Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Mary Creagh(5 years, 9 months ago)
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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.
High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Mary Creagh(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Mary Creagh
That is a very important point. The impact on western Coventry and Birmingham international airport cannot be overstated. When I was 18, the journey time from Coventry to London was two hours, and the £9 billion upgrade has got that down considerably to an hour. To reduce it still further would be a phenomenal achievement in one’s own lifetime.
Mr Sheerman
My hon. Friend and I have been parliamentary neighbours and friends for a long time, so I say in a very positive spirit that I started off, as the Secretary of State has said, supporting HS2 because I thought it would bring power, wealth, activity and jobs to the northern regions, but I have changed my mind because the research increasingly shows that it will suck more power into and give more strength to London and the south-east. Does my hon. Friend share my concerns? The Institute of Economic Affairs raised such questions this morning.
Mary Creagh
I missed that last bit about this morning, but the report we have had and the Treasury analysis show that the benefits will accrue to Yorkshire and west Yorkshire, including my city and my hon. Friend’s town of Huddersfield. One of the key points of the Higgins report is that full investment in east-west rail links across the Pennines is one of the great prizes that HS2 can bring to our area.
Badger Cull
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Mary Creagh(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Sheerman
My hon. Friend knows that I am a great campaigner for the countryside, but following the points made by Conservative Members, let me say that there are many people in this country, as well as farmers, who love our countryside and care about our farm stock, but who care about the animals that have lived in the countryside for thousands of years. We do not have the evidence for this cull, and that is what those people resent. As Chair of a Select Committee, one’s watchword is, “If possible, build policies on the evidence.” This policy is not based on any evidence.
Mary Creagh
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.
Let me come back to the perturbation side of things. My understanding from the scientists who conducted the cull is that hard boundaries were used where it was possible. We all know that badgers can swim through rivers and cross roads, and we know that the biggest impact on the badger population is being run over on roads. Again, the efficacy of the hard boundaries has yet to be proven.
Labour’s culls took place over eight to 12 days; the proposed culls will take place over six weeks. That matters, because when Labour’s culls took place over more than 12 days, the level of TB in badgers increased by a factor of 1.7, showing that slow culls, which this Government are licensing, increase TB in badgers. If the methodology changes, so too do the predicted results. These culls risk making TB worse. Slow culling makes TB worse in badgers, and perturbation makes TB worse in cattle on neighbouring farms.
The Government say that the cull will work, but they have downplayed the risks of making things worse, and I think they have downplayed the risks to neighbouring farmers, too. If the culls are marred by protests, culling is likely to be driven under ground and become more localised, which will make bovine TB in cattle worse, as the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) mentioned. If it is driven underground and happens on a localised basis, the one thing we know is that it will drive the badgers away and increase the problem for the neighbouring farm. That is why illegal killing of badgers is so incredibly selfish of farmers, because it is effectively spreading the infection around the neighbourhood. Farmers are frustrated; I understand that. They believe that this cull is the solution, but they also want a science-led solution. This is not that solution. That is why the badger cull will be bad for farmers.
Let me deal now with why the badger cull will be bad for the taxpayer. What has been the cost to the taxpayer so far? It has been over £300,000 for licensing activities carried out by Natural England, while sett monitoring has cost £750,000. An independent expert panel to monitor the cull has cost £17,000, and surveying the reserve site in Dorset will add to the total. Since April 2012, six DEFRA staff have been working on the cull. This cull has already cost the taxpayer well over £1 million—before it has even started.
What will be the costs to the taxpayer if the cull proceeds? The estimated cost of humaneness monitoring is £700,000, and badger post-mortems another £250,000. The policing costs for each cull area are put at £500,000 a year. There is a strong steer from the police that they will need to send armed officers to police any night-time demonstrations, taking up scarce police resources.
Environmental Protection and Green Growth
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Mary Creagh(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Mary Creagh
When we were in government, we invested £60 million to allow wind turbine manufacturers to invest in our ports.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend should ignore the campaign against having an environmental agenda, because it is not against business. The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills visited David Brown Gear Systems in Huddersfield—I am the Member of Parliament for Huddersfield, although many people from Colne Valley also work there. We are now specialising in offshore wind power, which is providing jobs and high technology. There is real money in the environment, but the Government are retreating from their green agenda.
Mary Creagh
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend.
I must tell the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) that a green company in my constituency, Logicor, manufactures a product called a green plug, and has business angel backing to roll it out nationally and internationally. The plug fits to an iron or other appliance, and automatically turns it off after 15 or 20 minutes if someone leaves the room and forgets to do so. It has been shown that that can reduce carbon emissions in the home by about 50%. The company’s research demonstrated that what we all fail to switch off most often is our computer printer. I share that with the House and the nation for those who wish do their bit on climate change.
Public Forest Estate (England)
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Mary Creagh(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
People care about our forests in this country. What we all want is a more diverse forest, with the old English oaks alongside other trees, but that is very expensive to achieve, so yes, I want a Forestry Commission that buys more land and turns it into diverse forest. What we have with commercial interests is a drive always to plant fir, to secure quick commercial returns.
Mary Creagh
My hon. Friend raises a key point. Much of the timber stock that is now ready for felling is being felled by the Forestry Commission, which is replanting it with broadleaf native English oak, ash and beech. If we sell off the timber stock, we lose the chance to change the shape and structure of the forests. Next year, with the sale of 10,000 hectares, this Government will sell more in one year than Labour sold in 13 years in government, and they will do the same for each of the following years. The holdings could include sites in national parks—I hope that Members from Exmoor are listening—community forests, areas of outstanding natural beauty, or sites of special scientific interest.