Environment and Climate Change

Marsha De Cordova Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful for your help, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will give way again, but not for a few moments.

I wish to place on record my thanks to everyone in local government who contributes to improving recycling. We still need to do much more, which is why in the forthcoming environment Bill we will put into effect some of the changes that our waste and resources strategy talks about, to ensure that we have uniform levels of recycling throughout the country and that we extend the extended producer responsibility scheme. It is a fact that overall, pound for pound, kilo for kilo, Conservative councils have a better recycling record than Labour councils, but I am more than happy to acknowledge—

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Michael Gove]

No.

I am more than happy to acknowledge that there are individual Labour councils that do well and from which we can learn.

I said that we need to do more as a nation, which is why I am looking forward to the publication tomorrow of the report by the Committee on Climate Change, which was originally established by the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). The programme of carbon budgets that the committee has set has enabled us to make significant progress so far in the meeting of our obligations to the earth, but we all know that we need to do more.

Last October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made it clear that the Paris target of a 2°C temperature rise was, as the science showed, not ambitious enough and that we need to ensure that we slow the rate of greenhouse gas emissions and hopefully achieve net zero in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. After that IPCC report, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Business, immediately commissioned the Climate Change Committee to tell us what we as a Government and as a society should do to meet that target. That level of ambition was endorsed by a range of different organisations, from the NFU, which says that we should try to have net zero in agriculture by 2040, to companies such as Tesco, our biggest single retailer, which have also committed to the net zero target. That is why I am delighted that, today, the Leader of the Opposition has also joined this Government, the NFU and Tesco in committing to net zero by 2050. As they say, every little helps.

--- Later in debate ---

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate. There can be no more denial, no more delay and no more hesitation. We are facing a climate emergency, and unless we take urgent action, climate chaos will wreak devastation in communities across the globe. Cuts to renewable energy mean that, on current trends, the UK will be carbon neutral only by the end of the century—more than 50 years too late.

This is too late for our children, and they know it. Children and young people have been leading the way on this. As the UK Student Climate Network recently wrote:

“We will be facing…climate breakdown…if those in power don’t act urgently and radically to change our trajectory.”

We must hear these words. I pay tribute to the school climate strikers, along with Extinction Rebellion. More importantly, I want to pay tribute to the many students, children and young people in my constituency who have written to me about the climate crisis, particularly those from Alderbrook school. One year 6 student wrote to me that

“it is heartbreaking to know that our generation is going to suffer from the chaos that we haven’t created.”

That is what will happen if we do not rise to this emergency because the science is clear.

The student strikers chanted

“system change, not climate change”,

and that is what we need—that is a fact. We need a green economy, investment in renewable energy and a ban on fracking, and we need to decarbonise our society. We need this for climate justice and for social justice. We need an economy that puts people and our planet before profit. This is an emergency, and we cannot afford to wait. We must act.