COP26: Limiting Global Temperature Rises

As people can already see, many Members want to participate in the debate. My advice is for Members to make short contributions so that we can get everybody in not just to this debate but to the following one.

I beg to move,

“That this House has considered COP26 and limiting global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

It is a pleasure to open the debate on COP26 and limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5°C. I would like to thank the Backbench Business Committee for recognising the pressing need for this debate and all Members who have offered their support.

The 2015 Paris agreement commits parties to:

“Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”.

The difference that just half a degree can make has been underscored by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s special report on 1.5°C. It could mean many millions more people being subjected to life-threatening climate events from unprecedented crop failures and food insecurity to risks from diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, extreme heat and sea level rises. Staying below 1.5°C is essential for all of us, yet the IPCC’s most recent report warned that unless there are

“immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5°C or even 2°C will be beyond reach.”

Globally, far from being on track for the 45% emission reduction by 2030 that scientists say is essential, we are on course for an emissions rise of 16%.

That is the context in which the UK is hosting COP26 in Glasgow. That is why the coming decade has been called the most consequential decade in human history, and it is why, as COP26 president and as the nation that led the industrial revolution, fuelled by coal and colonialism, the UK has a particular responsibility to lead the transition to a sustainable, just and resilient world in line with the science and with climate justice.

I thank the hon. Member for opening the debate, and she knows I listen carefully to what she says. I really welcome the net zero strategy the Government announced this week. I think Ministers do deserve credit for being the first major economy to legislate for net zero, and we are decarbonising faster than any G7 country. I realise that for our opponents there is a temptation to pour scorn, express cynicism and say it will never be enough, but as somebody who is nationally recognised as being a thought leader in this space, which part of the Government’s net zero strategy outlined this week would she like to praise and give credit to?

I have no problem in praising the Government’s targets. What I have problems with is looking at the fact that there is a dearth of actual actions to meet those targets. That is what we see again and again. The Climate Change Committee has itself said that there are no real plans to deliver the targets that are set. Frankly, the climate cares very little for targets. What it wants are the concrete policies to meet them.

I commend the hon. Lady for everything she has done in bringing these issues to the House for our attention. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as host of this year’s conference, must be vocal and committed in relation to our net zero emissions, and thereby pose as role models for others to follow. Does the hon. Lady agree?

Absolutely. Leading by example is crucial: we have to walk the talk.

No one questions the hon. Lady’s commitment on these issues, but is it not a bit unfair to criticise the Government for a lack of concrete action when, for example, the proportion of electricity generated by coal has fallen, since 2013, from 40% to less than 2%? That is a real change. When it comes to looking forward, a number of new technologies are still necessary if we are going to avoid the climate tipping point. Does she agree that investment in science and technology is going to be a crucial part of the mix?

The right hon. Member is absolutely right. The power sector is the one sector that is going faster than the others, and that is an area where we can have a greater amount of confidence. My colleague, the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), did just whisper to me, “Thanks to the Lib Dems when they were in coalition Government”. It is also of course to do with some of the big changes made some time ago under Margaret Thatcher—we would not necessarily say that they were done for the right reasons and in the right way, but they certainly did get emissions down—and I do pay tribute for that particular part of the equation.

On science and technology, yes, of course they are going to have a massive role to play, but so too is Government changing the policy framework within which decisions are made. The difference between some of us on this side of the House and those on the right hon. Gentleman’s side is that, all too often, it sounds as though Conservative Members are imagining we can continue with business as usual but, with some technology, just changing the technologies we are using to deliver that business as usual. What we recognise is that we need not just behaviour change, but systems change. We need to change the kind of economic system we have, which is a far bigger change than what we have been talking about so far.

Let me just make a little bit of progress, and I promise that I will let others in.

The UK presidency has identified four goals for COP26. The first is to secure global net zero by mid-century and keep 1.5°C within reach, but I want to say to the House that the climate does not actually care much about target dates. What matters is how much carbon has been emitted into the atmosphere and how much will be emitted over the rest of this century. The figures are quite stark, so I hope that the House will indulge me while I go through them.

Based on the IPCC’s calculations, the global remaining carbon budget—the total we can afford to burn between now and the time we reach net zero if we want to give ourselves a two thirds chance of staying within 1.5°C of warming—is just 320 billion tonnes from the start of next year. Given that we are currently burning through that at a rate of 40 billion tonnes a year, it does not take much to do the maths and to conclude that, by 2030, it will be gone if we do not rapidly rid ourselves of fossil fuels. That is the global picture.

To replay that in the domestic picture for our own carbon targets, if we divide the global budget equally on a per capita basis, but also allow for our disproportionate responsibility for the cumulative emissions in the atmosphere—after all, we were the leaders of the industrial revolution—it has been calculated that it would leave the UK a budget of just 2.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. That is a vanishingly small amount in the wider scheme of things when we adjust still further to allow for the carbon burned overseas in the service of UK consumption as well as our territorial emissions. Measured like that, our total carbon footprint is about 500 million tonnes a year. Again, I say to the House: do the maths. That gives us barely five years before our 2.4 billion tonne budget is gone. That is the reality. That is the inconvenient truth.

The hon. Member is making an excellent beginning to this great debate, and it is so good to see so many people speaking. What does she make of the cuts to international aid, which have made the problem for the future outlook even worse?

I will certainly be coming to that shortly, because I cannot think of a more damaging thing to have done a matter of months, as it was, before the COP26—a big global summit at which we need to have the trust of the developing countries. I think the idea that one of the richest countries in the world would just slash our aid budget is absolutely unforgivable, and we cannot be surprised that some of the poorest countries do not have confidence in us.

The hon. Member is making some excellent points in her speech. On the point about developing nations, it is the most vulnerable who pay the price, and international climate finance is based on debt, which is locking these countries into more debt. Would she not agree that now is the time to look at grants to help these developing nations and communities get out of that?

I could not agree more with the hon. Lady. It is quite shocking for people to realise that so much of our climate finance is actually in the form of loans, not grants. Given that we are talking about some of the most vulnerable countries in the world, which are already trying to cope with the impacts of climate change, for which they were entirely not responsible, I think the idea that we are then going to ask them for interest on those debts is absolutely obscene.

I was very proud to support this debate, and I am delighted that the hon. Member has secured it. Is that not why the concept of climate justice is so important? We should recognise the historical obligation we have in this part of the world for having contributed to climate change to those who have done the least to cause it and who are being hit first and hardest. That is a concept the Scottish Parliament has recognised and is trying to live up to, and it is a standard that we still have not heard the UK Government accept. Would it not be helpful if, at the end of this debate, the Minister said that the UK Government accepted the need to achieve climate justice?

I could not thank the hon. Member more for his intervention. I think he has been reading my notes, because I was going to make exactly that point. The Prime Minister himself has said:

“It is the biggest economies in the world that are causing the problem, while the smallest suffer the worst consequences.”

Yet he has not grasped the implications of his own statement. As the hon. Member has just said, climate justice means the biggest economies doing far more and being far more ambitious than net zero in 30 years’ time. Climate justice means cutting emissions at home, without overreliance on international offsets or costly and uncertain negative emissions technologies. Climate justice also means recognising the obscenity of continuing with business as usual knowing that young people, especially those in climate-vulnerable countries, are paying for it literally with their futures.

I thank the hon. Lady for her excellent speech. Following that point, at COP26 do we need to get proper funding for technology transfer to the poorest countries in the world, which need such technology to protect their environments? Unfortunately, the signs following covid, where there has not been a proper sharing of vaccines or vaccine knowledge, are not good. We have to internationalise our knowledge freely across the whole world in order to protect the environment on which we all rely.