Global Climate Change

Debate between Lord Hunt of Chesterton and Lord Lang of Monkton

Thursday 29th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, in 1992, there was a United Nations Rio Conference on Environment and Development. That was the point at which the Governments of the world broadly accepted the scientific consensus that the extra carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere would over the next century lead to a rise in the average temperature of the atmosphere and oceans, with serious and damaging impacts on the health, environment and economies of most communities all over the world. It was nice that today we had Psalm 23 in the Bishop’s Prayers, which reminds us of the preciousness of the global environment; and that is what this debate is about.

It was agreed in 1992 that through the combined efforts of people, Governments, industry and agriculture it should be possible to curb this rise and perhaps even return the temperature and other elements of the environment to a pre-industrial state. Since then, some Governments, through further agreements and many types of action, have started on this path. The aim of today’s debate is principally to review the UK Government’s policies and actions, and those of British people, to reduce greenhouse gases to the 80% of their previous level that was in the 2008 Act. In this debate we shall want to discuss how Her Majesty’s Government will work with other countries at the Paris climate meeting in December to achieve these goals and make further progress.

We are also making use of the opportunity afforded by this debate to urge the Government to implement stronger environmental policies that should be an integral part of their policy on climate change. These stronger policies are urgently needed in urban areas, where air pollution is greatest and worsening. According to the World Health Organization, globally, each year more than 2 million people die from air pollution. In London in March, I and some others experienced air pollution at an uncomfortable level—a level which I had not experienced since the 1950s. My remarks follow on from that experience.

I am grateful to noble Lords who will speak in the debate and to the Minister for his interest and commitment to the issues before us. I declare an interest as a former director of the Met Office, where much of the key scientific research work was done. I am also a professor at University College London, and involved in a small consultancy.

The continued funding of research and data-gathering by the Met Office Hadley Centre, the Natural Environment Research Council and international programmes is absolutely vital because policies for dealing with climate change are continually updated as scientific understanding develops. As we have seen and heard in debates in this House, over the past 10 years climate change has been far from a steady process. Although there has been a steady rise in global carbon dioxide as measured on a graph that continually goes upwards, particularly the measurements in Hawaii, the data on the rise of surface temperatures across the world have been quite erratic. Indeed, this was predicted by some scientists as long ago as the 1990s and we are continually learning how to understand this variability.

This is not just a scientific matter. It is of extraordinary importance to people. We saw the extreme temperatures in Europe and the UK in 2003, when 20,000 or 30,000 people died in Europe. There were extraordinary heating events in Russia in 2010. The long-predicted warming of the Arctic and the melting of summer ice have begun to happen in the past 10 years. But what is perhaps new is that we have begun to understand in recent research in the United States that large continental fluctuations of the jet stream are related to the melting of the polar ice, which leads to extraordinary and persistent heating and cooling episodes across the northern hemisphere. I had to speak on the Korean radio. You hear the concerns in Russia and China, and last year there were extraordinary changes in the United States. Wind storms and intense precipitation have broken records, with rainfall in parts of the Far East now at 100 millimetres per hour and rising.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emphasised the difficulty of understanding these precise processes but was quite emphatic in pointing out that the blanket of carbon dioxide that traps the outgoing heat from the earth is leading to the steady warming of the deep oceans. The temperature at the surface is varying, particularly across South America, with El Niño and La Niña. But the temperatures of the deep oceans are rising steadily and the consequence of this, plus the melting of ice in glaciers from Greenland to Alaska to Chile, is the steady rise in sea level.

If I may appeal to fellow parliamentarians, the parliamentarians in the central Pacific, Melanesia—

[Lord Lang of Monkton (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for interrupting the flow of the noble Lord’s speech. He referred to carbon dioxide. Some of us in this House who are not of a scientific bent have been surprised to read recently that carbon dioxide has contributed in a big way to the greening of the world and to improving agricultural productivity, whereas another gas, nitrous oxide—which again, we are told, is derived in part from diesel fuel—is a much more villainous piece. Can the noble Lord enlighten those of us who ought to know more about this sort of thing?

