The Carbon Brief Interview: Lord Deben, part 2
Lord Deben, or the Rt Hon John Selwyn Gummer, is the current chair of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). He is also chair of the sustainability consultancy Sancroft International, honorary president of the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International) and a non-executive director of the Catholic Herald newspaper. Gummer was a Conservative MP from 1970-1974 and from 1979-2010. From 1993-1997, he served as the Secretary of State for the Environment.
In Part 2, Lord Deben discusses the UK’s preparedness for climate change, the international climate talks, the need for a carbon intensity target, the Pope’s encyclical on climate change and his use of Twitter…
CB: Is the UK prepared enough for the impacts of climate change in the years and decades ahead?
LD: No. No, not at all. It’s a real issue, and it’s not just the UK, it’s throughout the world. There has been a dangerous dysfunction between adaptation and mitigation. The people for whom climate change is – as it is for me – the most material threat facing mankind, we have tended to focus on mitigation, because we can’t see how we can achieve these ends without dealing with that. Some of those who are much less convinced, and some of those who are outright deniers have been saying that you can do it all through adaptation. So they’ve almost tried to make a competitiveness between these two. And, oddly enough, our Climate Change Committee structure has made the links more difficult because, first of all, there is a separate chairman, perfectly rightly, of the adaptation committee, from the overall committee. And the adaptation committee has got some different members and works differently. That’s what the Act envisaged, and it’s certainly what I’ve continued because I think it’s the right way to do it. But it’s also, therefore, exacerbated by the fact that there are two ministries. There’s DEFRA looking after adaptation, and there’s DECC looking after the mitigation area. And I do think that in the future we’re going to have to bring those together much more closely. I’m doing that in the climate change committee. I very much want there to be two different set-ups, but I want them to work very closely together. I think for a future government making sure that DEFRA and DECC work very much more closely and trying to make they work more effectively. Above all, I’m afraid the Treasury’s going to have to face up to the real cost of climate change. I mean people talk about climate change as though it’s happening at some future date. It’s happening now, and that’s why we have to spend more money on flood prevention, that’s why we’ve got to learn about soft flooding arrangements, that’s how we’re going to have to re-learn about wash-meadows and all sorts of other things which we’ve lost. And, and we’re going to have to do that because the climate is changing and it is going to result in very many more incidents of particularly difficult weather.
CB: On the point around how we get the balance between DECC and DEFRA’s roles and responsibilities right: there’s some sort of chatter that post-election there may be a re-think about the structure of different departments and ministries, and whether DECC gets, you know, split away again and gets more the business side, and gets more the climate change side. What in your experience with the CCC, and obviously your ministerial experience, is there a kind of perfect vision in how that all gets divided up and how it gets reshaped and reformed after the election?
LD: Well, David Cameron has been, I think, been rather sensible about these things, because his view is that it is a very, very expensive business reorganising ministries, and they spend a lot of the first two years sorting themselves out. And then he didn’t want that, and that’s why there were no real changes [in 2010], in that sense. My own view is that the present system works perfectly reasonably, and that you can make changes, but I’m not sure that I would be spending my time making those changes. I think the link between climate and energy is very good. Energy on its own and energy in Biz [Department of Business], has never worked, it doesn’t work, and I think there’s a great deal to be said for that linkage together. Whether it would be better to have mitigation and adaptation in the same ministry I think is an argument which has got many other issues, about what DEFRA really ought to be like and whether it is a proper connection. I think DEFRA was, after all, a big ministry once, it was the Department of the Environment, and then quite separately the Ministry of Agriculture. I don’t think that necessarily it’s the perfect answer, but then, on the other hand, I do have to say that I wouldn’t be spending my time about it. I think that you can make the system work. But what you do need is to have a closer association between adaptation and mitigation in my view.
CB: This week [see endnote], UNFCCC negotiators are in Geneva at the latest gathering ahead of the Paris COP. How do you see this year playing out? Who needs to do what, by when, for a successful outcome on Paris? And what does success look like?
LD: Hmm… [laughs] I think that the steps have got to be very clear. First of all, the nations that are really committed, like ourselves, have got to show at home that we’re doing it. That’s why I think it is very important for us to fix a carbon intensity target for 2030, before we get to Paris.
CB: Before Paris?
LD: Yes, before Paris. Not necessarily that it will come into operation before Paris, but I want to say then this is what we’re going to put into operation so we make a clear commitment. I think that’s going to be quite enough.
CB: Hasn’t that been kicked into 2016?
