Intergenerational Fairness in Government Policy

Baroness Featherstone Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Featherstone (LD)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Smith on bringing this important debate to the Floor of this House. It is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate, and I too will speak on climate change in due course.

I first came to this House to stand at the Bar to listen to the debate on same-sex marriage, and I believe that, unlike some parts of our population, this House is considerate of the generations to come. In that debate I heard a number of your Lordships say that they were not necessarily totally convinced themselves but, following discussions with their children and grandchildren, who had said that they would never speak to them again if they voted the wrong way, they had changed their mind. It was that consideration for the generations to come and the sort of world that would be created that I noted.

Since coming to this House myself, I have not been able to help but notice that there seems more of an acceptance that remaining in the EU might not be such a bad thing because of the great act of self-harm that leaving may be for future generations, who, in the same way, may not forgive their parents and grandparents for what is to come. Therefore, I think that your Lordships consider intergenerational fairness in a way that the population in general does not.

The well-being of future generations depends on the actions that we take today. Each generation has a responsibility to pass on this earth in at least as good a condition as the one that we inherited from our forebears. There can be no more intergenerational harm than that which will be done by climate change. If we do not hold the rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees, or at the very least to under 2 degrees, future generations will suffer the consequences. It is our duty to hand on to our children their share of the planet’s natural resources and to ensure that our profligate use does not damage their futures. If we do not, future generations will suffer the detrimental effects that they are left to survive, together with the higher costs that will be forced on them by having to adapt to a future where the extremes of weather which we have all seen to date will be as nothing compared to what will come.

Climate change raises serious issues of justice between the present generation and future generations. We will feel the effect in the United Kingdom, of course, but, while we will suffer here, it will be as nothing compared with the ravages that will take hold elsewhere, mostly in the parts of the world where the poorest and most vulnerable live.

When I was a Minister in DfID, I experienced the effects that climate change are already having. I felt the desertification under my feet in Darfur and I saw for myself what too much water in Asia and too little water in Africa can do. It is no use thinking that we will be okay because we are not in the front line of climate change: there will be not only wars over water but, as my noble friend said, flows of migration escaping famine, drought and floods that will make the streams of refugees we have seen fleeing conflict as nothing.

Climate change will make the already stark inequalities in our world much worse than they already are. Not only are the societal impacts clear but the economic consequences of dislocation will be catastrophic. Our natural world will suffer horrendous loss—the loss of existing species, both flora and fauna, and the loss of diversity, which will consequentially mean that future generations do not have options: they will lose the range of options that we currently enjoy in addressing the needs of our own era. So we have a clear duty and responsibility to the future. It is clear that, if we do not take radical action, weather will become more extreme. Coastal areas, even in the United Kingdom, will flood and precipitation patterns will change.

However, we are not powerless in this. We, and the world, can take radical action. The Paris agreement, which has been referred to, saw the world come together and sign up to keeping the rise in temperature to 2 degrees or less. The signing of that agreement was a glorious moment in time: thinking of future generations, accepting responsibility for our own actions and the consequences thereof, and taking real action to turn the tide. But there has been no change of pace since we signed the agreement.

When I came into post as energy and climate change spokesperson, what struck me most was that there was no sense of urgency, but this is urgent. We need to have zero carbon by 2050 to meet our Paris agreement commitment. That is Liberal Democrat policy. We recently published a report, A Vision for Britain: Clean, Green and Carbon Free, in case noble Lords wish to read it. It is possible to get there but, to do so, we have to go further and faster than this country’s current commitment to an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050. We have to aim to reduce greenhouse gases by 80% by 2040, if not earlier.

As I said, to get there, we have to go further and faster, forging ahead on every front. We have to have more investment in renewables and in innovative technology. We definitely have to have carbon capture and storage, otherwise we have no hope of making it. We need a major programme on energy efficiency, and there we should think of future generations, because currently we are just wasting energy, generally allowing it to exit through the roofs of our homes. We need to accelerate the deployment of renewables. We need a new governance structure, a rapid rollout of storage technologies and an integrated electricity systems operator. We have to reduce demand. We have to address aviation and shipping, optimise supply chains, tackle industry, ensure a circular economy, have support for low-carbon heat and low-carbon transport, and afforestation. We also need close co-operation with the EU—I wish.

And what about our peatlands? They are not even counted in our emissions. What about community energy, housing standards, as mentioned earlier today in Questions, and onshore wind? What about heat pumps and tidal lagoons? For goodness’ sake, let us give the go-ahead to Swansea Bay as the first of many tidal lagoons. What about biogas? And what about climate risk in terms of the financial exposure of our great corporations? All that has to be done—that is the scary thing. Every single bit of it has to be done to the max, and it can be done only with political will. If are to deliver on our pledge to future generations, we have a long way to go, but what we are proposing at the moment does not go far enough. However, we owe it to the future. We have been a profligate generation but we are also the generation that can save the future if we act now.