That this House takes note of Her Majesty’s Government’s legal responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as detailed in the Climate Change Act 2008 and the implications of continuing climatic changes for global security and stability and for the world economy.
My Lords, I say at the outset how pleased I am to notice that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, are on the speakers’ list. Global warming is the ultimate world crisis with specific national dimensions. A warning 30 years ago spoke of the “insidious danger” of,
“the prospect of irretrievable damage to the atmosphere, the oceans, to the earth itself … by degrading the land surfaces, by polluting the waters and by adding greenhouse gases … at an unprecedented rate … It is mankind … changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways”.
That was Margaret Thatcher at the United Nations in November 1989. I recommend to noble Lords a read of the entire speech.
More recently, in 2006, the specific dangers were spelled out in a government-commissioned report. It stated that all countries would be affected by climate change, but that,
“the poorest countries … will suffer earliest and most … Climate change … is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen”,
and, crucially, that,
“the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the … costs”.
That was the substantial Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, conducted by the then head of the Government Economic Service, Sir Nicholas Stern—now the noble Lord. He included a host of recommendations, including carbon pricing, technology policy and energy efficiency.
Carbon emissions are made by all countries. The top emitters are China at 30%, the United States at 15%, the EU 28 at 10%, India at 7% and Russia at 5%. Two-thirds of global emissions therefore come from the top five emitters. I fully accept that, looked at per capita, by emission intensity or in terms of cumulative emissions, the order changes, but not fundamentally. It is clear that the large emitters will need to reduce substantially to affect the global situation.
In this month’s journal of the Institution of Engineering and Technology—I declare more than 50 years’ membership—there is a worrying article asking:
“Is China returning to coal-fired power?”
It is based on a recent study by Global Energy Monitor, Boom and Bust 2019, which indicated that, while the number of coal-fired plants under development worldwide dropped steeply for the third year in a row, and coal plant retirements continue at a record pace, there is a glaring exception in China. It is claimed that observation by satellite shows that developers have quietly restarted construction on dozens of suspended projects. The China coal capacity cap has been reset at 1,300 gigawatts. This would allow an extra 290 gigawatts of new capacity—more than the entire coal fleet of the USA at present. The report warns that global climate goals cannot be met without a full halt to new coal plants and rapid retirement of existing operating plants.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. He put his finger on the pulse by saying that he expects that we will all make similar speeches, but it is the action that must take place that will be the judge of what we say today. For three years, before I stepped down, I stood here as the Lib Dem spokesperson for energy and climate change, and I said over and over again that what shocked me most when I came into post was the utter lack of urgency in the Government’s approach to action on climate change. I said over and over that we needed to go further and faster, and I often said that the Government appeared to think that signing the Paris Agreement was an end in itself rather than a beginning.
This Government, without the strong leadership on this agenda that we had previously, during both the Labour Government, with the Climate Change Act, and the coalition, with Ed Davey and Chris Huhne as Liberal Democrat Secretaries of State and the huge advances we made under their stewardship, have pulled the rug from under that agenda. By the end of the coalition, we had made Britain the fastest-growing green economy in Europe. The amount of electricity from renewables had more than trebled. We had set up the Green Investment Bank, which up to the change in government had helped to fund £11 billion-worth of green infrastructure projects. In 2015 we had a record-breaking year, with millions of pounds poured into solar and wind energy and more homes powered by nature than ever before.
None of those things would have happened with a Conservative-only Government. We knew that at the time, but in the first two years of a Conservative-only Government we had a shocking list of anti-green measures. I shall not repeat the whole litany, your Lordships will be relieved to hear, but there was the precipitous cutting of subsidies for solar and wind, banning onshore wind, causing thousands of job losses in solar, scrapping the original £1 billion carbon capture and storage project, cutting the renewable heat incentive, pushing ahead with fracking, abandoning the zero-carbon homes policy—which was crazy—and on and on.
My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Climate Change Committee. I have come directly from the launch of the net zero report, asked for by the Government—the first Government in the world to ask for the mechanisms to meet what we agreed to in the Paris Agreement. I feel passionately that all-party agreement is the most important part of our system. I am also concerned lest all-party agreement becomes an excuse for a degree of unwillingness to move fast enough; a complacency sometimes comes from all-party agreement.
I have constantly objected to people who try to make party politics out of this, which is why I objected to my noble friend’s Daily Telegraph article talking about climate change and the Conservative Party, and why I think that last speech did not contribute to the debate at all. I do not care who has done it; I care about what is being done and what will be done. That is why the Climate Change Committee answered the Government’s request today. They now have to answer the facts, which are that we can reach net zero, not merely in carbon but in greenhouse gases, and that we can do so by 2050. We have made that clear and the mechanism is there. If the Government do not accept that, they will be saying that they accept neither the science nor, indeed, the best mechanism for doing so that has ever been produced. This is 600 pages of ground-breaking work that has already been recognised as a total game-changer—as important as the Stern report, if not more so—because it sets us all a real challenge.
