Communicating Climate Science

Amber Rudd Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)]

Thank you very much indeed, Sir Alan, for those words, and I also thank you for chairing this debate.

In addition, I thank the members of the Science and Technology Committee for their hard work in preparing this report during the past year. I welcome the findings of the Committee’s inquiry into communicating climate science, and I thank the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) for presenting them so clearly to us at the start of this debate.

As we said in our response, the Government must communicate what we are doing to address the risks that climate science has revealed, but communicating climate science is just one part of communicating the wider issue of climate change. Let us be clear that these are two interrelated but distinct discussions. Scientists, as independent and trusted experts, must take the lead in communicating science, and we in government must focus on communicating our responses to scientific facts.

[Andrew Rosindell in the Chair]

The scientific consensus is overwhelming: the fact is that climate change is happening and people are causing it, and we need to take urgent action to avoid dangerous climate change. Global climate change is already being seen around the world. Nine of the hottest years ever measured were in the past 12 years; heat waves have become more frequent and are lasting longer; the height of extreme sea levels caused by storms has increased; and oceans are acidifying and becoming fatally unhealthy for sea life. These facts are well known by members of the Committee but these changes are neither mysterious nor unexpected.

In 1988, the UN General Assembly was told that

“human activities could change global climate patterns”.

Mrs Thatcher, a scientist, took note and showed global leadership. She said:

“It’s we Conservatives who are not merely friends of the earth—we are its guardians and trustees for generations to come...No generation has a freehold on this earth. All we have is a life tenancy—with a full repairing lease. This government intends to meet the terms of that lease in full.”

When the Prime Minister addressed the UN General Assembly this September, for the Secretary-General’s summit on climate change, he demonstrated that we will stand by those words.

This is a timely debate, coming just before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finalises its fifth assessment synthesis report in Copenhagen. This report will bring together the findings of the three working groups covering the fundamental science on climate change, future risks and options for responding. I thank the Energy and Climate Change Committee for its inquiry into the IPCC’s report on the physical science basis of climate change. I welcome the Committee’s finding, which was that the IPCC procedures were robust, just as its conclusions are stark. The fifth assessment report represents the most up to date and comprehensive review of the science of climate change. It also provides an excellent vehicle for communicating climate science and will inform the international negotiations in Paris next year.

The science has spoken. As the Government, our priority is to communicate the actions we are taking in response. We must explain how the science underpins our actions, even if communication of science must be led by the scientists. In direct response to the Committee’s recommendations, we have taken action. I am delighted to say that we have updated our climate science brief on gov.uk, which went online earlier today.

[Andrew Miller]

Ah, we have stimulated something!

--- Later in debate ---

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman, speaking from a sedentary position, is absolutely right. We have taken action as a result.

We are also setting up an expert group to advise the Government and others on communicating climate science.

[Joan Walley]

I am interested to know who is on the expert group. Will the Minister elaborate on that?

[Amber Rudd]

I am not moving on from the expert group yet. I will say a few words about that. The matter was brought up in some detail by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston. We want to ensure that this group has an effective role and we are talking to those who are likely to be involved. We have set up the group and my Department has also set up the cross-Government climate change communications group and developed a cross-Government narrative, which climate science is part of.

The cross-Government communications group is composed of working-level officials invited from all Departments. It has met twice so far, in June and again on 15 August, and it will continue to meet for the foreseeable future. In the first meeting, 12 Departments attended, including the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The Scottish Government are also included. We also had representatives from the Department for International Development, the Treasury, the Environment Agency and the Met Office. That is another example of action following Committee recommendations.

My Department’s new chief scientific adviser, Professor John Loughhead, whom I was delighted to meet yesterday, on his first day, will have an active role in promoting understanding in this area, following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Professor David MacKay. The Government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Mark Walport, will of course also play an integral role. The Government will continue to work with the academies, learned societies and other experts, including the Met Office, to help ensure that authoritative scientific voices on climate science are more readily available to the general public.

However, most people do not need, or indeed want, to understand the detailed science; they want to understand what they can do. The good news is that the public in the UK understand that climate change is a serious issue. More than two thirds of people in the UK are concerned about climate change. This is a strong mandate for all political parties to take ambitious action to tackle climate change. That underpins this Government’s actions to seek an ambitious global deal in Paris next year and our policies to reduce UK emissions entrenched in the Climate Change Act, helping towards achieving our commitment of an 80% reduction of emissions by 2050.

[Graham Stringer]

Does the Minister agree with me and the Government’s chief scientific adviser that, although emissions are reducing, this country’s responsibility for putting increased amounts of carbon into the atmosphere has increased as we have imported more manufactured goods? Although one can boast about reduced emissions, actually there is a perverse consequence, which is that this country is responsible for more carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere.

--- Later in debate ---

[Amber Rudd]

The Government’s overall aim must be not only to reduce its own emissions, but to share that ambition with other countries. Even though we may slow down and—eventually, we hope—reduce this country’s emissions, that way of doing things is going to be really successful only if we bring other countries with us.

