Climate

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to declare a climate emergency.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I do not intend to rehearse the threats, challenges and opportunities presented by climate change, as these have been well covered in previous debates, but we know that climate change is real, it is here, it is now and we have to confront it. It cannot be dealt with tomorrow or the day after; it must be done today, every day of the year, and every year of every decade. It is the number one issue—not Brexit, not economic growth, not any of the other issues that we might feel passionate about.

My question today is whether the Government intend to treat the climate crisis with the urgency that it demands by declaring a climate emergency. We know from the world’s scientific community that fewer than 12 years are left to prevent 1.5 degrees of warming, which will cause huge problems for humanity—it is a massive threat. The Government’s policies and plans do not come close to meeting this deadline. An urgent and rapid global response is necessary, as has been recognised by 44 local authorities in the UK which have declared a climate emergency—that is since Carla Denyer’s motion in Bristol, with all those other councils following suit. Some 17,000 people have signed a petition on this issue, and thousands of young people across the country have been taking part in climate protests and school strikes to protect their future. And, of course, the campaign, Extinction Rebellion, and many other planet protectors are putting their bodies on the line to stop the disaster.

If we are to tackle the climate emergency, we must first call it a climate emergency—we have to acknowledge it. That would send out an essential signal to business, to industry and to the financial markets that our policies will be more ambitious and more stringent with time. Sending signals to the financial markets is crucial; fossil fuel companies and their reserves are heavily overvalued at the moment. There is a strong likelihood that we will see a fossil fuel crisis similar to the 2008 credit crisis once financial investors finally realise just how much of those fossil fuels have to stay in the ground.

That is why many people are calling for pension regulators to assess exposure to high carbon risk, for the Bank of England to factor in the carbon exposure of banks in its reserve requirements and for the London Stock Exchange to require all companies to make disclosure on fossil fuel risk. Pension funds, banks and other institutional investors have to be weaned off fossil fuels as a matter of urgency or their investments could go up in smoke.

There is no economic growth without the complex web of biodiversity that supports life on planet Earth. Climate breakdown will impact adversely on our ability to supply ourselves with water, food and safe shelter. It goes to the very heart of humanity’s safety.

The cumulative effect of CO₂ means that it is not just a matter of hitting a target by 2030 or 2050. If we fail to act today, we have to do more tomorrow. If we fail to reduce CO₂ now, the target for reductions in 2030 has to reduce even further to take into account our failures. Every failure of today’s generation imposes a new cost on the next generation. Today’s excesses are a cost that they have to pay.

It is a worldwide problem and we in the UK have to hit the brakes hard because of our historical legacy of the industrial revolution and the vast amount of CO₂ that we import from other countries—we take that for granted and tend to ignore it. Everything has a cost somewhere to somebody. It does not matter whether it is toys for Christmas, circuit boards for our computers, or exotic fruits—everything we import has a CO₂ burden.

No doubt the Minister will direct us to the Government’s Clean Growth Strategy as proof of how seriously they are taking climate change, but it is a very poor effort and extremely overoptimistic about the potential for change. Optimism is not enough. Optimism is often based in ignorance. We have only to compare the Government’s strategy to the scale of the government response to the investment in the project of delivering Brexit. The Clean Growth Strategy justifies inaction by looking at “a long term trajectory”, exploring “voluntary” standards and having aspirations,

“where practical, cost-effective and affordable”.

That is all absolute rubbish.

Meanwhile, Brexit is seeing billions of pounds ploughed into contingency planning, two-thirds of civil servants in some government departments are being told to drop everything to focus on this one issue, soldiers are ready to take over essential services, and several Bills have been rushed through Parliament alongside some 800 statutory instruments—all to fulfil a self-imposed deadline of two years, which has now been extended by a mere two weeks. If the Government can pull out all the stops to deliver on the so-called will of the people, I absolutely do not see why they cannot do the same for a climate emergency, which is the largest threat facing humanity.

Declaring the climate emergency is just the first step to treating the situation with the urgency it needs. The real policies come next. We need a green new deal which will create hundreds of thousands of jobs and a low-carbon economy, to enhance the Committee on Climate Change and to carbon-proof all new laws and policies—and we need billions of pounds invested by the Government to do this. The Treasury must not be afraid to increase the public debt substantially to head off this emergency.

Local authorities that have declared climate emergencies should be given a fund of money to go carbon-neutral by 2030. They deserve recognition by the Government for doing the right thing. The Government should set high standards that are enforceable and enforced, such as all new homes being carbon-neutral, and all existing homes being retrofitted to modern standards.

We have the Queen’s Speech coming up in May and the comprehensive spending review this summer. Now is the time for the Government to announce several new Bills alongside billions of pounds of funding to cope with the climate emergency. I see people taking a lot of notes, which I am very happy about; I hope it translates into action.

I assure your Lordships that Brexit planning is a drop in the ocean compared to the effort that we must put in to tackling the climate emergency; our great-grandchildren probably will not care whether or not we left the EU, but their lives will be permanently altered by whether or not we handled the climate emergency.

My conclusion is simple: when we fail to act today, we have to work twice as hard tomorrow. The Government must declare a climate emergency, taking climate change seriously in a way they simply have not envisaged so far. I therefore urge the Government to act now—today.