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Climate Change: Copenhagen Conference

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stone, for this debate. I apologise that I was not here for the first 30 seconds of his address to us. I am afraid that I belong to the Lord Whitty school that believes Copenhagen was a failure. The quotes from the President of the United States, from the Prime Minister of India and from South Africa show that many of the participants who brought the accord together are probably of the same view. Having said that, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stone, that out of that failure come more opportunities for the change that is needed to make future agreements more robust than they might otherwise have been. We should remember that Kyoto, which we look back to as the first model, has hardly been a great success in delivering climate change action since it was agreed in 1997. In Copenhagen we saw a major shift in geopolitical power which perhaps points the way to the future. The agreement was brought together primarily by the United States and China, with South Africa, India and Brazil there as well, and the European Union very much on the sidelines. The European Union had been unified and set the pace on climate negotiations but it was left outside during that crucial period. I think that that will have consequences. Huge improvement is also needed in the United Kingdom’s future performance. Its leadership is undoubted, but Europe will need to look at this carefully. One of the main things to come out of this debate were the contributions by the noble Lords, Lord Ryder and Lord Browne, on business. Copenhagen undermines business and industry’s investment and forward thinking about whether this agenda will last. The decisions that they make in the world’s corporate boardrooms will reflect this agenda into the future. I should like to ask the Government some specific questions although I realise that they will not have exact answers after a conference which was held less than a month ago. In terms of signatories, the accord has two blank pages at the end. It also simply notes the agreement. Do the Government know who will be signing the agreement by the end of this month, which is the deadline? Verification is one of the most positive moves in the accord. I recently read a history of the Reagan Administration. Although he is not one of my role models, one of his watchwords during the negotiations with the Soviet Union on mid-range missiles was "trust but verify". I think that that very much reflects the current view not only of the United States but of the European Union. China may have agreed the principle of that, but it does not like it. There is no way forward for a robust agreement without that working. I would be interested to hear the Government’s views on it. One of the sectors which has not been mentioned at all is international aviation and shipping. Where will that go from here? It was left out of Kyoto and we need it as part of the future agreement. Will it be included as a separate sector and will it be part of national targets? Do the Government believe that it will be included, and will they press for its inclusion? One of the other more positive areas was the great progress made on deforestation. How do the Government think practical action on the momentum built up in Copenhagen—in what was in many ways a separate track—will develop in the short term so that the momentum is not lost? As for the developed world’s commitment to developing nations, on which there were numbers in the accord, I would be interested to hear the Government’s view on whether there will be new money or whether it will come out of the Environmental Transformation Fund announced, I think, in 2009. It is important that there is a new money element. The biggest question has to be whether there is a real chance that there will be what we call a legally binding agreement where people actually make written commitments to deliver. That is of great importance. But will China and some of the developing world ever agree with that? Pragmatically, we need to take action on climate change as a global community. The United States, China, Japan, the European Union and India create two-thirds of the world’s emissions and contain more than half of the world’s population. If nothing else, let us take action there, through the G20 or wherever. One of the things that worries me most is that the parties process will become a Doha process—the Dohaisation of Copenhagen. That would be its death. It might not matter to the world community whether we have a free trade agreement in the next two or three years but it is vital that we have a climate change agreement.