Paris Climate Change Conference — House of Commons, 2015-11-19
Topic: Environment
Rebecca Faye Clark (Pow) (Conservative, Centre-right): I too welcome this cross-party debate. It is essential that we work together not just nationally, but internationally, as so many of my colleagues have said. Climate change is bigger than the internal political debate. It was my work over many years as a television environment correspondent that really put climate change on my radar, which is why I wanted to speak in today’s debate. It showed me that tackling this issue is pivotal to the future of the planet I congratulate the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on securing this debate, but we should also be praising the Pope for focusing on this issue in his encyclicals. It is the Pope who has raised the issue of climate change and its inextricable links to poverty, as mentioned earlier, and that has put the issue right at the top of the agenda—and amen to that. As a good convent girl, although not a Catholic, I know that when the Pope speaks, we listen Speaking as a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, I am heartened that the Pope has made the direct link between climate change and the sustainability of the planet. If we do not tackle climate change, the biodiversity of our environment will be in jeopardy, and if we do not look after our land, our soil and our water for the long term, not the short term, we will not be able to feed the population. There will be increased famine and floods, our natural world will be decimated, and we will head for environmental disaster. There is no beating about the bush on this By setting a new set of sustainable development goals running until 2030, I am pleased to say that the UN has recognised that we must act in this area. I am also pleased that we have a 25-year environment strategy right here in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in which climate change is firmly embodied. I shall press to ensure that we have a firm strategy for putting that into place. Lord Krebs, chairman of the Climate Change Committee, specifically highlighted that recently in a sustainability conference. I am confident that our Government are taking this on board. Just yesterday, as mentioned earlier, the Secretary of State said that we are committed to delivering our climate change commitment and that we are the greenest Government ever, so she must stick by it. She echoed the past words of the Prime Minister, who said the same thing not long ago in Prime Minister’s Question Time. He said that climate change was the "greatest danger" we have ever faced. I believe he is a great leader, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) said, and we need him to champion the cause The Climate Change Act 2008 gave us the tools to become a low carbon economy. No other country has commitments to match those Climate Change Act commitments, and we also have the independent Committee on Climate Change, which must keep holding our feet to the fire to ensure that we remain committed to cutting by 40% our 1990 levels of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and to have reduced the six greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 As a new Conservative MP, tackling climate change is a personal priority for me. It may seem strange, but in Taunton Deane, there is a great appetite for this. I was approached by an incredible number of people who raised the issue of climate change during my electoral campaign. They included groups such as Transition Taunton, Transition Athelney, the Quantock Eco group, and wildlife groups such as the Somerset wildlife trust—I declare an interest as a trustee—as well as farmers who had to combat flooding. They all came to me, some travelling to London, to urge me to press our Government to ensure that we keep to our climate change commitments. That is another reason why I am speaking today We have heard that Governments have agreed to limit global warming to 2 °C, which means that greenhouse gas emissions will have to fall by 80% to 95% by 2050. The statistics were eloquently put by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South. We need in Paris a clear global climate deal that sets out how each country is going to achieve that. But it is not all about what goes on internationally. We have to lead by example at home, as there is an indissoluble link between our methods of energy production and emissions. I think everybody is quite clear about that. Cutting emissions relies on transferring to a low carbon economy Yesterday’s announcement by the Energy Secretary to phase out all our coal-fired power stations by 2023 means that we are leading the way in this area, and we are one of the very first countries to make that commitment to phase out fossil fuels. It is a great message with which to head to Paris. As the Secretary of State said earlier, many people are talking about it. Coal is the most polluting way to generate power, and it still produces 30% of our energy. Coal plants are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, and this is one of the main reasons why we are facing the challenge of climate change. Running one large coal plant full time as far ahead as 2030 would provide only 3% of our electricity, yet it would use up 50% of the UK’s emissions targets, so it makes absolute sense to get rid of coal-fired energy.