LD: Well, what has happened is that the access that it can be done in 2016. All I’m saying is that in 2015, before Paris, it would be an extremely good step to say: next year we are going to implement a 50 [grammes CO2/kWh], something between 50 and 100 carbon intensity target. And I think that would be a very serious target.
CB: Are you getting any sense of that discussion, or the likelihood that that could happen? Or is that your call for that to happen?
LD: Well, I think that is what I would like to see, and I don’t think you’ll get a discussion like that until after the election. But I think that’s a proper discussion as to deliver that. Secondly, of course, we have to beef-up and make very clear the European Union’s contribution to this. Build on the good work on this. I think Ed Davey has done well in fighting for the higher targets, not quite what we’d like, but not bad. And then push that up more by having a better story round it, and a greater degree of certainty as to how it is delivered, so that there is a real common basis to be argued from. And Britain must be in the lead of that, and we must be sure that we are implementing ahead of other people, in order to get others on board. So, that’s the second area of work I think we have to do before that. Thirdly, I think we’ve got to use all our Commonwealth connections, and our international connections generally, to bring as many people on board as possible. It is happening, and we can underpin what America and China have done by what we can do with China as a European Union. That’s a very good link that we have, and also with India, that’s a very different system, much more complicated for them. But Modi is doing some important things, things which we can certainly support, and so we’ve got to do all that digging over, which is very, very vital if we’re going to deliver in Paris.
CB: In Lima there was some talk around the idea of whether it should be a five-year or a ten-year rolling mechanism. There are parallels, in a way, with the UK’s five-year carbon budgets. Do you see ways in which our own model could be productive if replicated at a more international level or scale? Particularly on that timeline of five versus ten years that some other countries or parties have suggested.
LD: Well, I like a five-year rolling programme myself because I think it concentrates the mind. It’s a short enough period, people don’t have the first sort of three years thinking ‘I don’t have to do anything’, which I’m afraid is what a ten-year period tends to do. So, I think it’s an important thing. But I think it’s much more, it’s much more a driver for individual national programmes than beyond that. I wouldn’t like to be prescriptive about how you deliver in Paris, simply because I think so much can change between now and then and this is a real area of diplomacy, a real area of finding what is the best way to achieve it. Because I feel we are, we are in the position that we have considerably greater support internationally than we had in Copenhagen. Very much more practical support. We’ve got 66 or more nations doing very serious things on climate. We’ve got a real executive demand in the United States. We’ve got China doing absolutely more directly, probably more proportionately, than other countries. We’ve got a different language coming out of the developing countries. A really major change. But one of the problems when you have that is that there is a great deal of goodwill, a deal great of, you know, ‘we must do it’, but getting that together into something that everybody can sign up to is not easy. So I don’t want to pre-judge what is delivered. I think it’s very important that we shall, we shall not know right up till the very end as to how the mix is going to be, is going to be achieved. But I think it will be, simply because it has to be, and because enough countries know that it has to be. And China has made a big difference. China’s position, intensely nationalist, intensely concerned with its own future, but therefore intensely committed, because it knows that climate change is having a huge effect on China. And they don’t want it to. They really do want to win this battle. But they don’t want to do it at a cost which does not properly represent the fact that the rich countries have made their money out of that pollution, and therefore we do have to shoulder a great deal of the cost.
CB: What’s your view of the kind of, there seems to be intense debate obviously in Geneva this week, around the precise legal shape/form/architecture of what the deal might look like. There also seems to have been increasing expectation management, from the Secretariat of the UNFCCC downwards, it seems, in the EU and others, around that Paris won’t deliver a 2C degree-compatible deal. What’s your view on that? On the form of what that deal could look and feel like?
LD: Well, it won’t be the last deal we do. And it may be better seen as the beginning of a continuous process. It has to be a good enough deal to mean that we can achieve a two degree world. That’s quite a big ask. But it certainly won’t encapsulate everything which makes it absolutely certain that that’s what we’ll do. I think we have to be very careful about how we define legally binding and all those things. We have to recognise that some countries don’t reveal to their own public what they’re doing. Leave alone what other people who come and crawl all over them. So, you’ve got to find a way of being reasonably sure that they’re doing what they say they’ll do, without making a whole series of arguments about imperialism and post-imperialism and the like. And that’s why I’m very careful about trying to prognosticate and saying, ‘I think that’ll happen’ and ‘that’ll happen’. I don’t know. I think what you have to do is be extremely flexible, but very firm. So, we can’t have fake agreements. We’ve got to have an agreement which stands up. But if we’re going to have an agreement which stands up then frankly, er, we may have to invent mechanisms which we haven’t thought of yet. What I am interested in is the degree to which the countries are now working really very closely together and there is no thought of…[pauses conversation to answer phone]
CB: About this question of the legal shape and form…
LD: Well, I think, um, that fact that countries are much closer together and talking together, things will emerge, and I think for people outside, we should do as little speculation as possible. Not because I am afraid of speculation, and I have ideas about what might happen, but I just think that this is not a moment to make it more difficult for what is a fascinating negotiation in the sense that this is, for the most part, a collection of nations that want to find a way through. So we mustn’t make it more difficult.
