David T C Davies
Main Page: David T C Davies (Conservative - Monmouth)
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Paris in 2015 is vital in ensuring that the target of keeping global temperature increases below two degrees is met; further believes that the UK Government should push for ambitious emissions targets for all countries, strengthened every five years on the basis of a scientific assessment of the progress towards the two degrees goal, a goal of net zero emissions in the second half of the century, transparent and universal rules for measuring and reporting emissions, climate change adaptation plans for all countries, and an equitable deal in which richer countries provide support to poorer nations in their efforts to combat climate change; and further notes the importance of making adequate plans for domestic mitigation and adaptation and ensuring communities are protected from the worst effects of climate change, including flooding.
It is an absolute pleasure, Madam Deputy Speaker, to be under your wise chairship for my first Opposition day debate of this Parliament. I also welcome the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to her new position and offer my congratulations to the Minister of State. I had rather hoped that it would be a different woman running the Department of Energy and Climate Change, but such is life.
I also take this opportunity to pay tribute to the former Member for Vale of Clwyd, Chris Ruane, who served as my Parliamentary Private Secretary. Mr Speaker once described him as an incorrigible delinquent, which I think he meant kindly. To me, he is a loyal colleague and friend and he will be much missed from the House, not least for his outstanding work on voter registration to ensure that as many people as possible do not lose their right to vote.
I want to pay particular tribute to the former Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West, Tom Greatrex. He served as shadow Minister on my team for four years and I could not have asked for a better right-hand man. Tom’s knowledge of energy policy was respected on all sides, and the House is a poorer place for his absence.
Why have we chosen to use half of our first Opposition day in this new Parliament to debate climate change? We have chosen to do so because some have recently tried to argue that we do not need to worry about climate change any more and that temperatures have not risen for 18 years, but that is wrong. The earth’s average surface temperature has indeed risen since 1996, and even using 1998 as a starting point, which was an unusually warm year, the world has got warmer.
Caroline Flint
Can the hon. Gentleman be a little patient?
The scientific consensus is shown by the fifth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published last year, which said that warming of the climate is “unequivocal” and that human influence on the climate is clear. We have chosen the subject because this is a crucial year in keeping the global rise in temperatures below 2ºC and avoiding catastrophic damage to the planet. That 2ºC target was agreed at the UN conference in Cancun in 2010. As we know, above that the risks of climate change move beyond our control. We have chosen the topic because this year our country needs to show international leadership, especially in Europe. As the official Opposition we have a role to play in helping to encourage the Government to get the best possible deal in the fight against climate change at the Paris climate conference towards the end of this year.
Caroline Flint
My hon. Friend is right. We want to hear more of those voices in the months ahead. Despite the fact that we will have our disagreements across the House, on this issue political consensus is key to playing our part not only on our national stage, but on the world stage.
Caroline Flint
I will give way shortly.
We have chosen the subject for this debate not only for environmental but for economic reasons. The floods last year showed that climate change and more extreme weather events are felt in the constituencies of many Members in all parts of the House, which makes it a matter of national as well as international security. My hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) will discuss the domestic mitigation and adaptation necessary to protect our communities, but let us not lose sight of the green jobs and investment that are the prize for making the right decisions now about the future of energy and energy efficiency in a new, cleaner economy.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
No one has ever denied that carbon dioxide is a global warming gas. No one has ever denied that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere since we started industrialising. Not many people are bothering to deny the fact that there has been an increase in temperature of about 0.8 °C over the past 250 years, and although it is a bit more questionable than some would have it, there is no need to question it at the moment. It follows that CO2 emissions that are man-made have had some impact on temperatures. What does not follow is the argument that is so often put forward, which is that CO2 emitted by mankind has been completely responsible for the very minor increase in temperature that we have seen over the past 250 years. Nobody that I have met has ever, ever denied that the climate changes. I have met many people who are sceptical about the current policy and none of them has suggested that the climate does not change; the climate has always changed and it always will. The existence of glaciers is testament to the fact that the climate has always, and will always, change.
The climate has been changing over the past 2,000 years. It was warmer during the Roman period, a fact that is acknowledged in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent summary for policy makers. It said that it is warmer now than it has been for 1,400 years—as though 1,400 years is a long time. The problem is that, because we all live to be, hopefully, three score years and 10, we think of 70 years or 100 years as being a long time, but the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years, and 100 years is the blink of an eye.