Although a small group—we may have a member of that group in this Chamber—is highly sceptical about action on climate change, fewer than one in 10 people in the UK think the benefits of tackling climate change are outweighed by the risks. In fact, six times as many people believe that the benefits of action outweigh the risks.

The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) challenged some views held strongly by other people, but he is in a distinct minority. I take issue with his wider point about this Government’s strategy, which is to reduce the emissions and the costs and to provide security of supply to consumers. It is wrong to characterise that strategy as in any way disadvantaging people who are worse off, because our clear plan is to ensure that the most vulnerable are always helped as much as possible. We do that through a number of strategies, led by my Department, particularly through the eco-subsidy, which is directed at the vulnerable.

Our challenge is to explain why climate change matters when people are concerned quite rightly about jobs, the economy and the cost of their energy bills. We must continue to talk about the risks posed by climate change, including risks of floods and heat waves, which have already increased in the UK, and the need to take action to avoid the unacceptable risks of sudden and irreversible climate disruption. However, alongside these risks, we must talk about the benefits that can flow from tackling climate change.

Our priority for communicating on climate change is to make sure that the importance and urgency of action on climate change continues to be heard, despite the weight of other concerns and other news. We recently laid out the case for climate action at local, national, regional and international level, and a global deal, in our Paris 2015 publication.

We are not in the game of chasing headlines. We know the science has spoken and we want informed, sensible debate on what we do about tackling climate change. We are working hard, responsibly and successfully to ensure that messages on climate change and our policies to reduce our emissions are accessible to the public, and to explain how these will affect other priorities, such as bills, health and, indeed, keeping the lights on. To do this we are looking wider than traditional media. Indeed, ahead of the next United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference of parties at the end of the year, I will be part of a wider Tweetathon in late November, communicating to all peoples and civic society, to debate these important issues.

We can avoid dangerous climate change through innovation and global will. Reducing emissions is part of securing economic growth. This is already happening. As a result of the commitment seen so far, new technologies are becoming available. For example, in only six years the cost of solar photovoltaic systems fell by two thirds. Costs continue to fall and deployment continues to accelerate. This month, the world’s first carbon-capture power station started operation. The UK is among the leaders in developing CCS.

My Department was instrumental in developing and launching a recent report on the new climate economy. The cast list was impressive. The report was overseen by a group of ex-Heads of Government, Finance Ministers and key chief executive officers from around the world. The IMF, the World Bank and the OECD were all involved. The report proves that economic growth and action to reduce emissions can go hand in hand.

The recent summit in New York showed that there is international will to tackle this global problem together. Our Prime Minister joined more than 100 world leaders and hundreds of leaders from business, finance and civil society. That global will at all levels of society will help to build momentum and find solutions.

The hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) suggested that the Government’s words did not match our actions, and I would take issue with that. My first example is the fact that the Prime Minister has, as she said, gone to the EU today to try to secure a deal for the whole of Europe. The UK has led, and it is now essential that we get the EU to come with us.

The Prime Minister was right to describe us as the greenest Government ever. We continue to be proud of saying that, and we are delivering not only at the international level, but locally through, for example, solar PV. Half a million households are now proud to have solar PV on their houses, and we hope that will continue. We also hope that solar PV, which has been so successful recently, will become subsidy-free by 2020.

I found myself in agreement with much of what the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) said, because she shares my concern about this being such a serious issue. She reminded us of the party consensus that exists. I feel we are the last generation to be able to change something, and the first to be absolutely able to act and to have the tools to do so.

The hon. Lady shares with me a commitment to ensuring that we take action, and she raised interesting questions about public awareness. The public’s activity in support of action is incredibly important. When I was in New York with the Prime Minister and other Environment and Energy Ministers for the recent summit, there was a climate change march of more than 400,000 people—in fact, marches took place in 40 cities throughout the world. When I had the opportunity, I told the people who were marching, “Please keeping doing this. Keep raising your voices. Keep reminding politicians how much you care about this and how much you will hold us to account, so that we continue to make the right decisions for your country and the world.”

The hon. Lady made an interesting point about education. I am aware that climate change is part of a GCSE geography syllabus, but I do not know whether it goes further than that, and I would like to come back to her on that.

To finish, many of those who purport to have issues with climate science do so because they do not like the implication of the solutions. Some may be worried that the proposed measures to tackle climate change are intrusive and at odds with the free market. However, the science is clear: human emissions are driving global temperatures upwards, and continued emissions will lead to further warming and many other changes to our planet. We need to take action to avoid unacceptable risks.

Let us talk about real solutions and options and about acceptable levels of risk, rather than wish the problem away. I am optimistic we can avoid dangerous climate change. It will take political will and technological change, and that is already happening. As I said, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister once again emphasised that climate change is one of the most serious threats facing our world and underlined UK leadership. We will continue to communicate what we are doing to tackle climate change and how we are playing a part in improving the UK’s energy efficiency, as well as our far-reaching plans to decarbonise our energy supply and to push for an ambitious global deal in Paris.

I would welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues further with members of both Committees, and I thank them for bringing this report to our attention.