But it means action now; it does not mean hanging about. There is a series of things that we have to do. I am pleased about the protesters, students and so on because they are saying to us, “You have a responsibility not to destroy our future”. I declare another interest, in the form of three grandchildren and two more on the way. I want their future to be guaranteed and it is we who can do that. It means that we must stop building crap houses which do not provide their owners with proper energy efficiency. It means having the kind of heating that does not need fossil fuels. It means doing something about the appalling condition of our soil. The fertility of our soil must be recovered because we need it not only for farming, but even more in order to sequestrate the carbon that itself is part of the soil fertility circle.
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Rooker for introducing this debate so passionately, and we have heard an even more passionate speech from the noble Lord, Lord Deben, whose work on the Committee on Climate Change is absolutely central to us getting this right. Some 11 years ago, I served on the Joint Committee on the Climate Change Bill, which brought in the very first legally binding targets. Some 20 years ago, I was working with my noble friend Lord Prescott in his department when he went off to Tokyo and was so instrumental in delivering the Kyoto agreements. I am glad he will speak later today.
Some of those earlier promises have not been fulfilled, either nationally or globally. Globally, we are not yet on course to achieve anything like the 1.5 degrees constraint of growth; it will be significantly worse than that, even if we adopt some of the measures that will be advocated today. Nationally, we have had a number of successes, but some of those have been by default. We have also seen the abandonment of policies that were delivering many of those successes, such as the premature ending of subsidies to the renewable sector, the abandoning of some R&D in tidal power and carbon capture and storage, the end of an effective programme of energy efficiency through the insulating of existing homes, and a pulling back on the regulations for new builds in this country.
We have had some success, but we need to be a little cautious about this. My noble friend Lord Rooker referred to Greta Thunberg’s assertion. Some people derided it, but she is essentially right that some of our claimed progress is a bit dubious. In particular, we have essentially exported the carbon emissions from our manufacturing industry to the Far East. Part of China’s escalation is because Britain and the rest of the West have moved their dirtier industries to the Far East. Therefore, an assessment of demand—including demand for imports—needs to be taken into account when we congratulate ourselves on our achievements in this area.
12:26 pm
The Lord Bishop of Salisbury
My Lords, the context of this debate has changed radically over the past few months. Whatever you think of the tactics of Extinction Rebellion, what has been created by its disruption has put the environment on the agenda in a new way and with greater urgency. The debate in the other place yesterday on a climate emergency was Parliament catching up with more than 40 councils in the UK that have decided to act in response to this climate emergency, including Wiltshire declaring that it will be carbon neutral by 2030. Two-thirds of Britons are now said to agree that the planet is in a climate emergency.
I welcome the publication of the climate change committee’s report. This is a creative opportunity and not only a moment of anxiety. We are in an industrial revolution. I was taken by Greta Thunberg’s comment:
“Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling”.
The Committee on Climate Change has set out the direction and detail of what it will do to respond to that challenge.
Net zero is possible and affordable. The cost of climate inaction will be more than that of achieving net zero. The business opportunities are considerable and we need to get on with it. This is urgent in the short term. The transition to net zero needs to be socially just and the costs fairly distributed. We should not use international offsets. The UK needs to continue to make firm commitments to developing countries to provide financial, technological and capacity-building support for their low-carbon development and resilience building. While 2050 is ambitious, 2045 could well be possible. A virtuous circle to spur greater action can be created by good policy.
In the faith communities of the United Kingdom there is a strong recognition of the need to change lifestyles and behaviours. We welcome the benefits that will follow, including cleaner air and warmer homes. We have already begun to embrace these changes, with thousands of places of worship powered by renewable energy and families committing to live simply and sustainably.
We need the greatest minds, hearts and souls committed to this task, with individuals, communities, businesses and government working together. I share the criticisms of others about some of the things the Government have or have not done, but the Government deserve to be encouraged for what they are doing in the right direction. The UK is giving significant leadership and has done so with a degree of cross-party consensus. That is important and I strongly support the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, about the need to build on and strengthen that if we are to face the greater urgency of the current challenge. There is so much more to be done.
My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Windsor Energy Group and a consultant to Mitsubishi Electric. We always say that these debates are timely, but this debate really is timely, not just because of the recent protests or the mighty new plan presented so eloquently by my noble friend Lord Deben a few moments ago, but because we are raising overdue questions about the whole of UK energy policy and its present trend and the global climate struggle, which we and the whole world community are, frankly, now busy losing.
