Michael Meacher - Labour's Future

Along with everyone else, I strongly welcome the Bill.

The latest figures show that greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by about 18 per cent. since 1990, although carbon dioxide emissions have marginally increased in several years during the last decade. There are two important caveats: first, that—as many people have said, and as the Prime Minister acknowledged in a speech on 19 November last year—the reduction required by 2050 must be at least 80 per cent. rather than 60 per cent. if there is to be headroom for developing countries to expand their economies while keeping within the overall global 2° C increase limit, which scientists say should not be exceeded without risk to the planet.

On that basis, I draw the sobering conclusion that an 80 per cent. reduction by 2050 requires an annual reduction in emissions of at least almost twice the rate of the past two decades.

The second caveat is that—as, again, many have said—the Bill ignores the UK’s share of international aviation emissions, which Department of Trade and Industry figures show already account for 12.5 per cent., or one eighth, of the total UK impact on global warming. Indeed, I regret to have to say that because the Government are proposing to triple airport capacity, the Environmental Audit Committee calculates that by 2050 UK aviation emissions—let alone UK shipping emissions—might amount to almost half of all UK emissions.

In introducing the Bill, my hon. Friend the Minister questioned the practicalities of including that data. I say to him that it would be entirely practical to include international aviation emissions in the Bill: the UK already reports on them regularly under the Kyoto protocol, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has figures dating back to 1970 on how much fuel has been taken on board at UK airports.

However—and this is where I disagree with some Members’ contributions—even if aviation emissions are included in the Bill, another loophole still needs to be closed. At present, the Bill allows 100 per cent. of emission reduction targets to be met by buying carbon credits from abroad rather than by reducing emissions in the UK. I am in no way against using genuine carbon credits that have been earned abroad promoting clean development in other countries, but this is a question of balance, and there are two relevant arguments.

One is that, unfortunately, the purchase of carbon credits overseas is sometimes open to highly dubious manipulation over the vexed issues of additionality and baselines; they are complex and can easily be manipulated, and there is clear evidence of considerable abuse.

The second argument, which is the clincher, is that we will succeed in stopping climate change, or the worst affects of it, given the stage we have now reached, only if we in the west, who are primarily responsible for it as a result of our industrialisation over the past two centuries, can persuade developing countries—largely China and India, which alone have two fifths of the world’s population—that we are serious about tackling climate change.

Buying all our credits from abroad simply will not persuade those countries that we are serious if at the same time we are taking an unsustainable path in our own country. That will produce only cynicism and resistance.
The fact is that the rich countries, with approximately 18 per cent. of the world’s population, are responsible for 54 per cent. of global emissions—three times our due share.

Until that is dealt with, we will simply not get international co-operation, without which the entire climate change problem cannot be solved. We are 1 per cent. of the world population and account for 2 per cent. of global emissions. Even with Europe, we are a small part of the picture. This has to be global, and we have to persuade the rest of the world that we are deadly serious about tackling the problem.

We should in this Bill impose a reasonable limiting cap on the buying of carbon credits abroad to meet UK emission targets. Indeed, that was precisely one of the caveats that led a United Nations human development report issued in the last year to say:

“If the rest of the developed world followed the pathway envisaged in the United Kingdom’s Climate Change Bill, dangerous climate change would be inevitable.”

That is a very sobering reminder. This is a good Bill, but it is certainly not ambitious enough.