COP26: Limiting Global Temperature Rises

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

“That this House has considered COP26 and limiting global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

It is a pleasure to open the debate on COP26 and limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5°C. I would like to thank the Backbench Business Committee for recognising the pressing need for this debate and all Members who have offered their support.

The 2015 Paris agreement commits parties to:

“Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”.

The difference that just half a degree can make has been underscored by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on 1.5°C. It could mean many millions more people being subjected to life-threatening climate events from unprecedented crop failures and food insecurity to risks from diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, extreme heat and sea level rises. Staying below 1.5°C is essential for all of us, yet the IPCC’s most recent report warned that unless there are

“immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5°C or even 2°C will be beyond reach.”

Globally, far from being on track for the 45% emission reduction by 2030 that scientists say is essential, we are on course for an emissions rise of 16%.

That is the context in which the UK is hosting COP26 in Glasgow. That is why the coming decade has been called the most consequential decade in human history, and it is why, as COP26 president and as the nation that led the industrial revolution, fuelled by coal and colonialism, the UK has a particular responsibility to lead the transition to a sustainable, just and resilient world in line with the science and with climate justice.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for opening the debate, and she knows I listen carefully to what she says. I really welcome the net zero strategy the Government announced this week. I think Ministers do deserve credit for being the first major economy to legislate for net zero, and we are decarbonising faster than any G7 country. I realise that for our opponents there is a temptation to pour scorn, express cynicism and say it will never be enough, but as somebody who is nationally recognised as being a thought leader in this space, which part of the Government’s net zero strategy outlined this week would she like to praise and give credit to?

[Caroline Lucas]

I have no problem in praising the Government’s targets. What I have problems with is looking at the fact that there is a dearth of actual actions to meet those targets. That is what we see again and again. The Climate Change Committee has itself said that there are no real plans to deliver the targets that are set. Frankly, the climate cares very little for targets. What it wants are the concrete policies to meet them.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for everything she has done in bringing these issues to the House for our attention. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as host of this year’s conference, must be vocal and committed in relation to our net zero emissions, and thereby pose as role models for others to follow. Does the hon. Lady agree?

[Caroline Lucas]

Absolutely. Leading by example is crucial: we have to walk the talk.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

No one questions the hon. Lady’s commitment on these issues, but is it not a bit unfair to criticise the Government for a lack of concrete action when, for example, the proportion of electricity generated by coal has fallen, since 2013, from 40% to less than 2%? That is a real change. When it comes to looking forward, a number of new technologies are still necessary if we are going to avoid the climate tipping point. Does she agree that investment in science and technology is going to be a crucial part of the mix?

[Caroline Lucas]

The right hon. Member is absolutely right. The power sector is the one sector that is going faster than the others, and that is an area where we can have a greater amount of confidence. My colleague, the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), did just whisper to me, “Thanks to the Lib Dems when they were in coalition Government”. It is also of course to do with some of the big changes made some time ago under Margaret Thatcher—we would not necessarily say that they were done for the right reasons and in the right way, but they certainly did get emissions down—and I do pay tribute for that particular part of the equation.

On science and technology, yes, of course they are going to have a massive role to play, but so too is Government changing the policy framework within which decisions are made. The difference between some of us on this side of the House and those on the right hon. Gentleman’s side is that, all too often, it sounds as though Conservative Members are imagining we can continue with business as usual but, with some technology, just changing the technologies we are using to deliver that business as usual. What we recognise is that we need not just behaviour change, but systems change. We need to change the kind of economic system we have, which is a far bigger change than what we have been talking about so far.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Caroline Lucas]

Let me just make a little bit of progress, and I promise that I will let others in.

The UK presidency has identified four goals for COP26. The first is to secure global net zero by mid-century and keep 1.5°C within reach, but I want to say to the House that the climate does not actually care much about target dates. What matters is how much carbon has been emitted into the atmosphere and how much will be emitted over the rest of this century. The figures are quite stark, so I hope that the House will indulge me while I go through them.

