Limiting Global Temperature Increase

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Whitty]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether (1) the position of the OPEC states, and (2) the lobbying of fossil fuel companies, at the Dubai COP 28 have made it more difficult to achieve the goal of limiting global temperature increase by 2050 to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, the UK Government do not comment on the positions of different groups and countries. The UK worked tirelessly with all parties to push for an ambitious outcome at COP 28 that keeps 1.5 degrees within reach, and we welcome the deal reached this morning, which is the first time that there has been a global agreement to transition away from fossil fuels. It maintains the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I join with the Minister in accepting that the current draft is a darn sight better than the dreadful draft presented two days ago, but it is still, sadly, deficient. In the run-up to the COP, we not only saw the petrostates and fossil-fuel companies trying to derail any reference to fossil fuels in the agreement; we also saw the IPCC and the scientists warning us that we were well off the Paris trajectory towards 1.5 degrees, to which we are all supposed to be signed up. Perhaps we also ought to acknowledge that any improvement due to the UK Government’s intervention was down to our own Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, with the actual leader of the British delegation being called back from saving the world to saving the Prime Minister. Is not this Government’s moral authority to persuade smaller, more vulnerable and poorer nations to adopt a net-zero policy sadly undermined by our continued licensing of oil and gas extraction in the North Sea and other retreats from our green policies? Can the Minister give us a date for abandoning those polices?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

There was a whole series of questions in the noble Lord’s statement. This was an international agreement, involving almost 200 countries. Is it perfect? Is it everything we would have wanted? No, but it is certainly a great achievement by our extremely hard-working negotiating team. I do not agree with the noble Lord on the second part of his question about licensing and increased production in the North Sea. Even if they come on stream, the output in the North Sea will still continue to decline and we are still committed to phasing out oil and gas production.