Government defends climate change fight
Environment minister Ian Pearson
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Wednesday, 04, Oct 2006 08:54
The government has defended its record on fighting climate change.
Speaking at the summit of the world's top 20 most polluting nations in Mexico, environment minister Ian Pearson said the government was spending £500 million to spur on investment in renewables in the next five or six years.
He predicted the renewables obligation would be worth around £1 billion by 2010.
Reiterating the mantra that climate change was the greatest long-term challenge facing the world, he said the government was spending around £600 million a year on flood coastal defence alone.
Although adoption to the realities of climate change was unavoidable, he said the government was working with partners in Mexico to find ways to pollute less.
"We spend a lot of money in other government areas as well when it comes to climate change. Adaptation is important as well and we are all going to have to learn to adapt to some climate change that is already in the system.
"But it is far preferable to avoiding damaging climate change and that is exactly what we are trying to do with the discussions we are having in Mexico at the moment. We need to get the polluters to talk about this."
With the Kyoto protocol to expire in 2012, he said it was vital that big polluting states such as the US, a non-signatory to the protocol, agree to binding targets post-Kyoto.
"We are going to hit our Kyoto targets and we need to move forward," he said.
Outlining what the government had done to date, he said Labour had set CO2-emission targets, established a climate change programme in March, and begun the Energy Review.
"We were the first country to introduce an emissions trading scheme, we are actually also key designers of the EU emissions trading scheme and we have a range of measures in place. But I am not saying we don't need to do more," he said.
"What we need to do is to take action nationally, internationally and indeed in the business community and in our own homes. We are all in this together."
He said he was looking for a new international consensus on tackling CO2 emissions.
Meanwhile, foreign secretary Margaret Beckett told the BBC she was impressed by "the pace of discussions" on the first day of the two-day gathering.
"There are already quite strong indications that things are moving faster than people had thought," she said.
"Both are more serious in their impacts and also more urgent than people had previously anticipated when they did the last analysis three or four years ago."
The Conservatives are calling for the government to table a Climate Change Bill in the Queen's Speech.
"We need the government to introduce a climate change bill where we can have annual limits on carbon emissions every year between now and 2050 so we can hit the overall target," leader David Cameron said yesterday.
The meeting in Mexico is the second of the 'Gleneagles Dialogue on Clean Energy, Climate Change and Sustainable Development' which emerged from the G8 summit in 2005.