Based on the IPCC’s calculations, the global remaining carbon budget—the total we can afford to burn between now and the time we reach net zero if we want to give ourselves a two thirds chance of staying within 1.5°C of warming—is just 320 billion tonnes from the start of next year. Given that we are currently burning through that at a rate of 40 billion tonnes a year, it does not take much to do the maths and to conclude that, by 2030, it will be gone if we do not rapidly rid ourselves of fossil fuels. That is the global picture.

To replay that in the domestic picture for our own carbon targets, if we divide the global budget equally on a per capita basis, but also allow for our disproportionate responsibility for the cumulative emissions in the atmosphere—after all, we were the leaders of the industrial revolution—it has been calculated that it would leave the UK a budget of just 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. That is a vanishingly small amount in the wider scheme of things when we adjust still further to allow for the carbon burned overseas in the service of UK consumption as well as our territorial emissions. Measured like that, our total carbon footprint is about 500 million tonnes a year. Again, I say to the House: do the maths. That gives us barely five years before our 2.4 billion tonne budget is gone. That is the reality. That is the inconvenient truth.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

The hon. Member is making an excellent beginning to this great debate, and it is so good to see so many people speaking. What does she make of the cuts to international aid, which have made the problem for the future outlook even worse?

[Caroline Lucas]

I will certainly be coming to that shortly, because I cannot think of a more damaging thing to have done a matter of months, as it was, before the COP26—a big global summit at which we need to have the trust of the developing countries. I think the idea that one of the richest countries in the world would just slash our aid budget is absolutely unforgivable, and we cannot be surprised that some of the poorest countries do not have confidence in us.

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

The hon. Member is making some excellent points in her speech. On the point about developing nations, it is the most vulnerable who pay the price, and international climate finance is based on debt, which is locking these countries into more debt. Would she not agree that now is the time to look at grants to help these developing nations and communities get out of that?

[Caroline Lucas]

I could not agree more with the hon. Lady. It is quite shocking for people to realise that so much of our climate finance is actually in the form of loans, not grants. Given that we are talking about some of the most vulnerable countries in the world, which are already trying to cope with the impacts of climate change, for which they were entirely not responsible, I think the idea that we are then going to ask them for interest on those debts is absolutely obscene.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I was very proud to support this debate, and I am delighted that the hon. Member has secured it. Is that not why the concept of climate justice is so important? We should recognise the historical obligation we have in this part of the world for having contributed to climate change to those who have done the least to cause it and who are being hit first and hardest. That is a concept the Scottish Parliament has recognised and is trying to live up to, and it is a standard that we still have not heard the UK Government accept. Would it not be helpful if, at the end of this debate, the Minister said that the UK Government accepted the need to achieve climate justice?

[Caroline Lucas]

I could not thank the hon. Member more for his intervention. I think he has been reading my notes, because I was going to make exactly that point. The Prime Minister himself has said:

“It is the biggest economies in the world that are causing the problem, while the smallest suffer the worst consequences.”

Yet he has not grasped the implications of his own statement. As the hon. Member has just said, climate justice means the biggest economies doing far more and being far more ambitious than net zero in 30 years’ time. Climate justice means cutting emissions at home, without overreliance on international offsets or costly and uncertain negative emissions technologies. Climate justice also means recognising the obscenity of continuing with business as usual knowing that young people, especially those in climate-vulnerable countries, are paying for it literally with their futures.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her excellent speech. Following that point, at COP26 do we need to get proper funding for technology transfer to the poorest countries in the world, which need such technology to protect their environments? Unfortunately, the signs following covid, where there has not been a proper sharing of vaccines or vaccine knowledge, are not good. We have to internationalise our knowledge freely across the whole world in order to protect the environment on which we all rely.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, with which I wholeheartedly agree. I particularly agree that if we look at the covid pandemic as an example of international co-operation, it does not augur well. If we cannot properly share technology and vaccines even when our own wellbeing depends so directly on that, it does not augur well for the climate crisis. We absolutely need the kind of technology transfer to which he refers.