In my short time, I shall make three points. First, of course carbon reduction is an essential priority. I certainly do not question that. It is necessary, but some compassion is also needed. It is also a priority to provide affordable clean energy for the millions across the world who do not have it and for the millions in the developed world who have it but face extreme difficulties, including in many parts of our United Kingdom. It is utterly shaming that we are a nation of fuel banks—of agonising choices for some families between eating and heating and of ineffectual price caps. There is a real choice here on pace and balance to prevent serious social harm and economic damage. It is callous to ignore that or to pretend otherwise, and in practical terms it is unwise and self-defeating. We have only to see what happened with the gilets jaunes in France a few weeks ago to get a good idea of what happens if we get the balance wrong.
Secondly, we face a massive growth in electricity demand worldwide, not least from billions of people without any power at all. The future is electric. However successful we are with cheap renewables plus storage technology, which we must of course press ahead with, and however clever we are with conservation, electric cars, distributed energy resources, carbon capture and storage or any of the other very desirable technological improvements, the only way to meet this inevitable and huge demand will be through low-carbon nuclear power. Everyone knows that—it has been recognised throughout the world. France recognises it. It has now decided to delay the closure of its highly successful low-carbon nuclear electricity system to achieve zero emissions by 2050, in line with the aspirations of my noble friend Lord Deben. It cannot be done without keeping open part of its vast nuclear power low-carbon system. Germany is in a complete muddle. Having abandoned nuclear power, it is now seeing a higher level of coal-burning. CO2 is rising, not falling, and it has ended up 50% dependent on Russian gas, which is highly dangerous.
12:39 pm
Lord Prescott (Lab)
My Lords, I offer my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Rooker on securing this debate and on the excellent and, as usual, inquiring speech that accompanied it—and on the controversy. There is always controversy over climate change; it was certainly notable in the negotiations of the Kyoto agreement.
There was great emphasis by my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Deben, in another excellent speech, on partnership. One of the first things I did when I was appointed the European negotiator for Kyoto was to invite the noble Lord, Lord Deben, to join our delegation. That was the first example of the last Secretary of State joining the new one in partnership to deliver what was essential for climate change. His speech today shows us the excellent work that has been done by his committee, which has laid down the roadwork for the next stage of climate change and the move to a low carbon economy.
That was controversial at Kyoto, but then it was all about the science. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, is not here today—he must have accepted that the science has changed. But at the end of the day there is no longer an argument about the science. The evidence is clear to us and the public have accepted it. The demonstrations now reflect much more than that—they reflect the anger that we are not implementing what the public thought we should be doing and what we set out that we would do.
I think they have been unfair in their criticism. Greta Thunberg was not right to say that things were not done. A global problem requires a global solution: it requires a global agreement, which was done at Kyoto; it requires a national one, which was agreed at Paris; and, as I will say in my speech, we need a regional agreement also, which I tried to implement at the COP in Poland.
To that extent, we have a framework. It is not right to say that nothing was achieved; something was certainly achieved internationally. Britain led the way, and continues to do so, through setting up a statutory committee to judge the Government on the policies they have said they would implement to cut carbon. That is a major change—it did not happen in any other country—and was at the first stage, so I am delighted about that. However, Greta was right that we are not moving urgently enough or with enough of the detail we get in the policies from the climate change committee. We need the political judgments to get on with it and implement the policies.
It is quite clear from that excellent report that controversy will continue—it is about targets, timetables and policies. I do not look forward to debates over the next 20 years about whether we have the targets, which direction we are going in, what needs to be done or whether we got 10% or 15%. For God’s sake, can we move on from that argument? This is an emergency. We have to do what we promised—probably even more—but that will be a big problem when we start talking about transport and housing. It is not just about money; it is an essential part of the requirement to get down to a low carbon level. As we all say, rich countries that poison the world with high levels of carbon need to produce low carbon economies. That means fundamental changes.
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on securing this debate. I declare my interests as set out in the register, in particular my work with the Water Industry Commission for Scotland, which is the water regulator for Scotland. I also co-chair the All-Party Group on Water.
In setting the scene for this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, called on the Government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and respond to the challenge of climate change. My noble friend Lord Deben referred to the role of the Paris Agreement and how to achieve what was agreed there through today’s report from the Committee on Climate Change. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is absolutely right to press for greater international commitments to match what has been achieved by the UK and Europe. I am pleased that he singled out the fact that India and China are the enemies of climate change prevention and that there are climate change deniers in the US.
