Climate Change and SustainableEnergy Bill

I am aware that Woking has a long history of no overall control and that the leadership has ebbed and flowed between the Conservatives and the Liberals, and I stand corrected. The hon. Member for Glasgow, North (Ann McKechin) made a thoughtful and wide-ranging speech and drew attention not only to the colder climate in Scotland, which necessitates much more heating, but to the limited access to gas, particularly in rural areas, and many other factors that make homes in Scotland particularly hard to heat. She rightly drew our attention to the menace of electrical appliances left on stand-by. My hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke(Mrs. Miller), who made a particularly powerful, lengthy and compelling speech, reminded us that climate change is an issue that we must all address. I am grateful to her for supporting my amendment, which will empower local authorities to consider both energy efficiency and microgeneration when discharging their functions, particularly in relation to planning. She is absolutely right: we must be more ambitious in reducing demand for electricity in new-build houses. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) played a thoughtful and positive part in the Standing Committee on the Bill and rightly pointed out that, on a per capita basis, we are a very significant emitter of global CO2 and that we must therefore play a global leadership role. The hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir), who spoke for the Scottish National party, made a passionate and hard-hitting defence of the cross-party consensus on climate change. He and his party are a very important part of that agreement and helped pioneer that consensus, which we need to strengthen and develop. I welcome his profoundly sensible comments. It is just a shame that, to date, we have yet to welcome the Labour party into that consensus, but I am ever hopeful. The hon. Member for City of Durham(Dr. Blackman-Woods) made a fine speech, and I found myself nodding vigorously. She is absolute right to say that we must promote microgeneration to the mass market, to bring down costs and to make those technologies mainstream. I am grateful for her support for the amendment that I succeeded in making to the Bill, which now provides parish councils with the power to promote community energy schemes. My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd), who is a distinguished member of the Select Committee on Environmental Audit, made an impressive and thoughtful speech about the measures in the Bill and in the energy review, and the need for transparency and rigour in auditing progress if the Bill is enacted. He pointed out the tremendous potential of microgeneration both to reduce fuel poverty and to promote renewables, energy efficiency and a culture of responsibility among consumers. The hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), too, made a thoughtful speech in support of microgeneration and the need to do more to encourage the rapid expansion of the industry. The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) spoke at length about the potential of microgeneration, but he misconstrued my comments last week about quality-of-life issues. I was trying to make the point that we cannot just see climate change through the narrow prism of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or a single Government Department. The policy review instigated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney(Mr. Cameron), which is being conducted with the able assistance of my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood, is considering quality-of-life issues and the different implications of climate change—it does not just focus on narrow departmental functions. The hon. Member for Cheltenham was right that the lead must come from the private sector, and that we must not rely just on small amounts of money dripping from the Chancellor. My hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), in a forceful and articulate speech, reminded us all of the power of technology to fight CO2 emissions, giving a practical example from High Brooms. I, too, have recently installed solar panels on my house, and I was fascinated to hear about his constituent’s experience. My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara) rightly raised the closure of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology at Monks Wood in his constituency. He is not just a doughty champion of his constituents’ interests but of the cause of excellence in research, particularly on the impact of climate change on UK ecosystems. The closure of that laboratory is a huge step backwards in our understanding of the impact of climate change on UK biodiversity. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) reminded us of the impact of climate change not just on the UK but on Africa, and our responsibility to take global leadership, particularly through the United Nations. It is not surprising, given his championing of climate change issues, that at the general election there was a well deserved swing in his favour. He spoke, too, about the tremendous pioneering work at Woking. My hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) drew our attention to the need for consensus. He highlighted the fact that politics makes for strange bedfellows, as the grand coalition on climate change has drawn in both the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) and Donald Rumsfeld—not a combination that one often sees. He weighed up the scientific evidence in a splendid prebuttal of the arguments that were to be made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, and