and that things had to change. It was a call for adaptation to do with the city of New Orleans. Like all Governments, they did not want to have that expenditure and they did not want to listen to the warnings, so nothing was done. The result of that, as we know, was the inundation of a major city in North America. The cost of that inundation will be something like $35 billion by the time it is put right. We had the example of a population of about 500,000 made homeless, and the greatest state that there has ever been was completely unable to cope with the outcomes of that storm and that damage. In 15 or 25 years’ time, it will no longer be New Orleans, and it probably will not be us. It probably will be a third of Bangladesh. Instead of half a million people, something like 50 million people will be affected if we are unable to make the right decisions today.
I welcome this Bill. I may have been completely inaccurate in forecasting energy and oil resources for the future, but we must take action now. If we are a leader here, we do not need to be afraid of that, because we will generate businesses that are environmental leaders globally. We will secure our energy for the future. All those positives will come. At the end of the day, even if we question or are not 100 per cent certain on the climate change science, which is still new, we knew in the 1970s that in oil we were using a finite source unsustainably. We know now that we are polluting our atmosphere at a rate of several billion tonnes of carbon per annum. That cannot be right; and it cannot be right for the future, for us, or for this planet.
12.59 pm
Lord Sheikh: My Lords, at the outset, I apologise for my late arrival this morning. I take this opportunity to thank noble Lords for the very warm welcome that I have received. I also thank all the attendants and staff of the House for their courtesy and friendly reception and for the great help and assistance that I have been offered. I am naturally proud to have received the peerage and I hope, in return, to make useful contributions to the House and become a diligent Member.
The environment is a passion of mine and it saddens me to see the devastating impact of climate change, particularly on societies in the most vulnerable parts of our planet. It is on that subject
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I was brought up in Uganda, a country once described as the “pearl of Africa” by Sir Winston Churchill. As a young boy I used to fish on the shores of Lake Victoria, swim in the River Nile and visit our game parks to watch with fascination and awe the beauty of the wild. I was lucky enough to see and enjoy the fruits of nature in my youth and it was those experiences that led me to a lifelong love of the environment. I want future generations to be inspired, stirred and captivated by the same natural wonders as I was as a young man. It saddens and worries me when I see the problems that have been created by climate change. The more we understand climate change, the more it looks as if we may be the real culprits.
Climate change poses a serious threat to Africa, and measures to help African countries to “climate-proof” their societies, economies and infrastructure are now widely seen as vital. Sir Nicholas Stern, among others, has recently warned of the uneven impact of climate change on the poorest countries. Most Africans still rely, literally, on the fruits of their labour. When crops fail, things fall apart. Lake dissipation, collapsing fisheries, the displacement of millions, the loss of crops that feed them—all these have a direct and potentially fatal effect.
Many environmental tragedies are being overlooked. They include the shrinking of Lake Chad, formerly the sixth largest lake in the world; the melting glaciers of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya; and the drying up of the famously lush Okavango Delta in Botswana. The fate of Africa’s iconic natural wonders is sadly symbolic of a world in which climate change can be measured not only in temperature increases, but in damage to human society.
But of course the problems of climate change affect not only Africa but the entire globe. As the chairman and chief executive of an insurance broking organisation, I see at first hand how the insurance industry is already feeling the impact of climate change worldwide. In the United Kingdom, Europe and America, we are suffering from freak weather conditions; we now have hot summers and excessive rainfall resulting in flooding and stormy conditions in winter. Storm and flood losses in Britain cost £6.2 billion between 1998 and 2003—double the amount in the previous five years. The financial costs of flooding could rise in both the UK and the rest of Europe, increasing the annual flood bill by some £82 billion across the continent. More important than the financial loss is the human cost. It now appears clear that climate change is a threat to the future of the entire world. Hurricanes, floods, drought, tornadoes, wild fires and other natural disasters have caused devastation in parts of the globe.
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Yet the future does not look promising. Economic growth is expected to propel global oil demand from 84 million to 116 million barrels a day by 2030. Carbon emissions are set to soar by more than 55 per cent over that period. Furthermore, there may be greater use of the burning of coal. This energy scenario is not only unsustainable, but doomed to failure, according to the International Energy Agency.
What we do with energy is crucial to global climate policy. The production of energy and consumption must change from now on. To take the appropriate action, there needs to be a holistic approach with the participation and the support of local authorities, Governments, international organisations and us, the people. All countries, especially those that consume vast quantities of energy, must sign up to increasingly progressive international agreements. If we take the right action, there will be dual benefits: first, we will reduce pollution and, secondly, we will secure our energy supplies for the future. There needs, therefore, to be more efficient fuel consumption, more efficient power generation and a switch towards nuclear and renewables to minimise fossil fuel burn and carbon emissions.
What can we as people do? We can begin by undertaking home improvements to cut down on energy wastage. We can recycle as much as possible. We should make more use of public transport and cut down on air travel, where possible. There are very great challenges ahead of us and two divergent paths. The first is to live as we are and play Russian roulette with the future of the planet and our species. The second is to find a new direction and, through societal and international action, rebuild and renew our relationship with the natural world.
