Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. As a former teacher, I am here because I want to prevent young people from having to do that again. We are coming up to exams, and it would be better if they stayed in school, but it is incumbent on us to ensure that action is taken.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I agree enthusiastically with the hon. Lady about the energy and enthusiasm that we saw from young people on that Friday? I have grandchildren in Cambridge who demonstrated, as did schools in my constituency, and their energy and enthusiasm was remarkable. That is what we need to save this fragile planet.

[Layla Moran]

I could not agree more. Climate change, as those young people were saying, is the biggest issue facing our planet, and in 2018 extreme weather hit every populated continent, killing, injuring and displacing millions, and causing major economic damage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

If my hon. Friend will allow me, I will just make a bit more progress.

When I was discussing this issue with these young people, I was conscious that none of them knew that the UK was the first developed economy to pass a Climate Change Act. Why should they? In a way, it is a rather a processy thing to know. Nevertheless, it does show that across this House there has been a determination to act. This country has reduced its emissions by over 40%—more than any other developed G7 economy. I asked how many of them knew about Blue Belt and all their hands stayed down. Blue Belt is one of the policies in recent years that I am most proud of. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) was fundamental in driving that through despite, I have to say, a bit of institutional opposition in certain Departments, but he did it and we are now protecting an area of sea the size of India. That will shortly grow to much larger areas and we are policing that with modern satellite technology. It is an extraordinary thing that we in Britain should be proud of, particularly those of us who were swept away by “Blue Planet II”. At least we have a Government who are doing something about this.

There has been a huge leap in renewable energy. Record amounts of power are now generated renewably. The 25-year environment plan has things in it that those young people would be really pleased to see, and they would of course be right to push us to make sure that it happens. Work has been done in this House in recent months, particularly on the Government Benches—with letters to the Prime Minister and Ministers, and meetings with the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth, who will respond to the debate—to move to net zero, which I think is clearly inevitable.

Why do we need that to happen? We need it to happen because the science is clear—it is staring us in the face. In October last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that there was an even chance of meeting a 1.5° target for global CO₂ emissions and spoke of the absolute imperative of reaching net zero. It set forth this extraordinary challenge to policy makers all over the world: there are 12 years left to deliver that. I am really pleased that the Minister, who has responsibility for climate change, has instructed the Committee on Climate Change to do a feasibility—an impact—study on what net zero would mean and what we would be requiring our economy to do. It is no good we in this House just using terms such as “net zero” without really understanding that there will be an impact. It will affect businesses, but if we do this in the right way, first, businesses can transition, and secondly, there is an economic opportunity for Britain to continue to be a centre for green growth. That fits in with the clean growth strategy.

In the wider context, this is a key moment for the United Kingdom. Domestically, we have new legislation coming before the House on fisheries, farming, the environment and other related subjects. As a farmer, a conservationist, and someone who has been, and is, active in the non-governmental organisation movement—I am a trustee of a charity called Plantlife—I am excited by the opportunities offered to take control of our environmental agenda and to make sure we do what we have been talking about for a long time, but seem unable to do, which is to reverse the declines in biodiversity, to significantly reduce emissions from agriculture, to weaponise, if you like, the natural environment, to lock up carbon and to be a sustainable source of the necessities of life, such as clean water.

[Mr Sheerman]

I know of the right hon. Gentleman’s great reputation as a farmer. Do we not have to do something about the dairy industry and the effect on waterways, rivers and streams?

[Richard Benyon]

I think that the best way to protect our environment is to have more grass in rotation. If people make sweeping statements that close down certain industries—[Interruption.] I know that that was not the point that the hon. Gentleman was making, but there are swings and roundabouts. I was probably the only dairy farmer in the House of Commons until I stopped being a dairy farmer, so I know a little bit about this, and I am happy to talk to him about it.

Internationally, our leadership in tackling climate change, the protection of our oceans and reducing pollution can be a key component of what people mean when they refer to “global Britain”. As a Minister—and a devout pro-European—I sat in international forums such as the International Whaling Commission and the United Nations Conference of the Parties, and I sat for too long in EU co-ordination meetings, lowering the ambitions of the UK so that there could be a single, agreed view across the European Union. Now we can have those ambitions. We can raise our game. We can reconnect with organisations from which we have withdrawn. I am looking for silver linings to our current cloud, and that is very much one of them.

Let me end by returning to the issue of the schools strike. We make a mistake if we—whom those children would view as old people—complain about their having the nerve to bunk off school, or if we just tell them the good things. We need to agree with them that there is a problem and much more needs to be done, and we need to explain it.