I hope that when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State goes to Paris, she will deploy the same sceptical mindset about some of the things she is told that she always deployed when we worked together on the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. I hope she will bear it in mind that it was warmer during the Roman period, cooler during the dark ages, and then warmer again during the medieval period. It then became much colder, and up until about 1800 we had what is called the little ice age when ice fairs were held outside Parliament on the Thames. It was at about that time that we started to industrialise. It was a coincidence that we industrialised at the same time as we came out of the little ice age, and it absolutely must follow that some of the temperature increase that has taken place—about 0.8 °C—must be due to the fact that the Earth was naturally warming up anyway, and the IPCC will not deny that.
David T. C. Davies
I am delighted to give way to Opposition Members who disagree with me, because, unlike the shadow Secretary of State, I am not afraid to have this argument.
Stephen Doughty
The hon. Gentleman keeps quoting the IPCC, but does he not recognise that one of the IPCC’s recent reports said that 100% of the climate change—the warming—over the past 60 years was due to humans and that the IPCC was 95% convinced about the argument overall? The IPCC has been very clear on this point.
David T. C. Davies
Let me read out something for the hon. Gentleman. Under the title “Summary for policymakers” on page 17, fourth paragraph down, the IPCC says:
“It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.”
What that means in simple English is that slightly more than half of the increase that has taken place in the second half of the 20th century is down to man. The overall increase over the past 250 years is 0.8 °C, but in the second half of the 20th century, the increase was about 0.5 °C. What the IPCC is saying in this report is that slightly over half of that is likely to have been man-made.
David T. C. Davies
The hon. Gentleman can see the report for himself. We are talking about well under half of the total increase in temperature that has taken place.
David T. C. Davies
The hon. Gentleman can shake his head, but that comes from the IPCC. [Interruption.] I am happy to give way to the shadow Secretary of State if she wants to correct me on something. Even the IPCC is not saying that the increase in temperature is a result of man-made carbon emissions. It is saying that some of it is, and that the overall amount is well under half. On the basis of that, we are going ahead with a set of policies that have caused massive increases in energy bills for home owners and businesses. I say to the right hon. Lady that, with all due respect, none of the Opposition Members will back her when the policies that she may sign up to come home to roost, as they will create higher energy prices for businesses such as Celsa, which the hon. Gentleman has mentioned. It is absolutely outrageous that steel companies and other manufacturers are finding it difficult to manufacture in this country because they are paying so much more for electricity than their competitors in the rest of Europe.
The reality, of course, is that it costs—I listened with great interest to this discussion—roughly £95 per MWh to generate electricity from both nuclear and onshore wind, and £150 per MWh to do it from offshore wind, so it is very expensive. It costs about £50 to do it from gas and about £30 from coal. We can therefore be absolutely certain that the more we rely on renewable energy, the more we will have to pay for it. No politician from any party should run away from that. They should be willing to go out and make the argument for paying more if they think it is a good idea, but nobody is doing that. Nobody on either the Government or the Opposition Benches thinks it is a good idea to put up energy bills, so why on earth are we prepared to support policies that increase them?
If we are going to do that, we should make absolutely certain that it is not just the UK that will do so. We generate about 2% of the earth’s total man-made carbon dioxide emissions, so we will have no impact whatsoever on the temperature if we unilaterally decide to whack up taxes and start making people pay more money. If there is going to be an agreement, it absolutely has to be global.
What worries me is that, while a graph on which 1 cm represents 100 years may show a slight increase, the reality is that the earth has been around for so long that if we went back 100 million years, it would have to be represented by 10 km and that would show periods with more naturally created CO2 in the atmosphere, as well as greater and smaller temperatures. We would have to go back only 30 cm—about 1,300 years ago—to see the Younger Dryas, a climatic event that was never properly explained but which was entirely natural and during which there was a sudden drop in temperature by about 15 °C within the space of just a few decades.
Somebody cited Margaret Thatcher, a lady of whom I am always happy to call myself a fan. In her book “Statecraft”, in a chapter called “Hot Air and Global Warming”, she actually repudiated much of what she had written when she pointed out that people were getting quite hysterical about this. I think she was absolutely right and I urge the Secretary of State to be very cautious when she gets to Paris, and to remember that there is a difference between healthy scepticism and denial.