On Saturday the 20th of June the Fabian Society hosted a day-long seminar discussing the challenges that the international community has in the build up to the United Nations COP 15 Climate Change Conference hosted by Denmark from the 7th to the 15th of December.
Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change gave the key note speech where he outlined the challenges facing developed and developing countries to reduce carbon emissions.
In a speech that largely focused on the international challenges between developed and developing countries Miliband called for all stakeholders to get involved. Climate change as an issue is something that is not restricted to one continent or country but will affect everybody. The key to reducing global emissions will be in striking a balance where steps are taken collectively by all nations and all industries.
Text from key note address
Let me start by thanking the Fabians for organising this event.
There is no more important and no more difficult a challenge in politics at the moment than getting an ambitious agreement at Copenhagen.
I am very grateful also that we have such a wide range of organisations represented here.
But I want to argue today not just that we need a global deal at Copenhagen, but we also need to lay the ground for action not just in the next six months, but well beyond that.
Let me start with the scale of the challenge.
This week we published our UK Climate projections---they graphically lay out the risks which we know we face—here in the UK.
The most telling fact for me comes from Nick Stern—if we carry on as we are and see global warming of 5 degrees centigrade by 2100, it will mean the planet is hotter than it has been for 30 to 50 million years and humans have only been on the planet for 100,000 years.
But while it is easy to get bogged down in the science, personal experiences bring it home more vividly.
Two years ago on a Wednesday in June I saw people in my local high street in Toll Bar, Doncaster---a high street with people in canoes, plucking people out of first floor windows---raging at what had happened, bewildered and scared.
And two months ago in a village in North West in China, in Minqin, a remote part of the country, I talked to a local farmer about his battle against the pincer movement of two deserts threatening the livelihoods of 300,000 people.
For the people of Toll bar, the people of Minqin, the question is whether the politics can rise to the challenge of the science.
And what do we see?
On the one hand, we see the compelling issue of the reality of climate change and the science, and we see politicians around the world starting to rise to the challenge.
At the same time though, we can also see the compelling constraints that different governments face, from China to the United States.
China now produces more emissions than any country in the world but has 500 million people living on less than $1 a day who they want to lift out of poverty through sustained high levels of economic growth.
The United States which produces more emissions per person than any country in the world but must persuade 60 out of 100 US Senators to support legislation and 67 to support an international treaty, when the debate on climate change is less advanced than some other countries.
The 27 countries of Europe, with countries richer and poorer, all facing economic difficulties, and yet must play its part in financing a global agreement.
Every single country struggles with the gap between what is needed and what looks possible, the conflict between the demands of science and the constraints of politics.
But the task of people who want to bring about transformation in politics in this cause, as in all causes, is to find ways to overcome what seem like not just compelling but insurmountable constraints.
And that’s what I want to talk about today: how the politics we advance can live up to the science.
We need three things:
- the right political argument,
- the right sort of deal and
- the right sort of campaign to make it happen.
First, the political argument.
If we leave climate change to a question of managerialism around targets, finance and technology, we will be sunk.
You cannot sustain radicalism for decades or even for months without an appeal to the deeper reservoir of people’s values.
At the core of action on climate change is a fundamental moral question about whether we care about the legacy we leave to future generations: about whether we think it is fair or just to take advantage of the planet’s resources as if there were no tomorrow.
The question we must pose is whether we break the bond of the human race over our time on this planet: that the earth is held in trust by each generation for the next.
This is an issue of equality, of fairness, of morality and we should say it.
As we seek to advance our political argument, we should not shy away from this and we should honestly ask people how they want to be remembered by history.
And yet at the same time, we know progressive movements only build broad coalitions, only sustain themselves if they can promise not just a better life for others but for people themselves.
So, alongside the appeal to values, we also need a message of prosperity not austerity—for China as well as for the UK.
Part of the reason I am optimistic not pessimistic about the prospects for a global deal, is that the debate about climate change has been transformed by the debate about the green economy.
Suddenly, people can see the argument that this is an essential part of building the post-recession economy—in developed and developing countries.
And we shouldn’t be embarrassed about appealing to economics: when I look at my constituency, there are committed activists on climate change, but there are also people for whom jobs for them and their families are top of mind.
People whose living standards have been dramatically improved over the last fifty years by economic growth.
People who are prepared to be part of action on climate change, but people who also want to know that they can continue to have a better life, and that the costs will be fairly spread.
And so the argument must be not for low growth but for low carbon growth and we must avoid a sense of subscribing to a no growth hair-shirtism
Of course, our appeal to self-interest should go beyond economics: the interests in better air quality, better public transport and in communities coming together, which the transition towns movement has done well.
So the political argument must appeal to people’s values and people’s interests.
