My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, and Amendments 1 and 2. At the heart of this debate is the question of why decarbonisation is important. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, it sits at the heart of the Government’s Bill, and the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, seeks to strengthen the position of decarbonisation at the heart of energy policy. The noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, told us that climate change is happening more slowly than expected. He justified that with some somewhat selective pickings from the fifth report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The reality of that report is that its overwhelming conclusion is that the atmosphere and the oceans have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished and are continuing to diminish, sea level has risen and each of the past three decades has been successively warmer at the earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850.
Climate change is real and is happening. I wish the noble Viscount were right. I wish that it was not happening. I take no pleasure whatever in the fact that it is.