Climate Change: COP 26

Lord Bishop of Lincoln Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Ely]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, on her opening speech. To pick up on her football analogy, we will all be familiar with the football commentary, “They think it’s all over”. It was not over until the surprise and hoped for goal came. We are looking for that goal with passion, which is why we are encouraged by the passion and commitment that came through so strongly from the Minister and from Mr Sharma throughout COP 26. It has built my confidence that the momentum will not be lost, and our remaining presidency will be no less crucial for the future of this planet than the conference itself. I applaud the Minister for his work on deforestation, and I commend further work on sufficient soil improvement, both in this country and overseas, which will provide the best carbon capture.

The difference between the many pledges made at COP 26 and the world we will actually bequeath to the next generations tilts one way or the other on the fulcrum of implementation. For all the promises of this and earlier COPs, we are now dangerously close to tipping beyond any ability to recover. As we have already heard, every gap between promise and action, between target and trajectory, will be delivered directly to the front doors of every one of us through flood or drought, failed crops and empty oceans. We already have one rapidly depleting Dead Sea; we dare not risk others.

This country’s success as COP president can be counted only in the currency of scientific accounting, physics, chemistry and biology. I look forward to the maiden speech of my right reverend friend the Bishop of Exeter, who has already sought a sustainable rural life in Devon.

Implementation cannot happen without government playing its full role both in regulation and in releasing the market through private finance. For this to happen, it is now vital that the Treasury come fully on board as the vehicle for clear and stable government policy operation. Both the financial costs and benefits of keeping 1.5 alive must move from periphery to becoming the warp and woof of Treasury planning and all governmental activity.

Only government can protect the most vulnerable, whether at home or abroad. Internationally, the Government must decouple export credits and other subsidies currently going to oil and gas projects in developing nations. Decoupling will both increase the cost of extraction and end the crowding out of green developmental investment in the global south. Similarly, the poorest in UK society must be shielded from the immediate financial costs of decarbonisation. I urge the Government to set the costs of short-term support for low-income households against the long-term financial benefits of transition—not least the benefits in health and wealth that will come through better homes insulation and energy use.

Whatever role the Government foresee for Defra regarding climate change, unless they join together strategy with concern for equity across all departments, we will not make enough progress; it will be hard to see the Prime Minister’s much-needed green revolution succeeding. Business is ready to invest, as the global transition from coal to renewables has already proved. Consumers increasingly see the problems; they too want to act, as several recent opinion polls have shown. Until government connects and energises these different sinews and muscles of activity, our body politic will move too little, too slowly.

Finally, the Government must walk as they talk. They must align responsibility with obligations to future generations and the opportunities of the COP presidency. We cannot credibly urge others to make sacrifices to keep 1.5 alive while issuing new fossil fuel extraction licences in our own coastal waters. We cannot demand that others consign coal to history while issuing new licences to extract it ourselves.