Let me say a few words about the Government’s own track record, because we are not on track to meet the fourth and fifth carbon budgets, let alone the sixth carbon budget, which is the first to be based on net zero by 2050, rather than the older 80% reduction. Just last month, Green Alliance calculated that the Government policies announced since 2020 will cut emissions by just 24% by 2032, and that the policies out for consultation, even if enacted, would still fall far short of the fifth carbon budget. This week’s publications of the net zero strategy and the heat and building strategy lack ambition. They lack urgency and—crucially—they lack the serious funding we need. As a result they still do not do enough to get us back on track. Time is running out in the race for our future, and the Government are barely over the starting line.

Not only are the Government not doing enough of the right things, but they are actively doing too many wrong things. Consider some of the most egregious examples on the charge sheet: a £27 billion road building scheme; the expansion of airports; scrapping the green homes grant just six months after it was introduced; stripping climate change clauses out of trade deals; and an obligation still in statute to maximise the economic recovery of UK petroleum. Perhaps most egregious of all, we are pressing ahead with Cambo, a new oilfield off Shetland. No wonder the Climate Change Committee has concluded that the Government continue to

“blunder into high carbon choices”.

Leading by example on climate and nature matters, not just here at home, but because globally the first rule of diplomacy is to walk your talk. Perhaps it is not surprising that, despite what I am sure have been the best efforts of the COP26 President-designate, the Government have so far failed to persuade many other countries to come forward with climate targets aligned to 1.5°C. Indeed, Gambia is currently the only country whose climate pledge is compatible with 1.5°C. Based on the UN’s assessment of the nationally determined contributions submitted so far, the world is on track for warming of around 2.7°C. That cannot be allowed to happen. Shamefully, almost 90 countries responsible for more than 40% of global emissions, including China and India, failed to meet the UN deadline at the end of July to submit new pledges ahead of the Glasgow meeting. What more will the Government do to galvanise more ambitious action to keep 1.5°C alive? What is the President’s plan post-COP26 if the world’s collective pledges are not compatible with 1.5°C?

The Government’s second goal for COP26 is to adapt to protect communities and natural habitats. Globally, Ministers need to lead efforts for a new post-2025 public finance goal, specifically for adaptation, and ensure that other countries and the multilateral development banks follow the UK’s commitment to ringfence 50% of climate finance for adaptation. We need a scaling up of locally led adaptation and support that is accessible and responsive to the needs of marginalised groups. We also need ambitious and rigorous ecosystem protection and restoration incorporated into the enhanced nationally determined contributions and adaptation plans of all countries. Nature, with its vast ability to store carbon and cushion us from shocks such as flooding, is our biggest ally in the fight against climate breakdown. It is therefore shocking that just weeks before the start of COP26, more than 100 fires have been reported on England’s peatlands. They are a vital carbon store, and it is environmental vandalism to set fire to them right now. The climate and nature emergencies are two sides of the same coin, and they need to be addressed together with far greater co-ordination.

Let me move to the third goal of mobilising finance. The COP26 President has stated that delivering the 10-year finance pledge is a matter of trust. Yes it is, but when that pledge has not been delivered anything like in full, trust is at breaking point. Any leverage that the UK might have had in persuading others to step up has been carelessly thrown away by its becoming the only G7 country to cut overseas aid in the midst of a pandemic. That unforgiveable decision means that climate programmes are being slashed, leaving some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries bearing the brunt. For example, aid to Bangladesh has been cut by more than £100 million. It is not too late to change direction, restore the official development assistance budget, ensure that climate finance is genuinely new and additional, and increase our commitment so that we are providing our fair share.

We must also act on loss and damage—a subject far too long consigned to the margins of negotiations. I welcome the UK presidency’s more constructive approach to that issue, including making progress on operationalising the so-called Santiago Network, but we need to do more. We must facilitate a process to scale up dedicated finance specifically for loss and damage, and we must acknowledge that as the third pillar of climate action, on a par with mitigation and adaptation. We must ensure that it has its own dedicated space on every COP agenda, and take forward calls for a specific loss and damage champion. It is long past time for the more wealthy countries to put aside their concerns about liability and compensation, and instead to come from a place of solidarity and human rights, in order to make meaningful progress on loss and damage and delivering new finance. As the young Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate has said:

“Our leaders are lost and our planet is damaged…You cannot adapt to lost cultures, you cannot adapt to lost traditions, you cannot adapt to lost history, you cannot adapt to starvation. You cannot adapt to extinction.”