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

The noble Lord is quite right about the rising level of carbon dioxide having an effect on greening. But equally, the average amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising because of the release of heat by the combustion of oil and coal, and indeed from the burning of forests. Several studies have commented that there will be areas of the world where, to start with, this rise in carbon dioxide will lead to an increase in agriculture—for example, near the equator—but the point is made that as the temperature keeps on rising, this local advantage will be considerably overwhelmed by the increase in temperature. If we reach 3 degrees or 4 degrees—if we make no progress—that will have a devastating impact. So the noble Lord is right but it is also a question of the timeframe we are thinking about.

I want to comment on another feature of the rising sea level and its impact. There are areas of the world where the sea level is rising three times faster than the average. The islands that I mentioned are planning for their eventual abandonment. Noble Lords who know the history of this place will know that in the 11th and 12th centuries, we regularly had extraordinary floods in what is now our Parliament—but, fortunately, we are still here.

In the light of these increasingly hazardous impacts on societies worldwide, what would happen if the world began not merely to stop increasing the emission of carbon dioxide but to start reducing those emissions, over a few decades, back to the levels of 100 years ago? The evidence from computer models presented at the Royal Society in 2014 was that, for example, polar ice would return. When people ask why we should make these big changes to our lifestyle and reduce our energy use, the answer is that making them may well enable us to restore some aspects of the environment. If we do not do so, the environment could change more or less irreversibly.

The UK’s cross-party legislation in 2008 and legislation since then in other countries such as Mexico, along with the European Union’s political agreements, have introduced a timetable of steady reduction. It is good news that the European Union countries are on course to meet their reduction targets of 20% by 2020 and 40% by 2030. It is surprising as some rather major countries have been increasing their carbon dioxide emissions. However, that enables Her Majesty’s Government and our European partners to argue for the 150 or more countries assembled in Paris to introduce their own policies. It can be done.

One reason for some measured optimism at this time in the evolution of science and government regarding climate change is that China agreed at the previous climate meeting, in Durban in 2012, to introduce emissions reduction targets by 2015. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Stern, is in his seat. We had many discussions about China’s position before the Copenhagen meeting in 2009. At that point, China was moving ahead with efforts to make its emissions more efficient—that is, having fewer emissions per unit of energy. Now, however, it is talking about targets to reduce emissions which will be implemented by 2020. Since then, China and some other countries have been increasing the practical measures they are taking. Moreover, despite the objections of the United States Congress to his policies, President Obama has targets and policies for emissions reductions of 17% by 2020.

What is needed in practice is to make breakthroughs in energy use and production. It was interesting to hear, at a meeting of European parliamentarians in Paris in September, a review of the different methods being introduced. In some senses, France is the leading country in Europe as it has the lowest carbon emissions per person because it uses all the technologies, such as nuclear fission, wind, solar and so on. To some extent, the UK is following in that path. Interestingly, the car industry—a major source of contributions, occasionally up to 30% in some countries—is talking about very great reductions in emissions and improvements in efficiency. Another way that we can reduce our energy consumption is to have more efficient buildings. It is extraordinary that high-performance bricks are imported to the UK from Switzerland and we have not developed our own industry in this really important technology.

The generation of renewable energy is another aspect of the issue. Although there has been much development of renewable energy in this country, there is also great concern about reduced subsidies for solar PV. We hear about many small businesses in the more depressed areas of the UK going into insolvency and bankruptcy. I hope the Minister will respond on that point. Government documents emphasise the business opportunities associated with introducing technology for reducing emissions. That is a very important feature, and one hopes that HMG will be displaying UK technology solutions at the Paris conference in December.

Another role for UK expertise, finance and industry is in helping to make countries more resilient against hazards and their impacts, and UK businesses are making a particularly strong effort in developing countries. It is very important that the UK science base is maintained at the highest international level to provide competitive advice. This week, the Japanese embassy noted the importance of collaboration with the UK on tsunami damage, and Japan wants to have a United Nations day for dealing with tsunamis, which of course have caused many tens of thousands of casualties. Tsunamis are not, of course, caused by climate change, but with sea level rises, the danger of further inland penetration is an important factor.

The other important point I wanted to make about environmental hazards—I have already touched on the air pollution aspect—is that, in many other countries of the world, one of the ways of dealing with these extreme air pollution events is by using the media to warn people and, in particular, to advise traffic and people controlling emissions to reduce those emissions. We in this Parliament have had several Parliamentary Questions addressing the Department for Transport but it has refused to use its abilities to communicate with drivers and urge them to reduce their emissions.

Similarly, the UK is an important member of the international—