COP26: Limiting Global Temperature Rises

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Catherine West

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

Let me just make a little bit of progress, and I promise that I will let others in.

The UK presidency has identified four goals for COP26. The first is to secure global net zero by mid-century and keep 1.5°C within reach, but I want to say to the House that the climate does not actually care much about target dates. What matters is how much carbon has been emitted into the atmosphere and how much will be emitted over the rest of this century. The figures are quite stark, so I hope that the House will indulge me while I go through them.

Based on the IPCC’s calculations, the global remaining carbon budget—the total we can afford to burn between now and the time we reach net zero if we want to give ourselves a two thirds chance of staying within 1.5°C of warming—is just 320 billion tonnes from the start of next year. Given that we are currently burning through that at a rate of 40 billion tonnes a year, it does not take much to do the maths and to conclude that, by 2030, it will be gone if we do not rapidly rid ourselves of fossil fuels. That is the global picture.

To replay that in the domestic picture for our own carbon targets, if we divide the global budget equally on a per capita basis, but also allow for our disproportionate responsibility for the cumulative emissions in the atmosphere—after all, we were the leaders of the industrial revolution—it has been calculated that it would leave the UK a budget of just 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. That is a vanishingly small amount in the wider scheme of things when we adjust still further to allow for the carbon burned overseas in the service of UK consumption as well as our territorial emissions. Measured like that, our total carbon footprint is about 500 million tonnes a year. Again, I say to the House: do the maths. That gives us barely five years before our 2.4 billion tonne budget is gone. That is the reality. That is the inconvenient truth.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

The hon. Member is making an excellent beginning to this great debate, and it is so good to see so many people speaking. What does she make of the cuts to international aid, which have made the problem for the future outlook even worse?

[Caroline Lucas]

I will certainly be coming to that shortly, because I cannot think of a more damaging thing to have done a matter of months, as it was, before the COP26—a big global summit at which we need to have the trust of the developing countries. I think the idea that one of the richest countries in the world would just slash our aid budget is absolutely unforgivable, and we cannot be surprised that some of the poorest countries do not have confidence in us.