Successive UK Governments have been pioneers in this regard. The UK was the first country to set a science-led, long-term and legally binding greenhouse gas emission target. We have to accept that science changes; the science has already moved on. Every household is playing its part, with the emphasis on renewables and clean energy technologies. Undoubtedly, this has led to higher fuel energy bills.
In 2018, renewables contributed 37% of the UK’s electricity supply and the UK has already reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 25% since 2010. The UK is also one of the largest international donors of overseas development assistance and we are thereby contributing to helping developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change. However, echoing the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, I regret the Government’s focus on and obsession with fracking. There can be no surer way to increase our greenhouse gas emissions. I hope we will turn the corner and put an end to future prospects for fracking.
12:53 pm
20 of 55 shown
The Sierra Club, a US environmental organisation with over 3 million members, says that the US is on course to phase out coal by 2030 and transit to a clean energy economy. However, more than half the world’s new oil and gas pipelines are under construction in North America, the bulk in the United States. Global Energy Monitor points out that these pipelines are locking in huge emissions for 40 to 50 years, when the scientists say that we have to move in 10 years. It is a worrying story from two large emitters. The UK started all this, of course, with the Industrial Revolution. The UK is obviously a low emitter on the world scale, but we are part of the third largest and we will remain part of the European Union integrated electricity market. We have responsibilities from a historical perspective as well as to the next generation.
How are we doing? The science is world class, but I am not so sure about the performance. The scorecard against the actions recommended by the noble Lord, Lord Stern, does not look great. The special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was a wake-up call. The problem is it might be the final call. We are only 11 years away from 2030, which is a tipping point. The main consensus is that if the temperature rise is not limited to 1.5 degrees centigrade by 2030 there will be long-lasting, and in some cases irreversible, changes to the planet’s ecosystems. Rapid and far-reaching changes are required for all society, with faster development and application of new technology, as recommended in the Stern report, followed up by today’s publication of the report by the climate change committee, I am pleased to see.
We cannot rest on the fact that we were the first nation with a Climate Change Act with legally binding targets. We and the world have continued population growth. We have doubts about new nuclear build for clean energy, which must carry the baseload in the future, even if we maintain gas with carbon capture and storage. We have abandoned wind-generated power on land. Energy efficiency via insulation is less than what it was. We have given planning permission for a new coal mine. I will repeat that: we have given planning permission for a new coal mine. It should be stopped. Listed building consents continue to stop the use of certain clean energy techniques. We continue with the third runway and fracking, on both of which I have changed my mind.
I want to be positive, but before that it is worth mentioning that the effects of careless land use have now led the United Nations to estimate we have only 60 harvests left before the world’s soils are too barren to feed the planet. Michael Gove has said that we are 30 to 40 years away from,
“the fundamental eradication of soil fertility”.
We need to take urgent heed of the science before it is too late. Young people are taking the science seriously. It is the facts they want—not fiction from vested interests. Earlier this year I spoke at a sixth-form college lunchtime meeting and when the students arrived they apologised to the lecturer for bunking off on strike in the morning as it was a Friday. They had been out in Hereford city centre campaigning on climate change. They are concerned. In the recess, my 11 year-old granddaughter asked us to be quiet while she watched and took notes from David Attenborough’s TV lecture on the facts of climate change for her school project. She is worried. An unnamed 10 year-old was quoted in the Times last week as asking the question:
“If the pollution goes on like now, how long have we got left”?
A few days ago I attended the meeting in Portcullis House to listen to Greta Thunberg. As I listened to this remarkable young woman I became more and more uneasy. I remembered that I moved the Second Reading of the then Climate Change Bill. Her reference to the UK’s “very creative carbon accounting” was powerful, and it does not really matter what your view of the statistics is, or who says what; the fact is that our figures are affected to a great extent by the closure of the old coal-fired stations, as ordered by the EU, and emissions from aviation and shipping are excluded, as are the emissions from our imports. Of course there has been progress, but we are unable to claim really serious changes in many of the issues, including carbon pricing. Where are the waves of new technology for clean energy and very substantial energy efficiency programmes?
The Climate Change Act, which started life in your Lordships’ House in 2007, was world leading then, but it now looks a bit modest. I might add that 2007 was the year I bought my first diesel car, on government advice. The Act allows for shipping and aviation to be included in the targets, so there is flexibility. After it has been more than 10 years on the statute book, these should be included.
