Speech by Rt Hon David Miliband MP to the GLOBE forum "Let’s make 2007 a landmark year for climate change", 14 February 2007
[David Miliband introduced this via a pre-recorded video message to the GLOBE Forum.]
I am delighted to be able to address legislators from across the United States and across the world at this GLOBE Forum.
2006 was a big year for climate change. But 2007 must be a bigger year.
2006 was the year that a new scientific consensus about climate change gained ground. The year when the debate shifted to what we do not whether we should do anything. The year that in the UK, Europe and elsewhere, the economic arguments went into reverse gear – when we began to realize that the cost of doing nothing is far greater than the cost of investing in low-carbon solutions.
But in truth for too long the science has moved faster than the politics. 2007 needs to be the year when the politics starts to catch up – with faster action in all of our countries, and renewed momentum in the drive for agreed action between our countries. The battle against global warming will only be won with America on side. America has a huge amount to gain as well as to contribute from being at the heart of a global drive to reduce emissions.
I speak from a British perspective, on behalf of a Government led by a Prime Minister who raised the issue of climate change in his first speech to the UN General Assembly in 1997. We know we have to take action at home; but we also know we need to be part of a global movement for change.
Science
Our view is that there is a new consensus on the science and economics of climate change:
These realities mean that climate change has emerged from a box marked ‘environment’ and is being reframed as a political issue.
When climate change could cause a greater financial meltdown than the two world wars and the Great Depression put together, how can it not be an issue for treasury and finance ministers?
When climate change may leave coastal areas uninhabitable, and produce shortages in water and food, how can foreign ministers not worry about conflict from mass migration or conflict over access to natural resources?
When climate change will hit the poorest countries in the world the hardest, how can climate change not become a development issue?
In the UK, the political pressure for change is coming from all directions – from business showing leadership, reducing their carbon footprint, saving money and enhancing reputation; from citizens determined to play their part; and from all political parties, competing for credibility on this new ‘threshold’ issue.
We are already on course to achieve nearly double our Kyoto targets on greenhouse gas emissions, but we will shortly be legislating through a Climate Change Bill to become the first country in the world to set a legally binding timetable for becoming a low carbon economy. The Bill will establish in law the goal of reducing C02 emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. We believe this is good economics as well as good politics, and have the support of leading business organisations in this goal.
Practical solutions: 3 D energy revolution
The choice we face if we are to live within environmental limits is either to cut down our consumption or to transform the productivity with which we use scarce natural resources. Unless we actively choose the latter path, unless we make an orderly transition to low carbon economics, then the former option will be staring us in the face.
The positive news is that there are ways of keeping homes warm and light, and powering our transport, that produce little or no greenhouse gas emissions. The practical and technological solutions are increasingly available and increasingly cost-effective – if we put a price on carbon.
I call it the 3-D energy revolution.
First, we are focusing on demand management. In most industrialized countries, demand for energy has increased in parallel with economic growth. If we are to grow our economy in future, we need to find ways of breaking that link.
In the UK, we have done that. The first industrial revolution saw mechanisation and mass production revolutionise labour productivity. A similar revolution is now underway in resource productivity. We are reducing energy demand by creating homes, cars and electrical appliances that are far more energy efficient. Our economy as a whole has grown by over 25% since 1997, but our greenhouse gas emissions have been cut by 8%.
But we want to go much further, and in recent months there have been major commitments on reducing demand. We have recently committed to ensuring all homes are ‘zero carbon’ by 2016. By giving industry a long term signal of demand for major improvements in energy efficiency and micro-generation, we will stimulate the innovation and market transformation needed. Similarly in respect of cars, the EU Commission proposed last week that we should create mandatory vehicle standards that ensure we reduce emissions from cars by 20 per cent over five years, and we support their ambition.
Second, we are focusing on taking the carbon out of energy production – what is known as decarbonisation. In the UK we have lagged behind but we are committed to 20 per cent of electricity coming from renewables by 2020, whether this is through wind, wave or solar power. We think that nuclear power has a role to play in addition to this. We are determined to help make a success of Carbon Capture and Storage. In transport, the solutions are more difficult, and the first focus must be to improve efficiency. But in the short term biofuels and plug-in hybrids can play a big role, with developments in electric cars and hydrogen fuel cells further down the track.
The third change we are promoting is decentralization in our energy system. Since the opening of the world’s first thermal power station in London in 1882 by Thomas Edison, the trend over the past century has been towards increasingly centralised power generation. While centralised production will remain critical, some countries are showing that we can increasingly rely on more decentralised and distributed power generation – from biomass fuelled combined heat and power stations serving a community, to individual citizens producing energy through solar or wind power and selling their energy back onto the grid. The potential advantage is that decentralized energy reduces the huge energy lost through the transmission and distribution of energy. In the next thirty years, we could see the same transformation in energy production that we have seen in computers over the past generation – with a growing reliance on small computers connected via a network rather than a traditional mainframe. That is why we are looking at how to enable citizens to sell energy back on to the grid at a fair price and removing all the barriers to distributed energy generation.
