20180628_R4

Source: BBC Radio 4: Today

URL: N/A

Date: 28/06/2018

Event: Deben: future generations to pay more for the "low-carbon, no-carbon society we need"

Credit: BBC Radio 4

People:

Charles Caroll: BBC newsreader
Lord Deben: John Gummer, Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change (UK)
Chris Grayling: Secretary of State for Transport (UK)
John Humphrys: Presenter, BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
Martha Kearney: Presenter, BBC Radio 4: Today Programme

Charles Caroll: There's a warning that young people will be left to pick up the bill for climate change because politicians are dodging the issue. A report by government advisors says urgent action is needed to cut CO2 emissions from road traffic, homes and farming.

* * *

John Humphrys: It's 30 years since the world agreed something had to be done to stop our planet getting dangerously hot - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up. It's 10 years since we passed our own Climate Change Act and set up our own Committee on Climate Change. Well, today that committee reports that we have not been doing enough. This government, it says, is making it more difficult to meet its own laws on curbing carbon emissions. Just two days ago, MPs voted to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport. When the Transport Secretary Chris Grayling appeared on this programme, Martha suggested to him that that would add to the problem.

Chris Grayling: The Airports Commission, which was commissioned by us to do all of the detailed work about could you expand the airport or not, came to a very clear view that we could expand Heathrow Airport and still meet our climate change obligations. I think technology, over the next 20 or 30 years, is going to make a big difference in aviation, so that the transformation will be this -

Martha Kearney: You hope it will be, you hope it will.

Chris Grayling: It's happening already. I mean, if you look at the new aircraft - in a couple of weeks' time I'm going to the Farnborough Air Show with the first of the new Airbus aircraft. And, you know, that's going to make a huge difference to fuel consumption and emissions and noise at airports. Each new generation of aircraft that is produced, each new aircraft that is launched, is breaking a new frontier, in terms of emissions, in terms of noise.

John Humphrys: Well, I'm joined in the studio by Lord Deben, who is Chair of the Committee on Climate Change - he'd been running it for more than 5 years, he's been appointed for another 5 years, former Secretary of State for the Environment of course - John Gummer, as he was then, good morning to you.

Lord Deben: Good morning.

John Humphrys: What's the problem? What are we not doing that we should be doing?

Lord Deben: Well, the big thing we have been doing is being reducing the emissions which come from generation of power. But that has masked the fact that we are not doing anything like enough on transport and on homes, all of which are either stalled or the emissions are rising, as far as transport's concerned. And the government is not moving fast enough. It says that they're going to have an all-electric car sales in 2040 - that won't meet the targets which it itself is bound by law to do.

John Humphrys: All electric cars wouldn't do it?

Lord Deben: Yes, but only if you get that in 2030 - you mustn't push it off. Got to bring it forward.

John Humphrys: And you're afraid that it will be pushed off, as you put it.

Lord Deben: Well, the government is talking about 2040, and it has to be much earlier than that.

John Humphrys: Could we do it earlier than that?

Lord Deben: Oh yes, and other countries have committed themselves to do so.

John Humphrys: Hmm, [there's a] difference between committing and delivering.

Lord Deben: Well, that is certainly true, but if you commit yourself to 10 years later, that's also a difference between that and delivering. And if you look at what we're doing, as far as homes are concerned, we're building all over the country homes which are not fit for purpose, because we've not increased the standards of insulation, they are using a lot more energy than they need, and every one of the big housebuilders are selling a future of expensive energy because they do not make their homes properly environmentally friendly.

John Humphrys: But some people will be puzzled by this because they'll look around and see lots of wind farms all over the place, they will recall that there was I think a day - perhaps it was longer than a day - and fairly recently, where we generated more power from wind than from nuclear and coal and all the rest of it power stations, and oil and gas.

Lord Deben: But the trouble is, it's much more urgent than that - we have done a great deal but that mustn't mask the fact that there's much more to do. I mean, what on earth is the government doing, saying that even where a community wants to have an onshore wind farm, it can't have it? This is sheer dogma. The fact of the matter is: it is the cheapest form of producing electricity today, and we need to have more of it, and many communities particularly in Scotland and Wales would like to have it. The government doesn't make it possible. And that means that the next generation will pay more for the cost of moving from a carbon-intensive society to the kind of low-carbon, no-carbon society we need.

John Humphrys: Unless the next generation says: look, we're still - taking your points on board, we're not the cleanest, as clean as we could be, in this respect, but none the less we're cleaner than an awful lot of other countries. I mean, the United States isn't even signed up to most of these great targets. And therefore why should we bear the burden, when actually we are responsible for only a tiny amount of the world's pollution?

Lord Deben: Well, first of all, we are responsible for a very high proportion of the pollution that we've got now, 'cause we invented the Industrial Revolution. So don't let -

John Humphrys: Well, that's going back a bit -

Lord Deben: Well, it may, yeah, but we still have -

John Humphrys: - visit the sins of the grandfathers and great-grandfathers -

Lord Deben: But we're rich - we are rich because of that pollution, that's why Britain is a rich country, so don't let's kid ourselves. Secondly, other countries are doing a huge amount and all are signed up to the Paris Agreement. If you look at China, China is in many ways doing more than any other country. And you hit [?] at the United States - well, President Trump is not my favourite person but very large parts of the United States, many states and many cities in the United States have got programmes now, which are parallel to ours and indeed some which go further. So it is happening, round the world. But Britain set itself out to be a leader and what's more, we have legal requirements, we've passed acts in Parliament that we have to meet these targets.

John Humphrys: But if we don't?

Lord Deben: And if we don't, then the government becomes subject to the law, because -

John Humphrys: How can you sub- [laughing] - you can't lock up the government.

Lord Deben: No, but you can take the government to court, and under this particular thing they could be taken to court, and if it was shown that they were not doing what they had to do, under these budgets which have been passed by Parliament, then they would be forced by the courts to do it. So why not -

John Humphrys: Who would stand in the dock, as [inaudible]?

Lord Deben: Well, I don't know [they laugh] - that's beyond my pay grade, but the fact of the matter is: the law says that this has to be done. The government is, at the moment, not on course for doing it, and although one has to honour the government for the fact that it's put this at the centre of its policy in a way which no previous government has, when you look at what it's actually done, rather than what it has promised, it hasn't done enough to meet its legal obligation.

John Humphrys: Lord Deben, thank you very much indeed.