Climate Change

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Monday 24th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for his introduction and attention to this issue, on which he is always clear and relates all the different effects of climate change. I am afraid I cannot be quite so complimentary about the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Frost. The idea that we have a choice between mitigation and adaptation is absurd. We need both. As to the current furore in the newspapers over the weekend, after a by-election in which 250 people voted the wrong way, there is pressure on the leaders of our two main parties to back off from their commitment to green policies and tackling climate change. I find that absolutely absurd. I hope that the leaders of both parties will resist it, and I believe they will.

In Glasgow 18 months ago, Britain was seen to be taking a lead on reductions in fossil fuels. Commitments to adaptation were less clear, but nevertheless they were there. There was a minimalist contribution by rich nations to help the adaptation of more vulnerable, usually poorer, nations. Since then, we have gone backwards as a country in terms of UK leadership and as a globe as whole. The recent Climate Change Committee report—the last from the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and I pay tribute to his work and look forward to what he has to say—clearly shows, as do the other reports referred to, that Britain is not on track to achieve net zero or to have adapted to the warmer, more dangerous world that will ensue, and nor is the world on that check.

We have seen the results in heatwaves, high temperatures, wildfires, melting ice caps and disappearing glaciers. Sea temperatures and levels rise, while at the same time we have seen a loss of reliable rainfall and fresh water. We will now not, frankly, meet the target of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees—the Paris target. Nor will we restrain it to 2 degrees. The more off course we are for mitigating global warming, the more essential is the need to prioritise and pay for adaptation, with significant investment and major economic and societal behaviour change. The longer we continue to burn fossil fuels, drive diesel cars and cut down trees, the more expensive and difficult that adaptation becomes.

For some countries, adaptation is an existential requirement. Low-lying islands such as the Maldives and some Caribbean and Pacific nations will disappear unless we adapt as well as mitigate. Yet the already inadequate Glasgow commitments made by richer nations have failed to materialise. Here in Britain, we need a focus on flood defence. We need to be prepared to designate which land we will have to abandon, yet we are still building on floodplains. For this city of London, we need to start assessing the cost and the need for a second Thames barrier. We need to be building net-zero homes, yet the Government have abandoned those regulations.

Adaptations mean not only major infrastructure expenditure and commitment but societal change in our behaviour. The Environment and Climate Change Committee of your Lordships’ House, on which I sit, produced a report a few months ago in which we looked at changes in relation to food, energy and transport. I will not go over those, but they are all needed. At the moment, we are so far off the net-zero trajectory that we have little chance of limiting climate change. We need early focus on adaptation. The recent adaptation report from the sub-committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, who is not in her place, indicates that early adaptation investment could, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, give 10 times as much benefit later on and avoid additional expenditure. And yet we have the present pressure on today’s leaders and commitments by the major parties to back off from their policies.

[Lord Mott (Con)]

My Lords, we need to keep speeches to four minutes please.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I listened to the “Thought for the Day” programme this morning, where the theologian likened the politicians’ retreat to the position of St Augustine. But, in this context, “not yet” is too late.