COP26: Limiting Global Temperature Rises

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

It is an honour to be called so early in this most important debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on obtaining it at such a timely moment, and on speaking with her characteristic enthusiasm and charm, if I may say so, while not relenting on the urgency of the problem and the challenge that we face.

I will be attending the COP as Chairman of the Liaison Committee with a number of other Select Committee Chairs, and we will be concentrating very much on how we scrutinise the Government’s performance to deliver the COP goals. I think that this House sometimes gets a little negative, by finding fault with what the Government have or have not done. We should ask creatively and think positively about what the Government are going to do in the future and hold them accountable for that. [Interruption.] That is not a criticism of the Opposition. I have been in opposition as well; I know what it is like. This is too important. That is what we are going to do. We want the Government to define the metrics by which they will measure the performance of their own Departments.

I do not agree with all the hon. Lady’s figures, but if hon. Members watch the video that I produced just before the conference—if people google “Bernard Jenkin COP debate YouTube”, they will find the 11-minute video that I launched about climate change—they will see that she almost understates the perilous future that humanity faces on the present projections. The IPCC’s midpoint projections show that we are planning, as a race, to put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere between now and the end of this century than in the whole of human history so far. That is completely unacceptable, but that is the current trend. We have to change that.

We have to change the population projections. We cannot have over 11 billion people on the face of this planet by the end of this century; we will destroy the opportunity of our children and our grandchildren to survive. We cannot continue the massive decimation of species in our oceans and on our lands among the five living kingdoms of species on this planet. We are seeing an acceleration of species decline as we speak. And we cannot continue the wanton despoliation of our planet—the rape of our seas, the plundering of natural resources, the destruction of carbon-absorbing habitats—which is also still accelerating, despite all that we are doing.

In order for us to address that, this country must demonstrate that we can do and lead better than anyone else. I am the first to admire how the Prime Minister has put the environment at the top of the Government’s agenda, set targets and put this issue at the heart of the national debate, but we must still do much better. The machinery of government is simply not up to this. The Cabinet Committee system and the Cabinet Office are not thinking strategically enough about these huge challenges to deliver what is necessary. I have long complained, in this House and in my work as a Select Committee Chair, about the lack of strategic capacity at the heart of Government. That is what we must now address, and that is what I will be addressing.