I end on one of my favourite sayings, which is by Mahatma Gandhi. He said:
We all must be the change we wish to see. Thank you.
1.09 pm
Lord Soley: My Lords, I am delighted to follow the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, not only because I agree with a great deal that he said but because he brought our attention to the impact that climate change has on developing nations. What he said about Lake Chad, Lake Tanganyika and Mount Kilimanjaro are good indicators of that escalating problem in developing countries, and the noble Lord’s background of knowledge will help us to understand—and I welcome that.
I also note that he is chairman of the Conservative Muslim Forum. That is a particularly important role when we are trying to get as many Muslims as possible involved in the political system. It is also important because this is a very difficult time for Muslims: at one end, they feel scapegoated by the actions of a tiny minority and, at the other end, they are struggling with an argument about the future direction of Islam. In future, we will listen to the noble Lord’s views with great interest.
I also want to refer to my old colleague, my noble friend Lady Jones, whose incisive and accurate
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I, too, want to address the subject of climate change. It may be significant that so many of us have done so today—perhaps at long last this issue has moved to the centre stage of political debate. It is very welcome that all the political parties are focusing on it, as are the media, to whom congratulations are due on highlighting it over recent years. The attention given to this matter by the various groups within the green movement is also welcome, although in a few moments I want to say something about the stage that some of their tactics have reached.
One of the biggest and most severe dangers here is that we are pushing people into a position where either they feel powerless and that they cannot do anything and therefore they give up and say that “they”—usually they mean the Government but sometimes they have large organisations in mind—must do something, or they lurch to the other extreme and say, “It’s panic stations. We’re all going to die. They”—again, the Government or large organisations—“must do something about it”.
I found myself in that position some 10 or more years ago when I travelled the length of Britain looking at smoke columns rising up from the fields as a result of stubble-burning. I am not sure that I was right. I do not think that stubble-burning is necessarily as bad for the environment as I considered it to be at that stage due to the recycling process, but I am not knowledgeable enough scientifically to be sure. However, it led me to write a series of articles saying that we were in danger of following the dinosaurs into extinction if we did not get to grips with this problem. I felt that we were not paying serious attention to the matter.
I moved on from that panic mode some years ago and am now convinced that the problem is perfectly solvable without taking the bottom out of our current economic and social activities. If there were scientific evidence to show that things were so dire that we had to act overnight, it would be no good to pick on one or two industries: every single one of us would have to see our lives change so dramatically that it would be hard to envisage how normal society could continue to function. However, the scientific evidence does not suggest that. As many speakers have already said, it suggests that we all have to act both in our individual lives and in our corporate lives—that is, our everyday work and social lives—to drive down carbon emissions. That is a very important part of the battle.
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I want to spend a few moments looking at some of the things that we could do to move away from saying either, “You cannot do anything because it’s too big for you”, or, “You must panic”. At this point, I shall be critical of some of the green groups which put out advertisements attacking usually the aviation industry but not that industry alone, when it would be better to use those resources to tell people what they can do now. Everyone knows about putting less water in the kettle or, as someone has already mentioned, changing the light bulbs and so on. All those issues are important and I do not want to play them down, but I should love to see advertising, whether from the green groups or the Government—I recommend this to the Government—saying what more people can do. There are many examples but I shall refer only to a couple.
If, for example, you buy your energy from a green energy producer, that is as good as, if not better than, changing your light bulbs, although you should change your light bulbs as well. An awful lot of people do not realise that most of the big energy companies now enable them to buy their energy from a green producer. They can buy only part of their energy from those companies, although some provide all the energy from green resources. I have been doing that for the past year or two. People also need to know that they can now buy generators that enable them to use energy from a wind turbine or solar panels on their roof and put that energy back into the system. They also do not know that they can be paid for doing that. One company—the one that I use—will pay you 4.5 pence per kilowatt for every kilowatt you put back into the system. A lot of people will say, “I don’t want a wind turbine on my roof” or “I don’t like solar panels”. I understand that but they do not look any worse than telephone wires or other cables. People need to know about that and we need to get the message across. I say to both the green movement and the Government that we should try advertising these things.
Another example concerns water. When I was a Member of Parliament for the Acton area, I was struck by the flooding that occurred every time there was a mega-storm, which are more common now. The sewer system built in the 1880s was not good enough to take the overflow from the floods, and Thames Water is now installing new pipes. Many householders could install underground tanks to take rainwater, which could be recycled to water the garden or wash the car or whatever. In many cases, subsides are available for all the things that I have mentioned. If local authorities and water boards work hand in hand on this, there are few reasons why many new buildings—whether blocks of flats, factories or whatever—should not be designed and built in this way.
