Durban Climate Change Conference

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Huhne]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his interest in that area and the work he has done. The Congo basin initiative is absolutely crucial. We aim to work with some interesting projects through bilateral support from the UK Government for some key forest nations, which will be in the Amazon, the Congo basin and Indonesia. Further progress was made through the technical achievements in the working groups, which he will find set out in the full agreement.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The Secretary of State talked about the importance of monitoring. Monitoring is important, but so is action. I am deeply worried that, unless we see much faster action, we risk going down in history as the species that spent all its time monitoring it own extinction, rather than taking active steps to avoid it. The Durban agreement will not limit global warming to 2°, as he acknowledged, which means that we are on course for exceedingly dangerous climate change, so what will he do to ensure that the EU moves as fast as possible, unilaterally if necessary, to a 30% reduction target by 2020?

[Chris Huhne]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. Action is the most important ultimate benchmark of what we do, but I urge her not to underestimate the importance of knowledge in informing action. One of the key gaps that we need to fill in this area is regular reporting and attention on the gap between what we are doing and what we need to do to hold the global temperature rise to within 2°, beneath the level that would create dangerous climate change. I have had discussions not only with Marcin Korolec, the Environment Minister of Poland, which currently holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union, but with Martin Lidegaard, the Energy and Climate Change Minister of Denmark, which will hold the presidency for the first half of next year. I had good conversations with him in Durban and am confident that the Danes will bring forward some clear time within the Council to ensure that we make real progress towards some of the key staging posts in reaching 30%. Perhaps most progress will be made on the energy efficiency directive, because it should be relatively easy to agree and we know that energy efficiency measures tend to have benefits outright. We are thinking about how to do that and I hope that the European Union will be able to move forward on domestic action in the first six months of next year.