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I welcome the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, and humbly suggest that they are by no means too radical. It is entirely consistent for a political party with “conservative” in its title to take a lead in a debate on policies that conserve our resources. We need now more than ever to develop a truly conservative attitude towards the earth, which is not a limitless larder that can be plundered with impunity.



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Members of this House will recall the time and energy that we invested last year in ensuring a thorough and effective Climate Change Act. The recent economic crisis has added complexity to the decisions that we need to make and the actions that we need to take. I commend the Government for having maintained a focus on the need to invest in the growth of a low-carbon economy, especially at this time, although your Lordships' House ought to know that the low-carbon element of our economic stimulus package sadly lags behind that not only of Germany and Japan but of America and China.

Before I turn my attention to the noble Lord’s proposals, I should like to address one issue related to the scepticism sometimes shown in your Lordships’ House—we have heard it expressed today by the noble Lord, Lord Reay. In speaking about climate change, I defer to the scientists in your Lordships' House: it seems perhaps impertinent of me as a religious person to speak about a scientific subject. I comment simply as a lay person. Surely no scientist denies that CO2 contributes to the blanket of gases that wraps itself around the earth. Whatever else is happening within the natural cycle, the population of the world is increasing, from 6 billion now to, putatively, 9 billion by 2050, which means that more carbon is going into the atmosphere daily. We cannot ignore the fact that, because of population growth alone, the blanket is thickening and trapping the heat around the earth. By a variety of measures, we simply have to reduce the export of carbon into the atmosphere, as we have heard just now from the noble Lord, Lord Rees. Why? It is for the sake of the poor, who are already feeling the effects of climate change, and for the sake of ourselves, who have yet to feel the full effects of what is coming if we do not act now and urgently.

I welcome this debate because it is not sufficient to leave the responsibility for action just with the policy-makers. The answer to the noble Lord’s questions lies in three areas. The first is in policy: the British Government have shown consistent international leadership on this issue, not least, as we have heard, with the Climate Change Act. The answer lies, secondly, at the parochial—if I may use such a word—or local level: in our communities, neighbourhoods, and places of work and learning. Thirdly, it lies at the personal level, in the choices that we make about how we live.

I turn first to policy. I welcomed the inclusion of consideration of climate change in the Planning Act and in current discussions about the marine Bill. However, to achieve our 2020 and 2050 targets, we need a culture change throughout our society and in government, so that climate change is not regarded as largely the responsibility of a Secretary of State but is understood to be the responsibility of all Ministers, all departments and all officials, so that it is woven like letters in a stick of rock through everything that we decide.

For example, the Government are the largest commissioner of public buildings in the United Kingdom. Therefore, surely all government-commissioned buildings, and not just some of them, need to be carbon neutral. The Government can show leadership in this area which can be followed by other sectors.



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I was encouraged to hear in the Budget the Chancellor pledge investment in the development of carbon capture and storage. The global requirement to find ways of generating clean energy offers a huge opportunity for the United Kingdom to be at the forefront of global innovation and development. The urgency of this issue encourages us to work with other nations as well as independently. As we have already heard, President Obama recently called on America to rise to the global opportunity of responding to climate change, stating that the economy that innovates and find ways to build a low-carbon economy will lead the world in the coming century. Government policy needs to enable, not constrain, innovation in the UK so that our own economic recovery builds a low-carbon economy, and so that the UK leads the world in developing these new technologies.

An example that has already been cited, but where I can put more flesh on that particular bone, is in the estimate that developing tidal power in the easiest estuaries and waterways of England and Wales could produce 20 per cent of the country’s electricity needs. The technology is already there; it needs financial investment and political will. That technology, as we have already heard, could satisfy the needs of the developing world. For example, I recently heard a delegation from China reaching out on behalf of the developing world for access to such technology.

Changes required to society are not simply at the policy level; they must also involve our neighbourhoods. They must be parochially rooted, and education and schools play an important part there. I declare an interest in that I chair the governing body of a city academy that has taken the environment as its specialism. It has a solar atrium, solar panels and rainwater harvesting, and as the young people come into the academy they see, digitally recorded, the amounts of energy being garnered and of rainwater being harvested. It is humbling to be taken around the academy by the young people of that inner-city school and to have them tell visitors the importance of addressing our environment in this urgent way.

