Climate Change and SustainableEnergy Bill

Like many Conservative Members and, indeed, hon. Members on both sides of the House, I welcome the Bill. I join them in paying tribute to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) and expressing my condolences for his inability to be here today. I am sure that we all send condolences and best wishes to his family, too. There is widespread consensus across the House on the specific dangers that we face as a result of climate change. Indeed, as the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) pointed out, that consensus now includes the Pentagon. It is a remarkably wide consensus that can embrace both Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesmen and the Pentagon, but I am glad that it has been reached. While we all recognise that climate change is occurring, there are others, many of whom are mainly well-intentioned sceptics, who argue that the man-made contributions to the process of climate change have been exaggerated. Two things must be said to that. The balance of scientific opinion—from David King, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, down, up, or across—is that man-made contributions play a significant role in accelerating the process of climate change. I would not like to put my judgment in balance against the huge weight of scientific evidence that suggests that man-made contributions play their part. More than that, however, we should broadly apply a prudential principle when considering something as immense as climate change. While I absolutely believe that we need to balance risk and prudence in many areas of life, we are considering something as momentous as our planet’s climate, its impact on the environment, its impact on biodiversity and, as my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) pointed out, its impact on international development. When we weigh all those considerations in the balance, we need to step carefully—to ca’canny, as we say in my native Scotland. That means that by erring on the side of caution, we should give the Bill a fair wind. The Bill will achieve much more than simply a step change in our national contribution to combating climate change because it will also lead to welcome developments in the energy field. By promoting microgeneration, it will play a part in helping us to achieve greater national energy security, and it will help us to embrace the principle of decentralisation and competition in the provision of energy supply. As I am sure that we are all aware, there have been ominous developments abroad, not just in Russia but in the middle east, that put at risk our over-reliance on fossil fuels. Oil and gas, for a variety of reasons, are overwhelmingly located in countries in the middle east or the former Soviet Union that are either fundamentally politically unstable, or in the hands of regimes that, to put it mildly, do not have our best interests at heart. Anything that we can do to encourage domestic energy generation, especially microgeneration, is welcome.