As I said, I want to be positive. It is not too late. Governments, nations and individuals can all make changes. New technology is the key, and this has to include action on removal of the greenhouse gases that are already there, as set out in the joint report from the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, for example. Policies should include such things as afforestation of 5% of UK land, restoring wetlands and ensuring that building practices include using wood and cement with carbonated waste. I understand, though I have not seen all the details, that this is covered in the climate change committee’s report, which we will hear more about. The solutions should be mainly market driven rather than flat subsidies, because we need to create a new kind of economy, which has to be sustainable. The new economy has to be regulated, of course; therefore, government must play a role. Investment will not flow into new products and new ways of working unless there is confidence in a plan.
Here I come to my final point. Climate change does not fit our political system nor the electoral cycle. As Minister Claire Perry said last week in the Commons, there has been cross-party support and consensus building. In my view, this needs urgent strengthening. We need to fit the political system to meet the challenge up to 2030 at least. The status quo is simply not tenable. It needs national leadership from a Prime Minister to change the machinery of government to create a Cabinet committee, to include the three opposition parties, business, finance, agriculture, and construction as a way of locking in actions across the electoral cycle and creating confidence for investment in new products and techniques which are going affect every home in the land. Of course it needs high-level commitment from opposition leaders as well. I do not think it is any longer acceptable to hide behind the current excuse avenue of one Parliament not binding another. We need to make some changes.
Such a process as I have broadly outlined will not work on its own. Therefore, I see a role for a commission of climate action oversight, consisting of, say, seven Members of this House with powers to report to Parliament, the relevant political parties and the public on failures to act by such a Cabinet committee as I have set out, and its members, in the interests of achieving targets and working across the electoral cycle in the public interest. It is only by such changes, which I fully accept are wholly radical, that we can get a message to the public that something is different about this—that it is not the same as the other political issues we have dealt with. I might add that I propose that Cross-Benchers should be in the majority on such a commission, because that would give it greater force when dealing with the other place.
The Government and the elected House have to be in the lead and give a lead, but too often, and we can cite lots of examples, there is inertia for political and other reasons. I think that an oversight commission from this House, with the necessary powers, could provide the clout. I do not intend to take any further time, I am very grateful to all those who are going to contribute and I beg to move.
I am sure that when the Minister answers this debate, he will list what the Government have done, point to the industrial strategy and claim that they are totally committed but, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said, actions will speak much louder than words. We have real enemies out there: climate change deniers and the massive vested interests of giant oil companies. We have a climate change denier in the White House. Make no mistake, other countries will use Trump as an excuse not to act themselves. The wonderful, hard-won Paris Agreement, which gave us so much hope when it presented a united global ambition to tackle climate change is now under threat, and the global consensus is in danger of unravelling.
The United Kingdom should be leading the charge to net-zero carbon. Thankfully, along came Extinction Rebellion and we have a moment of opportunity, but it really should not be necessary to bring London to a halt. We have made it clear what needs doing: we need action. I commissioned work to find a road map for what needed to be done to get us to net-zero carbon by 2050, because it is clear that the current 80% target, even if we were to meet it, which looks unlikely, would not deliver the Paris Agreement. Culmer Raphael and Iken Associates, the consultants I commissioned, produced a report that I know the Minister has read; he has quoted its title, A Vision for Britain: Clean, Green and Carbon Free, and content back to me from the Dispatch Box. A huge number of experts in the field were consulted and gave their time and effort.
Even if we manage to do everything in that report, we get to 93% by 2050. Yes, we can make it to zero carbon with that extra 7% reached by technological advancement, but we now need even more radical action. What would it take? I would say close your eyes, my Lords, but that is always a bit dangerous here. Just imagine, as the ordinary citizen leaves his or her home in the morning, the commute to work has changed radically. In large urban centres, there are car pools of electric cars that anyone can rent, and rental, club and car-share ownership schemes have proliferated. People still occasionally own cars, but they use them far less and all cars are electric, with charging facilities available from most lampposts. Autonomous cars pick up and drop off from house to office and vice versa. Buses, tubes and trains are no longer the cattle trucks of yesteryear as people time-share slots to share familial roles, with many couples and non-couples sharing the working day. The third runway at Heathrow Airport never happened. A national anti-obesity campaign got everyone to get off their bus or Tube one stop early and walk, and separated cycle lanes are now in place on almost all major routes.
Houses are carbon-neutral. Gas-fired central heating and cooking now comes from green gas, hydrogen or green electricity. Renewable energy is the standard form of energy generation: solar, wind, geothermal, tidal and hydro dominate the market and prices have fallen dramatically over the past two decades and six tidal lagoons are now in operation. Hinkley Point was built but with vast public subsidy and coming in at three times the original price. It was, however, to be the last of its kind because before its construction was completed, nuclear was completely overtaken by massive changes in the energy market. Urgent and huge uplift in the provision of interconnectors took place in 2019. Fracking turned out to be a disastrous waste of time; the big companies abandoned their efforts as the geology proved too complicated and costly, not to mention the years tied up in local objections. People finally gained local control of the supply and delivery of their energy, with every household having its own battery storage and charging facility.