I commend my ex-colleague in the House of Commons, Joan Ruddock, MP, who ran a very good event in the Houses of Parliament the other week demonstrating what is already being done by many companies to enable ordinary citizens not only to save but to produce energy, whether it be ground emissions heat or solar. All those things can be done. We should
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The Stern report rightly says that the opportunities here are enormous. I repeat what I have said in this Chamber before: a British company won the contract to build two new cities in China, each of 1 million people and each designed to be carbon-neutral. This is where Stern is absolutely right about the way that the new economy is moving. As someone said earlier, China is very aware of its problems, not least because of the growing drought around Beijing caused by the increasing desertification of the area. The issues there are big and important. If companies such as the one I mentioned can rise to the challenge there, then we can do so here.
That brings me to the other point that I want to raise. Here, I take slight issue with my noble friend Lady McIntosh. I also declare an interest as the campaign director of Future Heathrow. One danger in picking on individual industries—be it the aviation or the car industries—is that we feed into the psychology that I described in my opening remarks: we make people feel that someone else has to do something or that cancelling a holiday flight will in some way solve the problem.
I want to flag something up because it is very important. The green movement is guilty of saying that we should not fly as it is the biggest growing cause of climate change in Britain. By next year, the new civil airliners that are coming into operation will be more efficient than high-speed trains in terms of carbon output. What will we do? Will we suddenly say to the public, “Don’t go by high-speed train; either fly on one of the newer aircraft or go by an inner-city train”, which will still be more carbon efficient than a newer aircraft? The danger is that we make people feel that matters are beyond their control or influence. The technology in this area is a vital part of the solution. Science and technology, as well as behavioural change, can get us through this problem.
We can expand behavioural change—the kind of things that I have described—in many ways. I do not know whether the Houses of Parliament buy electricity from a renewable source but they should. It would be very hard to convert this building in an acceptable way, considering its history, in order to contain energy as one would with a new building or a recently modified building. If we start targeting renewable resources on the energy-consuming buildings that one cannot convert and at the same time try to convert or modernise the others, that will make a big impact. One can also do much more with the science and technology as it stands.
As we all know, the big challenge is to find a replacement for oil. If one listens to one group at the Tyndall Centre, as my noble friend said—I do not know whether they would all say this—there will not be an alternative to aviation fuel for 50 years. I have spoken to several scientists who have said the exact opposite: that we can have it in five years. It all depends on the price of a barrel of oil and one or two
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Referring to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, a very real possibility for the North African countries is growing large amounts of biofuels. The technology already exists. Israel is a classic example—although it is not the only one—of converting virtually desert land into land that produces biofuels. There are very real possibilities here.
I believe we have moved beyond the point of saying to people, “You are not taking this seriously”. Some adverts and other things have had the effect of pushing people into not doing anything, or feeling it is all beyond them, or whatever. I think we have moved beyond that. Most people want to do something, but they do not know what to do. They do not know whether to stop flying, to stop driving their cars, to put less water in the kettle and so on. All those things could help but the bigger drivers that I have tried to talk about are infinitely more important. The offices of at least one local authority are almost all carbon neutral already. There is no reason why we cannot continue that across the board. I hope that that becomes the tenor of the debate.
Although others have focused on individual industries—motor cars or aviation—I could make a better case for focusing on one of the fastest-growing industries in the world which produces a great deal of carbon; that is, the media. I can make a very good case for saying that programmes such as “Big Brother” do not do much to help society. Indeed, I could make a very good case for saying that if we got rid of “Big Brother”, family and social behaviour such as visiting neighbours might improve. I do not want to say that this industry produces too much carbon, therefore we must stop it doing what it is doing and therefore we must regulate what people watch and whether they fly or whatever. We should say that whatever one does, whether flying in aeroplanes or driving cars or producing television programmes or heating one's home, we have to do so in as carbon-minimal a way as possible. That is the way forward. This problem is resolvable. We do not need to panic about it. The science says that this is a time not for panic but for focused action. That is what we need.
1.24 pm
Lord Bradshaw: My Lords, I shall concentrate on the railways and I take for granted much of what has been said on climate change. Demand for rail travel is expanding quite fast now for which the Government deserve some credit. It has to expand further because of climate change and because of congestion. I want to talk about the Government’s part in that process in the future. I acknowledge that they took over a very bad situation. Railtrack was a company bankrupt in money, in management and in skills. We need more rolling stock. I take the point just made by the
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Access to ports is extremely important. Large containers come to this country from China and yet the percentage of large containers moved by rail from the ports has dropped from 33 per cent to 27 per cent, simply because the routes to the ports are not cleared to carry heavy containers. It is a scheme waiting for government finance. That has not been provided.
The comprehensive spending review is soon to be upon us. I have a feeling that it may be very harsh, particularly towards transport and some other areas. I make a plea to the Government for franchises that encourage the franchisee to invest in the long term. Passenger numbers are now growing very fast on our railways—by about 10 per cent a year. If that rise were to continue, instead of carrying just over 1,000 million people now, the railways would carry 2,500 million people in 10 years’ time. We need action.
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