made a compelling case for microgeneration, not just to fight climate change but to enhance the UK security of supply, which is a serious consideration in long-term energy issues. It is sad that the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) is not here to participate in our debate. He showed enormous skill, patience and tenacity in the way in which he has piloted the Bill through the House. I have found him not just professional but a joy to work with during the rollercoaster ride that the Bill has sometimes enjoyed through the House of Commons. It is a great tribute to him that the Bill is now approaching the end of its Third Reading. I send him our condolences on the sad loss that his family have suffered. About three weeks ago, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney, I journeyed to about 600 miles of the North pole to look at the real and direct impact of climate change on the environment. Nothing more vividly illustrated the dramatic impact of climate change than the vast tracts of open sea that, until last year, were formerly ice. I probably speak for the whole House when I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that I really wish he would go to the North pole. In Svarlbard, I saw for myself the effects of global warming on the Scott-Turner glacier. At the Ny-Alesund Arctic research centre, I saw three more glaciers, all of them retreating at an accelerated rate. As has already been pointed out, the best overall measure for assessing changes in a glacier is its yearly mass balance. Two of the glaciers closest to Ny-Alesund have been measured for their mass balance for longer than any others in the high Arctic and their results have shown consistently negative mass balance almost every year since 1967—the year after I was born. The last five years have been the most negative and this pattern is being repeated on a far bigger scale all over the Arctic. Temperatures have risen by 2° C already in the past 30 years. Over that period, the average amount of summer sea ice has decreased by 1.3 million sq km. Both winter and summer sea ice are at their lowest levels since all records began. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witney asked one of the scientists at Ny-Alesund what was to the north of where we were, and the answer came, ““The sea and then the ice of the North pole—this year.”” My right hon. Friend asked, ““Why do you say ‘this year’?””, and back came the answer, ““Until now, it has only ever been ice.”” Some have argued that a series of warmings that took place in the 1930s show that the warming we are experiencing is nothing exceptional. I think that that is the argument that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch advanced. It is true that some parts of the planet got warmer in that period, but not all. In fact, a number of Arctic research stations reported a drop in average temperatures in that time, whereas there has been a consistent rise in temperatures right across the Arctic in the current period of warming. The change in temperature predicted over the next 100 years is not2° C or 3° C, but 4° C to 7° C. The other thing that is lost in the arguments on climate change is that people focus just on the average temperature increase of a couple of degrees in coming years. However, there will be massive variations in different parts of the globe and, in some parts, the increase could be up to 14° C, and that would have quite cataclysmic effects. It is important that we do not get carried away and that we use measured scientific language but, by constantly focusing on the mean figure, we perhaps understate the scientific impact in the coming century. Climate change does not just affect the Arctic. In the Antarctic peninsula in 2002, an area of ice shelf about the size of the English county of Cornwall or, to put it in an international context, the US state of Rhode Island, disintegrated in just 35 days. Glacial coverage in Peru has fallen by a quarter in the last 25 years, and the famous snows of Kilimanjaro are disappearing before our eyes. Measured right across the globe, the 10 hottest years since records began have all been since 1990. Perhaps some of these facts, places and statistics seem a bit remote. However, I also refer to hurricane Katrina, water shortages in the UK leading to a hosepipe ban in April and the storm and flood losses in Britain that cost £6.2 billion between 1998 and 2003, double the amount of the previous five years. In London, the Thames barrier, which was designed just a couple of decades ago to be raised once every six years, is now being raised six times a year. The Government’s chief scientific adviser has said that if a single flood broke through the Thames barrier, the damage could cost London £30 billion. That is 2 per cent. of our current GDP. We are witnessing not just gradual warming, but more and more unusual and unpredictable weather events. According to the international insurance firm Munich Re, before 1987 there was just one weather event worldwide that caused an insured loss of more than £1 billion. Since 1987, there have been 46. Those who say that all this has nothing to do with mankind should check the facts. There is a clear correlation between increases in global temperatures and levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. For billions of years, the world benefited from a natural greenhouse effect, which kept global temperatures about 30o warmer than they would have otherwise been, but since the industrial revolution, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen from 280 parts per million to 380 parts per million and, in parallel, global temperatures have been rising fast.