It has been years since carbon was allowed to get into the atmosphere as the technology of the 2020s saw capture and storage reach maturity. The exponential growth in renewables created an economic boom of huge proportions, and we are well on course to deliver the maximum rise of 1.5% in temperature. Industry cleaned up its act. We financed the transition in agriculture and land-use change, and we have a vibrant and successful circular economy. The financial institutions of our country changed the investment rules and regulations so that benefits to the planet and mankind were equally regarded alongside fiduciary duty. Exponential perpetual growth was frowned on as it was recognised that the world’s resources are finite. People self-regulated their eating of meat and accepted their ration of flying hours per year until the day that aviation became renewable. That is what it will take.
I like to think that the publication of our report helped to provoke Claire Perry into asking the Committee on Climate Change to look at zero carbon by 2050. This morning, the CCC launched its wonderful and extensive report on net zero. Britain’s future prosperity depends on developing an innovative, entrepreneurial, internationally open and environmentally sustainable economy where the benefits are shared fairly across the country and with future generations. This is indeed a climate emergency.
We need to bring aviation and shipping into the figures—and indeed, that is what we have insisted upon. There can be no sensible policy if we do not cover all those things. What we do must be market driven because otherwise there will not be strength enough to achieve what we need. But the market itself has to be driven by the terms under which it operates. The Government have to make sure that the occupancy advantages do not stop the change we need. That is a role of government. Regulation is not about the nanny state; it is about ensuring that the needs of the next generation are taken fully into account now, when we can make the necessary changes, which we have adumbrated in detail in this report.
Curiously, the new generation is threatened in a way that is utterly different from the threat we faced when I was growing up. Then, we were threatened by nuclear war, but it did not happen. Climate change will happen: it does happen. It is not a threat in the sense of being possible; it is happening now and unless we intervene, it will overwhelm us.
As I go around the country, I am fascinated to note that people no longer ask whether climate change is happening. The deniers have lost the battle because the science is so fundamentally clear. The new battle is not to make people believe in climate change; it is to take the steps that are necessary. We can take them and we can do so within the financial envelope Parliament set aside when our aim was 60%, let alone 80%. We can do it within the costs that we have allowed for today because government action has brought down the price of what we need to do, and further government action will continue to do that.
I finish by saying to my noble friend that we do not want fine words. We do not want comments about what we did, or why the Liberals or the Labour Party did not do what they could have done. What we want is a very direct statement. You asked for this report. You have got it. You put it into action.
The Government have been clear that we need to do something about this, but the reality is that it has gone down the list of priorities. Brexit has dominated our lives. Other things impinge—the housing and social care crises and so forth—but this is the central issue that any Government need to tackle. Yesterday, at last, following Extinction Rebellion, David Attenborough and indeed the report from the noble Lord, Lord Deben, the House of Commons declared this an emergency. It was pretty obviously an emergency 20 years ago. We now need to treat it as such and to upgrade the actions on climate change within our government machine, this House, Parliament and the national consciousness. It has been downgraded and it needs to be upgraded again.
I have not had the opportunity to read the climate change committee’s report yet—it is a bit long; I will have a go at it tonight—but I hope it gives us a blueprint as we go forward, and I hope the Government take notice of it. There are some big decisions on the immediate agenda, such as the decarbonisation of domestic heat and of our transport system; we have made some progress, but still a very small proportion of our transport system is decarbonised. We need to look at developing hydrogen for both those purposes, as well as at things that themselves have some environmental impact as they rely on current battery technology.
We also need effective government machinery. We need proper regulations and, above all, the effective enforcement of and compliance with those regulations. For all the good words from Michael Gove and others, which I support, when we come to actually proposing the future principles and governance of environmental policy, climate change is not centre stage and the proposed Bill, which is yet to reach this House, is completely insufficient to ensure that the whole public sector—let alone the whole economy—is prioritising the fight on climate change.
I will use my last two minutes to talk about two things that have been mentioned but are normally prioritised down. We talk about emissions into the air, but I want to talk about soil and water. The combination of poor water management, increasing heat, less water being available and the insatiable demand of individuals and businesses for water in our country means we have to take much more drastic measures to control our use of water, such as leakage controls, water efficiency measures and control of the energy content of water infrastructure. We need to retrofit our houses and businesses with energy efficiency appliances, and we need better water catchment management in the first place. That needs to be delivered with the industry and with effective government intervention.
