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Climate Change

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Dowd.]

Mr. David Chaytor (Bury, North): I am grateful for the opportunity to open this debate on the most important environmental issue of our time. The threats and challenges posed by climate change do not fit comfortably into the conventional time scales of domestic politics: significant changes of policy do not have immediate effects but without such changes we will continue to walk into the unknown, facing the prospect of unprecedented social and environmental disaster in the first half of the next century.

Climate change is an issue that needs to be dealt with urgently, not only because the clock is already ticking but because, as each day goes by, the scale of the problem is steadily increasing. New research on the availability of the world's oil reserves has highlighted the need for urgent action.

I pay tribute to the work of right hon. and hon. Members who have already made outstanding contributions to the politics of climate change. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), as Secretary of State for the Environment, ensured that the implications of climate change were understood by the previous Government.

My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister ensured that our Government provided international leadership at the Kyoto conference through his tireless work in seeking agreement on the protocol from powerful nations whose natural interests did not automatically coincide.

My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment is admired by environmentalists both in the United Kingdom and throughout the European Union for his detailed understanding of the wider implications of climate change and his dogged determination to secure the implementation of the necessary policy changes.

I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Dafis) for his work on the issue and in particular for his recent establishment of the all-party globe group--and I congratulate him on his recent election to the Welsh Assembly.

As tomorrow is polling day for the European elections, I pay tribute to the present Conservative Member of the European Parliament for Surrey who, in his capacity as president of Globe International, has ensured that climate change has been widely debated in the European Parliament and in the legislatures of many other countries. Sadly, he is not a candidate in tomorrow's elections.

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Climate change was first identified as an issue of international political significance at the Rio Earth summit in 1992, as a result of which 174 countries signed the framework convention on climate change, the substance of which allowed for a voluntary target of restoring the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2000.

As a result of the evidence produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, representing the overwhelming majority of the world's scientific community, the Kyoto conference of December 1997 established a protocol, including a legal agreement under which the developed countries would reduce their emissions of the six main greenhouse gases--carbon dioxide, methane, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, sulphur hexafluoride and nitrous oxide--to 5.2 per cent. below 1990 levels in the period from 2008 to 2012.

The international scientific community concluded that if no action were taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, temperatures would rise by between 1 deg and 3.5 deg by the end of the next century. That statistic will not excite the electorate in an election campaign, but it nevertheless represents the biggest increase in temperature on this planet since the ice age 10,000 years ago.

For those who are sceptical of scientists' ability to make such predictions, I would simply point out that in the past 10 years we have experienced seven of the hottest years since records began in 1860. Climate change is with us now. I repeat that the consensus of the scientific community is that the almost exponential growth in carbon emissions brought about by our burning of fossil fuels throughout the past 200 years, and particularly in the past 100 years, is largely responsible for those temperature increases.

Climate change may not be the most exact term and perhaps we should be speaking of climate instability or climate volatility, because if no action is taken we will experience a dramatic rise in sea levels, by between 15 and 95 cm, as the polar ice caps melt. I calculate that that would result in the loss of virtually the whole ofEast Anglia and the fenlands, representing about 35 Conservative seats at the last count. I note the presence of the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns); his seat is on the list of those that would be flooded.

The whole pattern of the world's weather will change, increasing the likelihood of heatwaves, floods, droughts and storms, and intensifying the process of desertification in certain parts of the world, so that many millions of people will no longer be able to grow their own food.

The availability and distribution of water supplies will change unpredictably, with disastrous consequences for agriculture, and biodiversity will be lost as the habitats of rare and vulnerable creatures are destroyed. The economic costs will be enormous, as many insurance companies are now beginning to realise, and the impoverishment or displacement of whole populations will lead to refugee crises of a kind that the world has not yet experienced.

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It therefore seems sensible to take the necessary precautions now, to avoid those unpredictable consequences later. I reiterate my recognition of the preparatory work done by the previous Government, and congratulate the present Government not only on the international leadership shown in helping to negotiate the agreement at Kyoto, but on the speed with which policy has been developed.

It is significant that we are now committed not only to the 12.5 per cent. target--our legally binding share of the European Union's Kyoto target--but to our manifesto commitment to a domestic target of a 20 per cent. cut in CO ₂ emissions. To their credit, the Government have moved swiftly in outlining the framework of policies that might achieve that.

The October 1998 consultation paper on climate change was preceded by the White Paper on transport, and followed last month by the White Paper on sustainable development. There have also been important Government statements on renewable energy, the review of energy sources for power generation and the recent consultation paper on fuel poverty.

The recommendations of Lord Marshall's report, which led to the establishment of the climate change levy in the 1999 Budget, as well as other measures in that Budget, will also in time play a significant part in the overall reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. However, the time for talk is now over; it is time for action and implementation.

In response to the admirable range of measures that the Government have already proposed or implemented, I shall raise a series of further points for consideration. First, it is crucial that the Government make clear the nature and status of the 20 per cent. domestic target. It is not legally binding, but it is politically binding. Our election manifesto said:

"We will lead the fight against global warming, through our target of a 20 per cent. reduction in CO ₂ emissions by the year 2010".

Secondly, transport contributes about 23 per cent. of total emissions. The White Paper on integrated transport produced some excellent ideas around which a new consensus on transport policy can be built, but we are waiting for the means to implement many of those ideas. For example, our attitude to traffic growth is crucial, because we need to clarify the precise extent to which we aim not only to reduce the predicted growth in traffic but to reverse it. I welcome recent ministerial statements confirming the intention to achieve a genuine reduction in absolute terms.

Thirdly, the White Paper refers to a target of generating 10 per cent. of electricity from renewables by 2010. Subsequent statements have implied that that may not be quite such a precise target, so I draw the attention of the House to what has already been achieved elsewhere--

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A recent report by Greenpeace argues the case for the development of an offshore wind industry, which it says could provide 30,000 jobs. The expansion of renewable forms of energy is no longer a question of technological limitation; it is almost entirely a question of political will.

Fourthly, there is the question of energy efficiency. Four private Members' Bills on the subject have come before the House recently. The Energy Efficiency Bill and the Energy Conservation (Housing) Bill received Government support, but were blocked by Opposition Members. We have to ask ourselves how much longer we can endure a system for dealing with private Members' Bills which allows the infantile antics of a single eccentric Back Bencher to block proposals that are widely considered on both sides of the House to be sensible and positive.

I urge the Government to explore every possible means of incorporating the eminently sensible proposals in those two Bills into other legislation at an early stage. I hope also that they will reconsider the Health Care and Energy Efficiency Bill in the context of preparing the climate change programme later this year.

I welcome the Government's support for the Fuel Poverty and Energy Conservation Bill, and also the recent consultation paper on fuel poverty. There is an urgent need for co-ordination of all the Government's programmes dealing with fuel poverty and energy efficiency along the lines proposed in the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation (Fifteen Year Programme) Bill. It may not be possible at this stage to propose such an ambitious programme, but the fact remains that energy efficiency programmes produce long-term savings after an initial short-term investment. Moreover, where they are specifically designed to alleviate fuel poverty, such programmes emphasise the point that the policies of social justice and the policies of environmental protection are in most cases two sides of the same coin.

Before leaving the subject of energy efficiency, I must point out the continuing anomaly whereby VAT is still levied on most energy-efficient materials. It is particularly important that the Government seek to extend the very welcome VAT exemption that they have already introduced for the home energy efficiency scheme to all energy-saving materials.