I am delighted that, next year, building on that academy’s success, and again in the north-west of England, we shall be opening our second academy, this time with the St Helens authority in Newton-le-Willows. It will be called the Hope Academy, and be the first to take sustainability as its specialism. Already, the specialism has been incorporated into the building’s design with—I am glad to say—a special grant from the Government in order to produce a carbon-neutral building. It is not just about schools and education; faith groups also have an important role to play. I am glad that in the north-west, through the help of the regional development agency, the faith communities have come together, establishing an organisation called Faiths4Change that engages mosques, temples, synagogues and churches in rolling out the regional strategy for climate change and trying to reduce the carbon footprint.

This has to be incorporated not only at policy and parochial community level but at a personal level. Three years ago, during Lent, the diocese of Liverpool launched what we call the carbon fast. Instead of giving up inconsequential things like chocolate or alcohol, people were invited to begin to reduce their

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carbon footprint by reducing carbon. Last year, it went on nationally and over 300,000 people took part. This year, with the help of the Secretary of State, Ed Miliband, we launched it globally and have seen a great response from people realising that, in the global discussions of this strategy, they can do something locally and personally. It is estimated by Tearfund, which has been behind this campaign—I declare an interest as a vice-president—that following that programme reduces a person’s carbon footprint by 25 per cent. The climate of opinion on this subject needs to change more rapidly than the climate itself if we are to avoid disaster, which is why I welcome the Motion for Papers by the noble Lord.

12.34 pm

Lord Tanlaw: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, for giving us an opportunity to discuss this subject. I shall make a subjective intervention in the debate. Before I do so, however, I want to congratulate Sir Ranulph Fiennes on getting to the top of Everest at the age of 65; it is an example to us all. I shall also draw on my personal experience of working on the Indian subcontinent for six years and living for two months of each of the past 20 years in south-east Asia, where I have some declared interests. I am intervening today also because of a pledge that I gave to my late friend Dr Michael Cole, a Cambridge physical scientist, to put forward some of his alternative views—which I share with him and with my clan chief, the noble Lord, Lord Reay, and with the noble Lord, Lord Lawson—on global warming.

Dr Cole and other distinguished scientists have had many doubts about the relationship between the IPCC scientists who formulated the Kyoto treaty and the politicians around the world who supported them. The scientific facts as presented by the IPCC scientists to support the treaty have led to the publication of the Stern review, to the Climate Change Bill and many other related papers, and, indeed, to this debate, but they may not be quite as clear-cut as they should. It therefore may be worth while for a non-scientist such as myself to spend a moment checking out some fundamentals regarding the role of science as a reliable guide for us in the political spectrum, and for political decisions to be made in general.

A good question for starters is, what is “science”? Terence Kealey, the vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, where I have a declared interest, raised that in his very readable book entitled Sex, Science & Profits, which he sent to me last month. He provides a good answer on page 274:

“There is no such thing as ‘science’—there are only scientists”.

Kealey goes on to say that many people—including myself—used to believe, along with Francis Bacon,

I believe that that is particularly relevant to the subject that we are discussing today.



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My first experience of the two sides of science was when I raised the matter of atmospheric carbon in this House with an Unstarred Question as long ago as 1978. My Question was put as a result of reading Sir John Mason’s scientific paper to the Royal Society when he was head of the Meteorological Office. However, I was surprised that the Royal Society—and I say this cautiously, bearing in mind that my noble friend, who is its president, is sitting behind me—did not sound the alarm bells that were ringing at that time, despite the fact that the science on which Mason’s paper was based has not altered one iota between now and then. We had to wait for Kyoto and the IPCC team of scientists to warn the world about the apparently serious implications of an increase in atmospheric carbon.

Everything then changed with the publication of my noble friend’s review, The Economics of Climate Change. This great work has had a profound influence on society and its governance around the planet. That is despite the fact that my noble friend Lord Stern is not a scientist but a very distinguished economist who, in my view, may one day also be recognised as the post-modern alchemist who revealed to the world a magical formula for transmuting atmospheric carbon into gold dust for government departments and profits for big business. Perhaps we can prove that point. Can the Minister say how many extra staff, NGOs, consultants and advisers have been added to his department since the publication of the Stern review? Can he also say whether atmospheric carbon has been increasing or decreasing since the publication of the Stern review and the Climate Change Bill?

The Minister will undoubtedly recall that the right honourable gentleman Mr David Miliband, the architect of the Climate Change Bill, wrote in its foreword that the Bill would,

Can he say what qualifications are represented by the members of the present Committee on Climate Change to classify them as “expert”? Can he also say where we can find carbon dioxide targets established by this expert committee? The Printed Paper Office could not find any reference to them prior to this debate. That is possibly my fault, but I should have thought that it would have something on them.