The climate crisis is pushing many communities beyond their ability to adapt.

The fourth goal of the COP26 presidency is to work together to deliver. No one would argue with that, but I go back to the context in which these talks are being held. The summit is taking place while the pandemic continues to rage in many of the poorest countries, as a direct result of vaccine apartheid. Only around 2% of the populations of low-income countries have received even one dose of the vaccine, and of the 554 million doses promised by the richest nations, just 16% have so far reached their destination. That failure is morally obscene, as well as running entirely counter to our own self-interest. If COP26 is to succeed, the concerns and justified anger of countries in the global south urgently need to be addressed. That means providing enough finance and vaccines to match the need, waiving intellectual property rights, and transferring technical capacity and expertise.

Glasgow is not only crucial for delivering climate ambition and finance in line with the Paris agreement; it is also a litmus test for safer, fairer, more inclusive forms of economic restructuring and global governance. It is a chance urgently to shift to an economic system that values the long-term wellbeing of people and planet above the endless growth that, in the words of the OECD, has generated “significant harms” over recent decades. When the climate crisis is caused by our extractive, exploitative economic model, we cannot expect to win the chance for a better future by re-running a race that we see we will ultimately lose, and that everyone else will lose as well.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for allowing me to intervene before she winds up her speech, and I am pleased that she secured the support of the Backbench Business Committee to hold this important debate ahead of COP26, which starts in under two weeks. She has spoken powerfully, and in the light of what she has said, does she agree that the UK is showing leadership in, for example, including international aviation and maritime emissions in our sixth carbon budget—we are the first and, so far, only country prepared to do that? She has called on this country to do that for some time, so will she at least welcome it?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee for his intervention. I welcome the fact that aviation and shipping will be brought into our climate budgets but, as always, the devil will be in the detail. I have great concern that some will try to find ways of assuming that technology can get us out of this hole as well. I suggest that it cannot, and that we need proposals such as those made by the citizens Climate Assembly on a frequent flier levy. I think we need to change behaviour, rather than think that technology will get us out of the hole, but I look forward to seeing the Government’s plans. [Interruption.] I am winding up, Madam Deputy Speaker—I have less than four minutes. You will be pleased to know I have a page to go, and I am rattling through it.

To conclude, if the UK Government are to rise to the challenge of being president of the most important global summit in a generation, and if we are to keep 1.5° alive, we need a justice reset to be at the heart of all four of the Government’s objectives. Will the Minister therefore say what more will be done to ensure that countries such as China, Russia and Brazil step up, and to demonstrate more ambitious leadership at home? Will she urge her colleagues in the Government to reverse the aid cut and step up with new funds for loss and damage, and will she propose a revision to our own domestic emissions reduction target based on that new understanding of what constitutes our fair share of the global climate budget?

I am championing in Parliament the new climate and ecological emergency Bill, which sets out a legal framework to do just that. It is backed by more than 115 MPs and many councils, businesses and organisations, and I commend it to the Minister. This is our last chance—our best chance. The young people who are striking for the climate and for a safer world know that. The workers who are demanding a just transition know that. The businesses that are, frankly, far outstripping Governments when it comes to climate targets and actions know that. It is time for the Government to recognise that we can all win, and that to successfully rise to the challenges facing us all—to seize this chance—is perfectly possible with the political will. If we do not do it, we will never be forgiven by history.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

I am sorry, but I just want to set the record straight. It is not the case that the UK is responsible for only 1% of our global emissions. If we look for the emissions that are linked to the products we consume that we import from countries such as China, we will not find them on our balance sheet, because they are on China’s balance sheet. That is not fair. We are responsible for far more than 1%, because of that and because of our historic cumulative emissions. Please let us have a debate based on fact.

[Bob Seely]

I completely agree. In fact, one of the points that I am coming to is that virtue-signalling about exporting our emissions is incredibly counter-productive. Half our emissions have come about purely because we have exported our guilt to other people. So I agree with the hon. Lady, and, by the way, I thank her for this debate.