On soil, three or four years ago, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who is not in his place, asserted that we had only 50 harvests left in northern Europe. That is the most frightening thing I have heard. It was the first time I had heard it, and I followed it up and read the literature behind it. It is truly terrifying. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, described, if we do not do anything about it, all our grandchildren will face within their lifetime a situation in northern Europe, and probably the globe, where the soil does not deliver the food, the biodiversity and the environment needed for human life to continue. It is a frightening thought that, 50 or 60 years from now, we will no longer produce enough food from our soil because of climate change, to a large extent, and bad agricultural practice and land use over the years.
Let us put those two issues back into the equation. Let us ensure that the Government take the situation more seriously. It is an escalating emergency, and I hope that we act on the report of the noble Lord, Lord Deben.
Could we agree a legally binding target of net zero emissions by 2045? Such a target would require a cross-party approach. In the context of the climate emergency, some of the Government’s decisions are hard to comprehend. We need a much more coherent approach to energy. The continued subsidy of fossil fuels is now absurd and needs to end. The stimulus of renewable energy and greater efficiency is a priority. The inability to tax aviation fuel or to find a way to limit air travel is just plain stupid.
I recently asked the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, a Question about Woodhouse Colliery in Cumbria. He replied that the Government continue to be committed to the Paris agreement and referred to a request for advice from the Committee on Climate Change, which was published today. He went on:
“Cumbria County Council took the decision to grant planning permission”,
and that it was its,
“responsibility to consider this application in its role as minerals planning authority, and the Council would have considered all relevant material considerations, including environmental impacts”.
That is odd when local decisions about fracking can be called in by the Government and resolved centrally. We need joined-up thinking and action, and we need policy formation that provides a framework in which individuals make good choices.
On the eve of the Extinction Rebellion protest, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Williams of Oystermouth, said that it is as if we have forgotten who we are and we need to rediscover our relationship with one another, God and the creation. To live in a revolution is hugely demanding. It will need the commitment of parliamentarians to engage strongly with our communities and establish creative policy frameworks that get the best out of people, not just because of anxiety but for the love of this wonderful creation. In this, the faith communities are a resource for prayer, thought and action.
In the United Kingdom, we are trying to expand clean nuclear power but it is not going well. Hinkley Point C is being built with colossal burdens on consumers for years ahead. Wylfa is on hold, with Hitachi suspending operations. The Moorside plan has been completely halted by Toshiba abandoning it. The Chinese are taking over. They are going to build their own Hinkley nuclear plant at Bradwell and possibly at Sizewell C. We, and the world, cannot achieve even the present targets without substantially increased nuclear power. All the mess that we have got into with the British system needs a thorough review, because without nuclear power we will not deliver the green targets or keep within the legal bounds that we have set ourselves.
Thirdly, however well we do here, our climate fate will be decided in Asia and the US, and in China and India in particular. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and others have recognised that. In 2018, emissions grew by 4.7% in China and 6.3% in India. In the US, by far the biggest per capita emitter of all, they grew last year by 2.5%, having fallen in earlier years because of the shift from coal to shale gas.
Throughout all that time, the UK has undoubtedly done comparatively quite well. We have reduced emissions but the trouble is that not only is there a heavy cost for the poor consumer but we account for only 1% of world emissions. The figure was much higher during the era of the Industrial Revolution but now it is 1%. Therefore, our influence on climate change worldwide will be only by example. In fact, even if we closed down the whole of the United Kingdom, the direct effect in the battle against climate change throughout the world would be marginal, as 99% of CO2 is pumped out elsewhere. Unfortunately, no virtuous little carbon-free zone would be maintained above us—it is not like that. We are caught up in the global system. Because of vast Asian demand as living standards rise, hydrocarbons will still be 74% of energy source by 2040, and 37% of energy still comes from coal, with many new coal-powered stations still being built, as earlier speakers have reminded us.
The lessons of this are clear: let there be protest and let the young and the old be motivated—that is fine—but let this protest be focused on real issues, without fantasy, and ideally without hitting and hurting hard-working people, the vulnerable or the weak, as I fear some measures have already done. Resources should be provided on a Marshall plan scale to put behind low-carbon technologies that will meet Asia’s colossal thirst for power and electricity, including clean coal technologies and particularly cheaper nuclear power. Smaller, cleaner and safer reactors may well be the solution, instead of the expensive behemoths that we keep building here, without great success.
Without this new focus, there is not the slightest hope of even meeting the inadequate Paris targets. Whatever we do here, legal or not legal, protest or no protest, that is the case and those are the facts. I hope that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will play its part—dare I say possibly a stronger part than in the past?—in bringing honesty and realism to the debate and in focusing on the real needs before it is too late. We do indeed need to think again urgently, sensitively and differently on all these issues.