Thank goodness climate change is a cross-party issue in this country, whereas in the United States it is a polarising, divisive issue. We can do this together, and we can be a world leader.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Creagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. One of the things we did in our green finance reports last year was talk to the top 25 pension funds in the country and ask them what they were doing in this area, and of course we talked to our own parliamentary pension fund as well, and we ranked them as engaged, moderately engaged and less engaged. We need to shape and bend the entire financial system to invest in this new green economy and to ensure a just transition, because in areas such as mine, Wakefield, which were dependent on coal, we must not have thousands of people just being left on the dole. We need to skill up the current generations to meet the green future we want to see.

[Mr Sheerman]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of our other great strengths is our great science in this country—the science base? Good policy based on great science really works.

[Mary Creagh]

I totally and passionately agree. We on the Environmental Audit Committee are privileged to have global thought leaders appearing before us and giving us the best available science. It is sometimes rather chilling, however; for example, Professor Jim Skea from the IPCC told us that our assumptions about how quickly we can decarbonise are perhaps over-optimistic and based on new technologies that have not yet been invented, so perhaps the discount rate for future technologies needs to be lower than at present. There are some truly profound moments in our Committee, and I am sure my hon. Friend would be very welcome to join it; we also have a couple of spaces for Conservative Members, so I hope we can get some volunteers following today’s discussion.

We have been leaders in this, and people still look to the UK for both thought leadership and policy action leadership. We provided that under the last Labour Government with the Climate Change Act 2008. A weakness in that Act has become apparent, however: there was no review process. We set up the Committee on Climate Change, which advises the Government—all well and good—but then it is up to the Government to heed that advice or to ignore it, which is less good, and there is no review process, so now if we do need to set this zero net emissions target, we will need to re-legislate, and I will be interested to hear from the Minister about the necessary policy mechanisms.

We have signed up to the 2015 Paris agreement and to the UN sustainable development goals to create a more equitable, sustainable world. Our Government will subject us to a voluntary national review at the UN this year, and I urge all Members of this House to participate in that process. It is about how we end poverty, violence and hunger in every aspect of our communities. Our Committee has looked at the hunger aspect, and I welcome the fact that the Department for Work and Pensions and the Office for National Statistics will now start to measure hunger in our country. Real sustainability comes not just with social justice, but with climate justice as well.

I want to talk about why net zero emissions matter. In October 2018, the UN’s leading scientists—some of whom were British—showed what could happen if we do not get to net zero. Extreme weather is already happening; the warming is already with us, as we are seeing with the tragic events on Saddleworth Moor, the heatwaves in the Artic last year and the fact that we have had the hottest February day on record. The Arctic is warming twice as quickly as the rest of the planet, and in February 2018 temperatures at the North Pole rose above freezing during the polar nights, which is when the sun has not even started to come up; it was 30° higher than normal. When we talk about an average of 1.5°, that means a 7° rise at the North Pole. That is catastrophic for the melting of the sea ice.

We had a deadly summer last year, and we also had the highest number of excess deaths last year because of the beast from the east; we had 40,000 excess winter deaths in this country. So when we talk about climate, we are also talking about ourselves; we are talking about the fact that we are conducting a vast experiment on the only system on which our life depends. We do not know what we are doing; we do know how to stop it, but there is a kind of collective passivity around the action needed. When we see cities such as Cape Town in South Africa running out of water, and when we see power stations in Australia unable to work because it is too hot, we have to ask ourselves what a 1.5° or even a 2° warmed world will look like.

The IPCC also showed us what the difference is between 1.5° and 2°. At 2° sea levels will be 10 cm higher. That means 10 million more people will be affected by flooding and coastal erosion. That is what the difference between 1.5° and 2° means. At 2°, all coral reefs die. Our children will never see a coral reef at 2°. If we keep the increase to 1.5°, one third of reefs might survive. We have cold water reefs on our shores that we do not know about. We do not value what is beneath the ocean.

Our species are becoming extinct at a rate that has not been seen since the last global mass extinction. We have just been hearing about the insect Armageddon. Our planetary health inquiry found that rates of extinction are between 100 and 1,000 times higher than what is considered to be natural diversity loss. This affects our food systems, because if pollinator populations are devastated, we will have to pollinate our fruit trees by hand, as is already being done in parts of China.

Soil is the only carbon sequestration system that is known to work at scale and for free, yet we keep treating our soil like dirt. [Laughter.] That was my little joke. Soil is the Cinderella ecosystem. We like clean air and clean water, but what we should really like is dirty dirt. The more dirt that is in our soil—I do not mean bad dirt; I mean organic content—the better it is. In Paris, we signed up to increase our soil carbon content by four parts per 1,000, but I have not yet seen any policy to support that, either in the public goods debate around farming or from the Minister. I would be grateful if we heard something about how we will incentivise farmers to achieve that and to incentivise urban guerrilla gardeners such as myself to achieve it in our own homes. If I knew how to do it, believe me I would.