CB: What’s your view about the Pope issuing an encyclical on climate change later this year?
LD: Well, I think it’s one of the most exciting and really important things that has happened, because the churches are the largest group, certainly in the western world, of concerned and committed individuals. On a Sunday in Britain, even with reduced church attendances, there are more people in churches than gathered together in any other, including in football matches. So, you’re talking about a group of people who do gather and who do connect in a way in which our rush and hurries of the world doesn’t happen elsewhere. That’s the first thing. The second thing is they are people who, um, for the most part are doers. They want to change the world, they want to affect the world, they care about it. They are in the proper sense the yeast, and you know, the salt has not lost its savour. They are very important to the community, and in most communities a very high proportion of those people who do the voluntary work and the rest of it are churches, you know. We wouldn’t have everything from looking after the down-and-outs, to food banks, to caring for the lonely if the church people were not there. So, it’s a very important. Thirdly, they are universal. The Catholic church – ours [Church of England] is a much smaller denomination – but the Catholic church which 1.2 billion or whatever it is people, is all over the world. It isn’t the symbol of Western Imperialism, it isn’t North or South, it’s about the Philippines and Canada, it’s about Argentina and the Ukraine. I mean it’s about the whole of the world, and so the Pope saying – reiterating – the Gospel concept of stewardship, of looking after God’s creation, is a crucial part of bringing people face-to-face with the fact that they have, individually, personally, a responsibility to do something about climate change. This is not something to be left to politicians, or the like. And it will mean that those who don’t want to have now got to face it. Mr [Tony] Abbott is going to have to say to himself in Australia, ‘I am a Catholic and the Pope has made this very clear. What am I, how am I going to argue, therefore, the policy that I’ve been doing now?’ It’s a very important thing because it will really affect the consciences and the personal decisions of very large numbers of people. I think the other thing it’ll do is, because it’ll be taken up throughout the world, is that we will see in a very independent way, different manners of looking at how you deal with climate change. I mean we’ll be listening to the Cardinal from Korea, we’ll be looking at what the American church will do in the context of Republican denial, we’ll be seeing how a country like Brazil is going to handle this. And we’ll be seeing it not through the eyes of the politicians, but through the eyes of that very powerful group of people, the churches.
CB: OK, last question. We can’t really end without talking about your use of Twitter. Your interactions with the, as you describe them, “climate dismissers” can be robust and combative. What is your wider view about taking on the more influential climate sceptic voices?
LD: Well, all I’m trying to do on Twitter is to keep the discussion in the bounds of sense. Sometimes one has to be a bit – one only has 140 characters so it doesn’t allow you to be, in any way enigmatic – you have to be very direct as to what you want to say. And I really do think that you have to bring home to people that they are suggesting – the dismissers and the deniers, and the lukewarmers – they are suggesting that they know better than the whole of the scientific community. That is what they are suggesting. Now I find that fundamentally unlikely. That’s the first thing. The second thing is that if they are wrong and we follow them, we will have faced disaster. If they are right we will have done rather more, rather more quickly, than we will have had to do anyway. I don’t think there’s any argument in it, it seems to me quite clear that if the vast majority of experts tell you that there is a serious risk, you don’t normally say I’m going ignore it and do something else. It’s like people who smoke heavily. You accept that society allows them to smoke heavily, but you know that they are doing a very stupid thing, and that it will be likely to lead to their premature death. They may have some wonderful idea that the people who don’t believe in the link between smoking and cancer are right. They’re not. And that’s the problem. So it doesn’t matter how the Senate of the United States votes, the fact is they can vote as many times as they like and say that there is no connection between human activity and climate change – there is, that is the fact, and it’s rather like King Canute sitting there, he tried to explain to his supporters that he couldn’t tell the sea to go back. Unfortunately, they thought he was doing something else and that’s rather been the story ever since. These people are suggesting that they can tell the sea to go back. But climate change will continue, whatever you do with the vote.
CB: OK. Thank you very much for your time.
LD: Thank you.