Climate

Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)]

My Lords, yesterday on social media, there was a small, viral video of two deer battling in the foreground, while far in the distance —as you could determine after watching it for a few seconds—a lion slowly emerged that, in one efficient movement, jumped on these fighting deer, killing them both. I draw a parallel: I feel as though the debate of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, today is that lion, while many other debates in this building are the deer in the foreground.

I was determined to speak this afternoon, because I have been through—to use a word from my own sector, technology—a pivot over the last six months, partly on the back of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report, and partly because of my partner’s establishment of a marine conservation charity, which has meant relentless tussles at home. I now feel it is not only the responsibility but the only moral thing that somebody with any small voice can do to constantly challenge and question why the climate emergency/climate crisis is not debated in public opinion in the way it should be, in the sectors I see, on the boards I sit on—certainly within technology, and with the inventors and innovators of the future. To give an example, I use Twitter, and after watching deer being devoured by a lion yesterday, I used it to ask what percentage of venture capital around the world was given to climate-related businesses. It would be bad if it was under 50% right now, because venture capitalists look to the future, imagining the solutions for the things we should be most concerned about. Imagine my horror at discovering that the percentage of venture capital investment in climate-based innovations has just decreased year on year. In Europe, it has gone from 3% to 2%, and in the US—get this—it has gone from 2.5% to 1%. This is a complicated number—there are investments across healthcare that you might determine are a climate issue, or possibly in fintech and so on—but even if it is 10 times that, it is half as much as it should be.

This is just one example of where it feels that we are wrestling deer in the corner, when the lion is approaching us from behind. As a technology innovator, I feel that we must demand more of the people that think they are inventing the future, because they are not inventing the future that I want to be a part of. We have to make sure that social media companies manage disinformation about the climate on their platforms; I declare an interest as a board member of Twitter. We have to demand that venture capital companies invest in solutions for everybody. This is fundamental, and these will not be challenges we can solve if we do not deploy all the weapons at our disposal. These are people who have proven in the past that they can solve complex problems, but the debate is not happening at the level that it needs to. That is why I could not support more whole- heartedly the notion of a climate crisis and emergency declared by the Government, because Governments lead and people follow, and that is what we need to encourage this Government to do.