Climate Action and Extinction Rebellion Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Kerry McCarthy
Main Page: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)Department Debates - View all Kerry McCarthy's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Climate Action and Extinction Rebellion
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Claire Perry
I thank my hon. Friend for raising carbon capture and storage. Members will know that a competition was run several years ago, and it was a rather crude, as it were, point-to-point competition—in one case, it was just decarbonising a coal plant that would in effect no longer be generating power. We are now trying to work out how carbon capture, usage and storage are embedded in an industrial cluster, so that we can actually decarbonise heavy industry and create a way of sequestering the carbon alongside clean power generation. This is how I think we will solve the problems: not looking at them in economic silos, but trying to solve these problems on a whole-economy basis.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
The global food system accounts for 30% of emissions, and it is said that without any action—if we do not do anything about it—food and farming will take up the whole of the Paris carbon emissions budget, so why is no one talking about it? I have been sitting here listening to this, and I have sat here listening to many of these debates, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of parliamentarians who are ever prepared to ask what we are going to do about the global food system.
Claire Perry
I pay tribute to the hon. Lady, who has been walking the vegan walk now for many years and has been a doughty campaigner. She is absolutely right: CO2 emissions from land use and farming will continue to rise precipitously unless we have changes both in the way we treat soil—she will know about the UK’s plans for improving carbon sequestration in soil—and in how we farm. Unfortunately, the challenge is also about how we feed the world cost-effectively, and we need to continue to look at technological solutions for that, but she is right to focus on this. I find that this and the industrial emissions bit are the parts that people very rarely talk about, so I thank her for raising this issue.