Ed Miliband is confident than the Copenhagen climate change summit can result in global good news
This December’s Copenhagen climate change summit is a defining moment. Having come so far, the world must seize the opportunity to create an agreement based on principles of justice, fairness and sustainability.
It is our best chance to protect the families I met in Bangladesh whose homes were washed away by floods that are becoming increasingly frequent and more severe. These are the people who have done least to cause the problem of carbon emissions and, as part of the terrible injustice of the issue, face the earliest and severest consequences.
It is also the best chance to provide new industrial jobs for the people in my constituency who have seen traditional industries decline and are looking for new jobs and new opportunities.
A deal at Copenhagen will help create the conditions for new clean energy jobs in our industrial heartlands, from manufacturing electric cars to offshore wind turbines. These jobs won’t just be in Britain – we could see a green industrial revolution create new, high quality jobs around the world.
When negotiators sit down in Copenhagen, they will need to consider both sides of the coin – avoiding catastrophe and seizing opportunity – if they are to get the right deal. We need to explain the economic and social benefits of tackling climate change as well as informing people of the risks of failing to act.
So there are positive benefits to action,
but the hardest issue is the respective responsibilities of developed and developing countries in securing an ambitious agreement. Here we need to be guided by a clear sense of justice and fairness.
There is no getting away from the fact that it is the industrialisation of developed countries that is principally responsible for getting us into a situation where carbon concentrations in the atmosphere are at their highest for at least 600,000 years. It is developed countries that will have to lead in cutting those emissions. That is why Britain has set out a legally binding commitment to 34 per cent reductions by 2020. And we have said we would do more as part of an ambitious deal.
It is also right that we provide finance to help developing countries address the consequences of climate change that it is too late to avoid and grow their economies in a low carbon way. Gordon Brown has led the way in arguing for serious, long term finance for developing countries, with his proposal for $100 billion a year of public and private finance by 2020. Now Europe has endorsed
a similar proposal and we need others to follow.
Finance is also necessary to help ensure that tackling climate change is not left to developed countries alone. At current rates, around 90 per cent of future emissions growth would come from developing
rather than developed countries. So, at Copenhagen, we need developing nations to take actions that reduce their emissions from the business as usual path. We have already heard President Hu Jintao of China, in his first ever address to the United Nations General Assembly, sign up to doing just that.
Gaps between countries remain. There remains a risk that those gaps will not be closed in time. The negotiations will be tough, not just on finance and emissions levels but also on issues like technology, forestry and monitoring of emissions cuts.
This Government is determined to do all we can to get the deal we need. The Prime Minister has said he will go to Copenhagen to push for a deal. In the past month I have hosted major international conferences that helped narrow the gaps between countries on the key finance and technology issues. As I write, I am in Copenhagen at a meeting designed to break the logjam on some of the issues that will be at the heart of the formal negotiation next month.
But the truth is the fate of the talks still hangs in the balance. It will take political will, not just from Britain, but internationally, to get a deal. It will also take civil society to keep the pressure on leaders and make clear that the world expects a deal consistent with justice and consistent with the science of climate change. With that pressure and with the right political drive, I believe we can get a deal that is good for justice, good for jobs and good for future generations.
Ed Miliband is Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and Labour MP for Doncaster North
