Climate Change

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Indeed. I can agree with the noble Lord on the first part of his question. It has been encouraging to see the number of major businesses that have joined us in the race to net zero. I pay tribute to the work of the CBI in helping us to do that. But we have already set a number of quite ambitious targets. We have legislated in this House for the carbon budgets, and we will produce the net zero strategy before COP, which will see further progress.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

My Lords, as the European continent in the Middle Ages warmed up by 1.5 degrees centigrade and then reverted to normal temperature after a century, can the Minister tell the House of two scientific facts that show that we can stop or reverse climate change?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord invites me to indulge in a long debate about the validity or otherwise of the various reports and the IPCC report. Perhaps we could discuss it separately outside. However, the IPCC report was a major piece of work taking on board many of the assessments from world-leading scientists, and we would do well to take it seriously.