Here are some specifics for the Minister. Shutting down our own gasfields while continuing to import gas from other countries is not sensible policy making. I had the privilege of talking to Chris Stark, one of the Government’s senior climate advisers, who said that our renewables would be able to supply us in 15 or 20 years. We were discussing the issue in the context of security, especially in relation to Russian gas. Chris was absolutely right, but for the moment, whether we like it or not, we will be continuing to use that natural gas. It make no sense, therefore, for the relevant committees to deny an extension of the Jackdaw gasfield when we are simply importing gas from elsewhere. We should consider the mileage and pollution costs of bringing gas here by ship, and the fact that we are getting it either from the middle east or, sadly, indirectly from Russia.

Let me come to the point made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). Half our emission gains in the last 20 years have been because we have been exporting our guilt, effectively to China. Again, it makes no sense. Every time we offshore jobs and wealth creation, we are offshoring them to a country that will take longer to cut its emissions, and has 300 coal-fired power stations. We should be onshoring jobs, because we will do a better job, however imperfectly, than others in trying to reduce the carbon emissions and making that more successful or, at least, less polluting.

We need to take people with us. Most of us here are talking to an important but relatively small part of the electorate who care passionately. Perhaps more people will in time; indeed, I am sure that they will. At the same time, however, we must talk to the people who are worried about bills—who are worried about keeping their families, their children or mum and dad warm this winter. If we do not take people with us, we will lose this debate. Hearing the Californian Windsors lecture hoi polloi from their private jets is hugely counterproductive. Again, we need a sense of realism.

There is a series of practical questions that I would like the Minister to answer. Does she agree that having a housing policy involving low density and greenfield development is no longer sustainable? We all know that the most carbon polluting form of housing is the kind of detached houses that we see in greenfield development. We need land use to be much more effective in this country, not only for quality of life and for plenty of reasons that people involved in planning care about, but also because of the environment.

Wind power is a great success story, and the sceptics have been proved absolutely wrong. Many of the wind turbines that we see out in the North sea are actually made on the Isle of Wight by Vestas. I am delighted that Vestas is there, and I hope that the Government will help me to ensure that it stays there, because it wants to increase the size of the massive blades that it is building. But what news on wave power? What news on tidal power? We have been waiting for years. We have very strong tides in this country, and while tidal power will never provide 100% of our energy supply, it could provide up to 10% or 15%.

Finally, and most important, there is nuclear power. We have avoided this for 10 or 15 years, much to our cost now. I congratulate the Government on the money that they are putting in, but we need to invest considerably in a series of small-scale Rolls-Royce nuclear reactors which will create jobs in this country, and to do it on an industrial basis.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

I am truly grateful for all contributions from my honourable colleagues. If I have seemed ungrateful, Minister, that is because when it comes to the Government’s efforts, what matters is what the climate science demands. The climate science does not care whether the Government are making their best efforts or about their targets. It does not care whether we are doing slightly better; it cares only about whether we are doing more to reduce the amount of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere and whether we are doing enough, and on that, I am afraid, we are not. However, I agree that this debate does not have to be about doom and gloom, and as well as huge risks there are huge opportunities. It is the frustration that many of us feel that the Government are not harnessing those opportunities that makes us feel so angry. Again and again we have seen the Treasury dragging its feet—we know; we have seen the leaked documents—when it comes to the ambitious actions we need. It is no good the Minister saying simply that we have to do something; the point is that we have to do enough, and we have to do it fast, and she is not.

My final point is about young people. At the Youth4Climate summit in Milan last month the Prime Minister said to young people:

“Your future is being stolen before your eyes…you have every right to be angry with those who aren’t doing enough to stop it”.

On behalf of those young people, for whom many of us have spoken today, we are all angry. However, being angry is not enough as we need also to be active. In that spirit, will the Minister urge the Prime Minister to accept the invitation that was sent to him by young people several weeks ago, to join a roundtable with the leaders of the other Westminster parties and discuss climate change? That follows a similar roundtable in 2019 with Greta Thunberg. If the Prime Minister is serious about putting his fine words into action, he could accept that invitation from those young people, sit down with them, hear from them, and finally act.

Question put and agreed to,

Resolved,

That this House has considered COP26 and limiting global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius.