By Climate change is a defining political test of our era. As leaders gather for the European Council meetings today, a deal at the Copenhagen conference hangs in the balance. But I believe that getting the right global deal on carbon could be more vital to tackling global poverty than even the Gleneagles summit of 2005.
Climate change is not some future possibility for many of the world’s poorest people, it is a present reality. The Global Humanitarian Forum estimated recently that more than 300 million people are seriously affected by climate change.
I have seen for myself the impact that climate change is having in the developing world. In Kenya I met a man who told me that the seasons he remembered as a child have gone. In Bangladesh I met families who have had their homes swept away by the rising waters. In Ethiopia, I met women who had been forced by drought to walk further each day to collect water until they were walking 5 hours simply to drink from a watering hole shared by people and animals alike.
It is a tragic reality that the people who have done least to contribute to climate change – the global poor – are being hardest hit. By 2035, the Himalayan glaciers, which provide water for up to 750 million people across Asia, could disappear. By 2050, some twenty five million more children may be malnourished. By 2080, an extra 400 million people could be exposed to malaria.
Progressives came together in 2005 to make poverty history but climate change now threatens to make poverty the future for millions. That is why we have not only a self-interest, but also a moral responsibility to the developing world to work for a fair deal on climate change at Copenhagen.
But while the historical responsibilities of the West in relation to climate change are unarguable, it is in the emerging economies that we will see the greatest rise in emissions over the coming decades. So a climate deal must include both developed and developing countries.
Of central importance in getting developing countries to the table will be agreeing a consensus around the additional financial support that the developed world will provide for poor countries. I believe that Europe can lead the way here as it did in 2005, when European finance ministers agreed to increase aid ahead of the G8 summit at Gleneagles.
This is too important an issue for ‘wait and see’ politics, or old-fashioned horse-trading – that is why as a British Government we have made the case for additional and predictable flows to the developing world of around 100 billion dollars per year by 2020.
For our part, the UK will increase our investment in helping developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change – over and above our aid commitments to reach 0.7% of gross national income. We believe that the lion's share of the funding for adapting to and mitigating against climate changes is additional to development assistance.
But at the same time, we have acknowledged that a limited part of the aid funding we are providing has benefits both in terms of tackling poverty and combating climate change, like the DFID funded projects I saw in Bangladesh that are lifting homes above rising waters and protecting crops and livestock from floods.
The Tories refuse to match the commitment Labour has made. But I believe it is not only morally right for developed countries to provide additional finance but it will be essential to securing a deal at Copenhagen. Given that climate change will affect all of us, it is in our own interests to help developing countries to ‘leapfrog’ dirty technologies and find a low carbon path to growth.
Climate change is one a defining challenges for our generation. It is not a future threat but a current crisis. It goes to the core of our progressive beliefs. It demands a progressive response because it is the world’s poorest people who are least responsible for the problem and it is they who have been affected first and will be affected worst. For many of the poorest people in the world, the weeks between now and the Copenhagen conference are not a window of opportunity but a window of necessity.
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In twenty years' time, people will look back and ask, "Why were we all so utterly stupid?"
No but I read the dreadful reviews.
We do not know for sure if anthropogenic climate change is occurring or not, but in order for Labourlist draw a conclusions – especially as most of you are non-scientists – it is vital that the science be objective and untainted by politics.
For some time the IPCC has been known to negate traditional scientific method. The climatologist Roger Pielke, despite believing in anthropogenic climate change, has criticised the IPCC for its ill-gotten conclusions, accusing it of subjectively choosing data to support a selective view of climate change science. That folks, is not science. These people’s professions are adulterated with idealism.
Forget these worrying grandmothers with their crappy computer models turning out doomsday scenarios about rising temperatures, sinking islands and collapsing ice shelves. You should not trust them because they have little if any basis in observed reality. Their 'science' is all about twisting and omitting/selecting data until it confesses. The last two years have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase.
Though there is a HUGE body of vested interests: Obama intends to use ‘global warming’ as an excuse for more taxation, regulation and protectionism; energy companies/investors stand to make a fortune from scams like carbon trading; charities like Greenpeace depend for their funding on public anxiety; most other environmentalists who need to constantly talk up the threat to justify their jobs.
As for poverty, what irks me about environmentalism is that it is driven by people who have too much money. Try explaining “global warming” to an Iranian or Turkish peasant and he'll have no idea what you are talking about. Their lives are about finding their next meal. I hear many ordinary people who are just sick of all the nonsense they hear about global warming from metropolitan liberals.
Your moralising would have more effect if you did not support expanding Heathrow. But since you do support it, we can take it this is another "don't do as I do , do as I say" rant from a Government Minister.
And then you wonder why politicians are treated with contempt? And why w don't trust you.
Go away, stop moralising and practise what you preach. Then come bakc and tell us.
Until then, forget it. You have zero credibility.
How much of my money did you spend in Bangladesh making the stilts on the houses of the people who live ON water a wee bit higher?
This though isn't on the agenda as the left doesn't like the idea of telling populations you have to modernise your way of life.
You can't have a rate of population expansion with severly limited resources and then wonder why poverty isn't being dealt with.
If third world families have historically had large numbers of children because many die young due to poor infant mortality rates and then you send medical aid to keep them alive but don't work to change attitudes on family size then you get population explosion with no resource to prevent poverty.
You know very well that deductive reasoning is an imperialist conspiracy.
As you earn £140 grand a year witch is 6 or 7 times the average wage in this country do you see this as a bit hypocrcy , Start getting your own House in orfer before coming to dictate to us why we should pay more .
ricki
This Global Warming stuff is tax driven that's all.
We have an unelected Prime Minister who tries to stop paying for the TA when we're at war. He steals £12500 of our money for cleaning a flat he doesn't even live in. That money is in cash and to his brother who has nothing to do with cleaning as far as I know. Labour...£12500 for cleaning? Is it me?
Tessa Jowells husband is a Tax Avoidance Lawyer. A member of the Labour Party married to a man of that profession? Is it me?
Billy
What on earth does he think his salary is for?
I don't mind paying taxes for hospitals, schools, etc. but I don't wanty to pay for ministerial Christmas Cards. He didn't even send me one.
The developing and developed economies arguing over emissions are a bit like two cripples fighting over a crutch.
Some of the biggest carbon savings are to be made by producing nations. eg Nigeria flares enough gas to power Brazil; and the waste in the Middle East has to be seen to be believed.
It's not carbon emissions that need to be priced - that is a completely unworkable idea brought to us by the same people who brought us the Credit Crunch. In fact it is the proposed solution to climate change which is the Scam - you don't need to take a position on whether or not climate change is a reality or not, or if it is whether or not CO2 is the cause.
The solution IMHO is to make the energy value of carbon more valuable within a global International Energy Clearing Union.
The role of producers, and the unitisation/monetisation of energy value is what I referred to in this article
The global warming scam is designed to keep emerging nations down and the poor in poverty.
It is not a coincidence that just as living standards in India and China rise, the West wants to burden them with billions of taxes and cripple new industries.