There are things we can do beyond just having arguments for 13 years—we will still have them, they will not go away, but we need something that provides more proof than people’s judgments. I propose my constituency of the Humber area. The Humber estuary is now moving towards being one of our great rivers of energy. Why? Because the new industrial revolution—that is what it is—is based on wind and water, as the last one went through all its stages based on coal and iron. Now it is about renewable energy—that means you need to have the low costs that come with renewable energy and an estuary to get out. That is because the real low costs come from a continental shelf out at sea. If we want to develop new energy sources, we have to have an estuary to go on. They provide us with a unique way of beginning to develop a low carbon economy.
I say to the Government that we must all get together to try to plan. We should not just rely on the climate change committee; it can show us the way forward, but why do we not produce a living lab? Why do we not look at an area that will implement that programme? The Government talk about an industrial strategy and they have talked about places of growth. Let an estuary become a place of growth. Why? Because it is unique, not only because it is an area which has the wind power.
Yesterday, I addressed a conference of 350 people in Hull where they are today planning the next stage of the growth of renewable energy. Any new industrial revolution is bound to be based on renewable energy. That requires access to the sea. The Americans were at this conference, because they now realise that renewable energy brings with it the technology for the development of the new carbon economy. This is a new industrial revolution. That is what we have to get over to people.
As I explained at this conference, the Humber offers a good opportunity for estuarial development. I am arguing this within the international framework at present. The Government have an industrial strategy—having caught up on all the debates at the moment about Brexit—which says that there should be places of growth. Let the Humber become a place of growth. We now have the new source of energy, the land for the new technologies and the supply industry that come from it and the traditional maritime infrastructure—ports and fishing—which now service that industry. We have the science. We have a river base that offers water power. You need an estuary to get out to the seabeds to get the low energy. The Humber has all of that. We even have holes in the ground for carbon capture. The North Sea industry gas was taken out and pipes were taken to the town. Let us take the carbon capture and dump it back in the North Sea, in the holes that are empty. That is another asset belonging to an estuary like the Humber.
There are many things we can do; some we still need to identify. I will finish on this point. We have to recognise that an industrial revolution is taking place. It requires certain location factors, which are all found in the Humber. I ask the Government to consider the idea of the Humber as a place of growth. We could call it the living lab, so that when arguments with the climate change committee are going on, we have some way of seeing whether those policies are working in this new, low carbon industry. It is a practical test against a lot of the hot air about targets and timetables. We need to be more practical. This would be the first step towards an emergency step to deal with the carbon and climate change problems we have at the moment.
The conclusions of the climate change committee today are welcome. I congratulate it and its chair, my noble friend Lord Deben, on setting out the framework going forward. I have one question for my noble friend: why is it always those living in the south of England, in largely arable areas, who tell us to produce less meat and turn our heating down? Having represented upland farmers for 18 years in the other place, I accept that 65% of our land is best suited to grazing animals. I welcome the fact that farmers are committed to reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across England and Wales by 2040. There are always smarter and more environmentally sustainable ways to farm and farmers are rising to that challenge.
Any proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will impact on British business, British consumers and British competitiveness. That is why I believe any action should be based on a multilateral, international approach—on initiatives such as that put forward on the eve of the forthcoming Future of Europe summit, to be held on 9 May, in a letter from 50 CEOs of businesses based across the European Union, calling for the adoption of the European Commission’s vision, A Clean Planet for All. The letter from these top European businesses calls on Heads of State and Government to endorse an EU strategy for climate neutrality by 2050 at the latest. I believe we would do best to support that, whether we remain in the European Union or following Brexit. We should follow their lead.
Others have spoken of the great challenge of replacing petrol and diesel vehicles with electric ones, and the need to make air and sea transport more environmentally friendly. Like the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, I am fully signed up to what we have achieved in North Yorkshire by planting more trees. I direct the Minister to the Slowing the Flow at Pickering pilot project, where, by planting trees, making dams and creating peat bogs that take some 200 years to build, we have made a flood defence scheme at the same time. There is no better way to capture and store carbon than planting these trees.
I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that we must push for better catchment management and ensure that any new houses are built in appropriate places, not on functional flood plains, with proper infrastructure for resilience—in particular, a sustainable water supply with freshwater in and wastewater out.
I end with two questions to the Minister. In encouraging electric-powered vehicles, from which sources of energy will this electricity be supplied? If we are all agreed, which has been the main thrust of the debate so far—politicians, industry, farmers and even schoolchildren—will the Government ensure that we deliver on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and address the challenge of climate change, and that we do so by seeking international action?