Secondly, if we are to transform the politics, we have to make the argument for the right kind of deal.
And here we get to what might seem like the paradox:
that developed countries are responsible for the situation we find ourselves in.
Thirty percent of global emissions 1850-2000 are from the EU, 30% from the US and just 6% from china.
And Per capita emissions are still significantly higher in developed than developing countries: 10 tonnes per capita in the UK versus 5 tonnes in China.
Yet at the same time, when we look ahead, 75% of the predicted increase in global emissions over the next two decades come from developing countries, 50% from China alone.
So there is no global deal worth its name without developed and developing countries action.
The way to resolve what seems like a paradox is that developed countries need to accept their responsibility to take the lead: the lead in cuts in emissions, not just with goals for 2050, but tough and ambitious interim targets.
At the same time, developing countries have to show they can move from high carbon growth to low carbon growth, with growth in emissions tailing off and eventually put into reverse.
And the bridge to get developing countries from high to low carbon growth must be action on finance and technology in particular by developed countries.
If we are to ask developing countries to show substantial deviation from business as usual by 2020 and beyond, we need certain and stable flows of finance, including public finance.
We also need institutions that command their respect in the way they operate, in their accountability mechanisms and in their governance.
How can the UK play its part as a developed country in making this sort of deal happen?
We need to accept our responsibility to lead in our commitments to carbon emissions—as we have with 80% by 2050 and reductions of one third by 2020.
We need to show a willingness to take action on public finance and we will be saying more about this soon. In this context, we need to understand that it is not an abdication of responsibility to help build a global carbon market, but it is a way of helping ensure we have the scale of finance we need for developing countries.
And we need to be helping to drive forward the key technologies and sharing the know-how about them. This is why action on CCS and coal is so important. It’s not just about UK emissions, it is about pushing forward CCS as quickly as possible.
And we need to be persuaders for a global agreement consistent with the science.
We need to show that whatever the agreement we reach at Copenhagen it will help us prevent dangerous climate change—consistent with minimising the chances of temperature rises above 2 degrees.
So we need the right political case for Copenhagen. We need the right sort of deal. And to change the politics, we need the right sort of campaign too.
Why can’t Copenhagen simply be left to governments?
Because look at the great advances in the past:
- Against slavery
- For rights to representation in Parliament and at work
- For equal rights for gay people
- For freedom from racial discrimination
All of them took progressive action by government; but none could happen without progressive forces in society. What makes change happen is popular pressure.
And in fact, it’s not in the same category but let me add another successful campaign to that list, one which could only have succeeded with popular mobilisation, and in which many of you in this room played a role: the campaign on coal in the UK.
Campaigning by green organisations and their supporters has changed the politics and I am glad it has.
Unfortunately, the Copenhagen task is even bigger. And I’ll be honest: we don’t yet have the domestic or global campaign that we need.
Next week we will launch our Copenhagen manifesto, seeking to explain to the public the urgency of acting, the ambition we need, and the international co-operation that is required.
We will seek to give our manifesto as wider currency as possible.
But we need you too.
When I thought last December about how much mobilisation there would be now, with six months to go, I thought there would be more than there is.
The honest truth is: we’re behind. Outside of people who are prepared to give up their Saturdays for it, how many people know that this December is the make-or-break moment for our planet?
I do know that people care, and that the popular pressure is there waiting to find expression.
The time to influence this debate is not in December, it is this month, it is now, now when the Major Economies Forum of the top 20 countries is meeting every month, and now that countries are coming out with their proposals – Japan last week, Australia the month before.
And I look to a movement which shows as much determination to get a global deal to save the planet as it has done on UK coal-fired power stations, as much attention to the detail, as much creativity, as much imagination.
And just as we must appeal to the population at large not to be remembered as the people who didn’t act, when the scale of the problem was apparent, so we must avoid being people who lost sight of the bigger prize: the deal at Copenhagen.
So, today, I hope will produce concrete ideas about how to upscale the campaign, how to fix people’s minds on a simple ask, the equivalent of debt, aid and trade and how to build a broader coalition not just here but around the world.
Let me end on a note of optimism.
Nine months ago, some people told me that president Obama would never be interested in a bill on cap and trade in his first year in office. They were wrong.
Other people told me China would never want a deal, but I know having been there, they were wrong.
Other people told me a few months ago that Australia was far too timid and would never be part of an ambitious agreement, but now they have upped their offer.
Still people say Copenhagen is so complicated that we can’t possibly resolve the issues in time.
We can prove them wrong too.
We can get the framework we need if we advance the right arguments, if we seek a genuinely global deal and if we strive for the broadest-based campaign.
We can still help win a victory over climate change.
And the time, if we are to do it, is now.
