Climate Change and SustainableEnergy Bill

I, too, am very sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) is not here and I send my condolences to him and his family. I congratulate him on the excellent work that he has done, which has brought the Bill so far in its passage. I am pleased to have the opportunity to support the Bill and to have been able to contribute as a member of the Standing Committee. My main reason for supporting the Bill is my consciousness of the urgency of the problem. The chief scientist has made it absolutely clear that we have a short window of opportunity in which to avoid the most damaging effects of climate change. For example, it is not widely understood that it is possible that there will be a reversal of the Gulf stream, which would make this country much colder, not warmer. It is possible that countries such as Bangladesh could be flooded, and although people are worried at the moment about refugees and asylum seekers, if that happened, the current problems would pale into insignificance. I agree with the hon. Member for Basingstoke(Mrs. Miller) about people being in denial. We must not move from denial to despair when we contemplate the problem. Action now will be much easier and more economic than action later. The key to achieving our target and tackling climate change effectively is a change to our culture. In 1973, when I was a schoolgirl, I went to a summer fair in Ashbourne. I entered a competition about the environment that was run by Friends of the Earth, with a prize of membership of Friends of the Earth. I won the prize because I was the only person who had entered the competition, but I think that consciousness has been raised since then. Fifteen years later, I was a Treasury civil servant when John Major was a Treasury Minister. We were having the annual round of spending cuts and he was thinking about cutting the home energy efficiency scheme, which was the forerunner of Warm Front. When I pointed out to him that the scheme was good and that it tackled fuel poverty, benefited the environment and created jobs, he agreed not to cut it. That is a good example of the way in which people are prepared to act once they understand the issues.