Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress

Debate between Lord Benyon and Darren Jones

Thursday 28th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

Rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all parts of the economy: that was the call to action from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Without acting on it, we will miss our climate change targets and global warming will cause fundamental damage to our planet and the way we live our lives. So why is this the first time in two years that we are debating climate change on the Floor of the House of Commons? Why is this debate not being led by the Prime Minister herself? Why is not climate change at the heart of every major statement from this Government?

The IPCC has given us 12 years. The independent Committee on Climate Change has said that we are falling behind and not acting with enough urgency. The climate strike protestors, whom I visited in Bristol, are rightly demanding more radical and urgent action now. What has been the response? The response to the IPCC report was to write a letter to the independent Committee on Climate Change, asking for advice. We should have been amending the Climate Change Act 2008 by now to upgrade our climate change targets in line with the Paris accord. We should be setting out how on earth we are going to finance the huge investment needed in upgraded infrastructure, energy and food security and in the technologies needed to meet our negative carbon emissions in future.

[Richard Benyon]

rose—

[Darren Jones]

I cannot give way because we are so short of time. That is the problem: it has taken two years for this issue to get to the Floor of the House, and we have four minutes—four minutes!—to deal with an issue of this enormity. There is no time at all to talk about how we will not be able to meet our electric vehicle targets without investment in the infrastructure system; no time at all to talk about the efficiency of energy use in our homes; and no time at all to talk about food security, agricultural reform or the need for investment in the energy network. That is completely unacceptable.

I do not think that climate strike protestors from my constituency will be particularly pleased with the idea that their Member of Parliament—and many other hon. Members here today—has only four minutes to deal with this issue. When will it come back to the Floor of the House? Will the Minister tell us in her summing up when we will have days’ worth of debates to get into the issue of climate change?

There is a total lack of vision about the long-term risks. A world that is 3° warmer than pre-industrial levels is unimaginable yet is within the lifetime of my daughter. The United States and China—gone; Africa, southern Europe, the middle east, India, South America will be uninhabitable, based on models from universities. Refuge for the world will be focused on Canada, the United Kingdom, northern Europe, Scandinavia and Russia. Hundreds of millions of people will be displaced as climate refugees. The world will be dominated by Canada and Russia. Agricultural and food supply chains will be completely lost. This happens within the lifetime of people born in the past year or two, yet we have four minutes to talk about it.

How we live, what we eat, how we collaborate in a global community: how on earth will we meet the cries from the independent advisers, from the community, from young people, from the scientists—from everybody in the world who says we are not doing enough to tackle this problem? We have four minutes to deal with those issues.

We are talking about the future of our planet, the world that we want to live in and the role that this country must play, and it is all up for grabs. I stand in solidarity with those young people, the next generation, who took their time away from school to strike on this very issue and say that not enough was being done, and I say that this debate is not enough, although I congratulate the hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing it. I look forward to the Minister’s confirmation later of when more time—Government time—will be allocated to this important issue.