International Policy and Politics
So this is do-able. The 3D revolution is not a pipedream. In Europe, in US states, in emerging countries, there are inspiring experiments. But there is a missing link.
The truth is that without global confidence in the commitment of governments to put a price on carbon, to agree a set of long term commitments for long term emissions reduction, to live up to the commitments in the 1992 Rio Convention to prevent dangerous climate change, national and state initiatives will not have the drive and the critical mass to arrest the growth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Europe can make a big difference – with tough and binding emissions caps, a strong and secure carbon market, new regulatory standards. But we need more. We need to break the deadlock; we can’t afford a stand off between developing and developed economies.
As the Prime Minister and Chancellor Merkel set out yesterday, we need to develop an international framework - and I stress framework - that can follow the end of the first Kyoto commitment period in 2012. That framework must promote sustainable economic development, develop the technologies of the future, and help countries cope with climate change that is here today. From the position of the UK, that means leadership from developed economies and engagement from developing economies according to the principle of common but differentiated responsibility – we all have a responsibility to act, and our responsibility to act must be commensurate with our capacity to do so.
First, we need to make concrete the 1992 commitment to avert dangerous climate change. That means committing to the idea of a long term stabilisation goal for the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. 450 ppm of CO2 equivalent is almost upon us. 550ppm looks very dangerous indeed. A commitment to stabilise between these figures will boost market confidence that lower-carbon solutions will be rewarded. It will guide the adaptation that is needed in the developing world to the climate change already in train. It will create the foundation of an effective carbon market.
Second, therefore, we must establish carbon markets which put a price on carbon emissions and stimulate a transformation in energy efficiency and low carbon technology. Climate change is a market failure, but the solution is not to abolish markets.
In Europe we need an emissions trading scheme for the post 2012 period that is long, deep, scarce and secure. It needs to cover more of the economy, including aviation. I hope European carbon trading can be linked to initiatives in the US, which is why last July our Prime Minister and Governor Schwarzenegger signed the UK-California climate agreement committing our two governments to collaborate closely on developing carbon markets and new technologies, and why we want to strengthen links with the eight New England states that are part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
Third, we need greater technology investment and transfer: a carbon market in which credits are bought overseas will help enormously. But we need increased collaboration to stimulate research and investment including specific agreements on scaling up efforts to develop low carbon technologies and energy efficiency and an expanded approach to handling the large flows of investment to transfer technology to India, China and other developing countries.
Fourth, deforestation. Emissions from deforestation in developing countries amount to about 20% of global carbon dioxide emissions. A future agreement must contain incentives for sustainable forestry management, while maximising co-benefits such as biodiversity protection and sustainable development.
Fifth, adaptation: we must also recognise that the most vulnerable developing countries will need substantial support to help them adapt to the unavoidable effects of climate change already in train. Elements of this should include increased access to climate data, cooperative research on key technologies for adaptation in agriculture and health, as well as investment in disaster prevention and improved resilience to climate variability.
An international framework cannot be effective without the US. But this is an opportunity as much as a responsibility. It is an opportunity for politicians and governments: to reconnect with the dynamism and energy within civil society and get beyond the distrust associated with machine politics.
It is also an opportunity for business. The US has developed first mover advantages in so many industries; it has spotted where the market is going and got their first. The US is the great innovator in the world economy. It competes based on creativity and knowledge. If it can develop the green technologies of the future – in electricity, heat, transport, and agriculture – it can develop sources of wealth creation for many generations to come.
We will not conclude an agreement in these five areas this year. But we need to start the process of building a new set of commitments for the post 2012 period. The G8+5 will be critical to that process. We need the engagement of the major emitters; we need that engagement to take place among Heads of State, Prime Ministers and Finance Ministries; and we need practical and short term action alongside long term agreements, including the development of low-carbon demonstration projects and agreements for particular sectors. This must be part of the agenda at the G8 + 5 meeting of Environment Ministers in Potsdam in March, the G8 + 5 Summit in Heiligendamm in June, leading to the Gleneagles Dialogue with Energy and Environment Ministers in September, and building towards discussions at UNFCCC in Bali.
Conclusion
I believe climate change is a challenge to all of us, whatever our political label. It is a problem that our generation of legislators must solve if we are to have any chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. We have a lot of the technology. Now we need the will.
In this project the work of GLOBE is vital. I look forward to working with you in pursuit of our shared goals.
Page published: 19 February 2007