Net-zero Emissions: Behaviour Change

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I too have the happy duty of being a member of the Environment and Climate Change Committee. I congratulate both my colleague on that committee, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, on having obtained this debate, and the chair of our committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, who has been remarkably good in the face of the differing opinions of the committee in reaching what I think is an excellent report.

We as a society have committed to decarbonisation. I hope that we have also committed to allowing a lot more space in our lives for nature. In making those sorts of commitments, we need the Government’s help to see it through. In playing our part, we want to be owning that process and to have a sense of agency, knowing that what we are doing is doing good. But even in the most basic aspects of this, the Government are failing.

Most of us recycle, but do we know what happens to our recycling? In my experience, a lorry turns up and tips my recycling into the back of it; the next sound I hear is the crunching of glass being shattered and mixed in with the paper. What happens after that? Is it all shipped off to Africa? Can someone unmingle it? Is it actually a useful thing to do? No one trusts us with that information. If the Government want us to be part of what is going on, we need to know.

The Government would like us to consider a more vegetarian lifestyle. That is fine; I have been persuaded of that by my daughter and am enjoying the process, except when I go to the shop and find that oat milk is twice the price of cow’s milk. Why? Again, who can help us? The Government should be helping us. You cannot say you want a change and then find that you are asking people to consume half as much of something that should be, according to the theory of things, a great deal cheaper. What is going on? That is what I want the Government to tell us.

Similarly, we are told that we should not travel so much by air, but the cost of a lot of the flights we might take is a third or a quarter of that of the journey by train. Are we being given the honest figures? The answer is no, we are not. We are just told the fuel consumption, not the total cost of the two systems. It is not explained to us why air travel is so much cheaper. Usually, things are cheaper because they have a lower impact on the environment and use fewer resources. Again, the Government owe us some detail.

Similarly—this will come up in our next inquiry—Nesta has shown in a recent report that heat pumps are substantially more expensive to run than gas central heating. Just comparing the fuel consumed by one against the fuel consumed by the other does not give us the total systems impact of changing from one to another. If the Government want us to have agency to be part of the national narrative in making changes that decarbonise the economy, they must share with us the information that allows us to understand and have a grip on the decisions they are asking us to take.

I am sorry that the Government decided not to publish help for people on how to use less fuel and live in a house with the thermostat turned down. I think we need honest, truthful, open information. It helps us sort the myths from reality. I—along with many other noble Lords, I suspect—spent a great deal of my youth in the company of my noble friend Lord Frost’s cousin Jack. We know that, apart from the displeasure of chilblains, it is possible to live without central heating, but none of us wishes to. We are all delighted that we have it, but when we started out with central heating the British kept their thermostats at 15 degrees. It was only the Americans who pushed it above 20, but now people seem to consider that 24 is normal. We need help to get back and reset society, and to think whether we need to have such an impact on the environment or whether we can moderate what we are doing.