Are we then to presume without this information that the targets are the same as those in the Climate Change Bill? If so, does this mean that the UK’s cumulative carbon budget of emissions for the years 2000 to 2050 will be between 5.5 billion and 6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide? The Minister will be aware that, under the Kyoto treaty, this target figure does not include the aviation and maritime figures which, if included, would raise the UK’s total emissions to between 7 billion and 7.5 billion tonnes for the years 2000 to 2050.

According to the Tyndall centre, the UK must emit no more than 4.5 billion to 5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide if it is to maintain its agreed target of atmospheric concentrations of no more than 450 parts per million. Can the Minister confirm this? What the Tyndall centre is saying is that the science does not support the Government's targets as set out in the Bill, which craftily exclude the total volume over the target period

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by including annual emission levels only at two fixed points—2020 and 2050. Can the Minister say whether these fundamental errors have now been corrected by the climate change committee? If so, what are the new targets, and are they in his opinion attainable?

With respect to the right reverend Prelate, I do not think that there is a snowball’s chance in hell of attaining those targets—if those figures are correct—if the maritime and aviation pollution figures are included. What are you going to do with them—sweep them under the carpet, or just hope that they go away? Is this not proof that there is a clear division between real science and the political science utilised not only by this Government but by Governments around the world? Is there not a need for the climate change committee to draw on all known methods of atmospheric carbon reduction, especially where power generation is concerned?

Therefore, when the committee took evidence from experts in power generation on four different occasions in the past two months—on 1, 22 and 29 April and on 6 May—why was daylight saving, which could save at least 2 per cent of generated electricity per year, never put on the agenda? Is this debate not about saving energy and atmospheric carbon? Why was Dr Elizabeth Garnsey, from the Institute for Manufacturing at Cambridge, not called to submit her well-researched and erudite paper on the subject? Her report, of which the Government must be aware, clearly demonstrates that daylight saving is energy efficient and would assist the UK in meeting its challenging emissions targets. It would have prevented an extra 46 million tonnes of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere since 1971.

Dr Garnsey’s sources, including the National Grid, are almost precisely the same as those that gave evidence to the climate change committee. Why did they exclude the subject of daylight saving from their evidence to the committee? Why did they not even bother to look it up? Why was it not included? The Government must be fed up with my mentioning this all the time—but others have also mentioned it. So why does the committee, which calls itself a climate change committee, not put it on its agenda? Is it because it cannot prove that daylight saving does not save electricity and atmospheric carbon? Where is the proof that I and others who support daylight saving are wrong? Let us have the proof and I will stop mentioning it and give you all a bit of relief.

This leads me to a more serious point. As almost every speaker has said, the concept of slowing down global warming, or atmospheric carbon, depends on the great subcontinents of India and China reducing their emissions. As I said, I lived in India for six years. One of the greatest needs of India, Indonesia and, to a certain extent, China, is rural electrification. If you fly over India at night, or even during the day, you will see the great brown haze caused by the burning of lumps of wood or cow dung in cooking stoves. For their standard of education to match that of the rest of the world, these people need to be able to cook without cutting down their forests and polluting the atmosphere to the extent that they do. Therefore, rural electrification should be very high on any agenda for these countries.



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We are trying to encourage India, China and other countries to engage in carbon capture. This is an untried system and, from what I gather, is extremely inefficient. In fact, it could well be a net producer of atmospheric carbon, as opposed to a net reducer. When I visit the Far East every year, I detect increasing hostility to the concepts of carbon capture and carbon trading—which was dreamt up by the same people who got the world into its present financial crisis—as simply being devices to slow down economies that compete with western economies. That serious criticism underlies policies in China, India, Indonesia and other countries. We should proceed with great care and stop calling these countries developing countries. The great countries of India and China are the empires of the future and were empires in the past. If we do not acknowledge that, or their economic strength, and if we suggest silly ideas to them, we will create serious political problems stretching far beyond that of atmospheric carbon.

12.46 pm

Lord Soley: My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, on initiating this debate. Like him, I draw attention to the expanding population of the planet and, indeed, of this country. We should remind ourselves that nature has a rather brutal way of dealing with any species that either outstrips its own resources or so pollutes them as to make their appropriation difficult or impossible. It is always timely to have that in mind.

However, I intervene in this debate to talk about the science and technology role as opposed to the personal change role, as I believe this important point underpins the discussion. I intend to mention aviation only tangentially but I declare an interest as the campaign director for Future Heathrow. Many years ago—I think it was in the 1970s—the BBC broadcast a wonderful programme, “The Weather Machine”, which was really the first alert to the dangers of climate change. I remember being very struck by that programme. At that time we were more concerned about the planet cooling rapidly and triggering a new ice age. Certainly, in the 1980s I wrote articles expressing acute concern about that. In some ways I suppose that I was doing what some people are doing now as regards being in a slight panic mode about it. We have to draw back a bit and understand that this problem is one of serious pollution but that it can be resolved. We have to get right the balance between science and technology and the need for individuals, societies and communities to change their behaviour.

I stopped supporting Greenpeace about 10 or 12 years ago following the mistakes it made in the Brent Spar incident and in one or two others. During the past 10 to 15 years I have been troubled by a sense that an anti-science role is rapidly emerging, which is profoundly dangerous. A good example of that was touched on by other speakers; namely, the very successful lobby group which slowed down, and almost stopped, the development of nuclear power. No one is suggesting that nuclear power is the ideal solution to climate change. However, it has been known for a very long time—many of us

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have been worried about this issue for a long time—that nuclear power is an essential part of the medium to long-term answer.

I remember listening to someone only a couple of years ago boasting proudly of how they had taken their family on holiday to north Africa entirely by train, and thus avoided polluting the planet, because otherwise they would have flown. They were also anti-nuclear. It seemed almost cruel to point out that 80 per cent of the electricity for the high-speed rail network in France is produced by nuclear generation, and it would have been even crueller to point out that it would probably have been better if they had flown directly to north Africa. I left them alone on that occasion, but I will not promise always to do so.

This is the difficulty, in a way. If we lurch into a slightly anti-science and anti-technology mode, we begin to not only make people think that there are simplistic solutions which can be achieved simply by changing our behaviour, we also, importantly, stop some of the progressive things that can and should be happening. This is very true when people get into this mode of saying, “We must stop people doing things”, whether it is stopping them flying, developing nuclear power and a whole range of things. The real message is that in all walks of life—our personal lives, communities, social, leisure, work and everywhere—we have to drive down carbon emissions. We need to look at that in a positive way, rather than in a “let’s stop everything” way.

There is a lesson from history, in that Thomas Malthus believed we would all end up starving because were going to outstrip our food sources. If it had not been for science and technology, he might well have been right. However, just as science and technology were allowing people to live longer and healthier lives, they were creating the facility for increasing food supplies. There are ways of addressing this issue, and we have to get the balance right. I emphasise that we should put right up front of any debate about climate change the argument that although science and technology on their own cannot solve this problem, they are vital ingredients. It would be infinitely more difficult and almost certainly lead to a dramatic loss of life if we tried to tackle climate change without science and technology. They are part of the answer.

The key is to ask: what are we doing now that we can do better? When people say, for example, we must stop flying, I say: “You pick on flying, but let’s say you stopped everyone in this country flying. Even if it had a significant impact and never mind stopping people flying in other countries, what then do you turn on?” There are a number of things. For example, you could turn on the media, which might please some people in the political process. The production of television and programmes, their distribution and broadcasting, have a massive impact on climate change; but we do not say, “Let’s stop watching ‘EastEnders’ or ‘Big Brother’”, even if it might push people back into their communities where they sat on the doorstep and talked to each other, which might please the right reverend Prelate. You would not need to set up a neighbourhood watch because you would not be watching telly all the time.



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You can get into all sorts of arguments about stopping people from doing things in order to solve climate change, but the answer is more sophisticated. We have to do these things in a more environmentally sensitive way and make sure that we are not doing them in a way that increases climate change. There is a core problem about the population issue, and the noble Lord and my noble friend Lord Bhattacharyya touched on it. There is no way that India, China, South America and so on will hold their standards of living down. Any lectures to them about not developing industry, not flying and so on, would be seen for what, in some cases, they are: western countries and organisations telling them not to do what we have already done and not to expect the living standards that we expect. There are all sorts of moral traps in this issue.

The key is to drive down emissions. I try to do that in my personal life and I hope and expect other people to do that in theirs. It is more difficult when we start to think about the community activities we involve ourselves in, because, very often, they involve a considerable degree of climate-changing activity. Which is why—and it is right that in all walks of life we address this issue—you need to say in those organisations, “What are we doing to reduce climate change?”. I often walk into this place and find the lights are on, and I cannot think why. The daylight is pretty good—that will please the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw. Even given the hours we work, we still have pretty good daylight and do not need to have the lights on. Also, in older buildings such as this, we ought to use electricity only from renewable sources, because it is much more difficult to make old buildings carbon-friendly.


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