11 March 2007Sunday MirrorVincent Moss
MOSS: Is climate change the most serious threat facing Britain and the rest of the world?
MILIBAND: Yes. I think this is the biggest threat to the comfort of our lives over the medium term.
We're lucky in this country that it's not the difference for us between drought on the one hand and deluge on the other. But it could be different in developing countries.
When I was in Kenya, people told me about how they were having to walk longer to reach water through the desert. Over my lifetime - and I'm 41 - this is the biggest threat to our economy and our society. It's not that the world is going to come to an end, Labour can rise to it more suffering than there need be.
MOSS: Some scientists are sceptical about the causes of global warming. Are you convinced it's a man-made problem?
MILIBAND: I am convinced by the facts. But more importantly than me, 99.9 per cent of the world's scientists as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are convinced that it is happening and that it is man made.
MOSS: Do you think Britain can make any difference when we produce less than two per cent of the world's energy?
MILIBAND: Countries that react first are going to have the greatest economic gain. If we put this off and hope it doesn't affect us, it's going to end up hurting us more.
If we don't show that we can change our own behaviour, then there's no chance at all that countries like India and China will make the right choices to keep their carbon emissions down.
MOSS: Aren't you worried that Tory leader David Cameron is now leading the way when it comes to green policies?
MILIBAND: I think the green agenda is about substance, not about gestures and gimmicks.
At the next election people will draw a line down the page and contrast our serious response to a serious problem with their gimmicks.
The Tories say; "We're conservationists, so we'll be able to save the environment." But where's the beef? You've got to be radical to save the environment.
MOSS: But don't your policies, such as taxes on airline flights and motorists, hit poor people the hardest?
MILIBAND: We abolished VAT on fuel - that was the most anti-poor policy from the Tories. We spend £700million a year - £300million of taxpayers' money and £400million through the power companies - on insulation and other energy efficiency measures for poorer families.
MOSS: What do you make of the message from our poll, that people want to save energy, but don't want to pay higher green taxes?
MILIBAND: The first job of government is to make it easier for people to make a difference. We were the dirty man of Europe under the Tories. We've changed that by creating kerbside recycling. Ninety per cent of the country now has recycling outside their front doors.
And that's why we've had a 400 per cent increase in levels of recycling over the past six years. We believe in carrots as well as sticks. If people can do the right thing and they know it's going to make a difference, they will do it.
MOSS: Tell us what "sticks" has the Government got lined up in terms of any new taxes on motoring and air travel?
MILIBAND: Just days before the Chancellor's Budget? That would be extremely unwise!
MOSS: But do you think we'll be paying higher green taxes in a year's time?
MILIBAND: I'm not advocating a rise in the tax burden. But when there have been taxes, they have been significantly offset. The Chancellor said about the Air Passenger Duty rise that the money would go back into projects like transport and the environment.
MOSS: Do you practise what you preach about energy-saving in the Miliband home?
MILIBAND: We're quite good recyclers and have switched to a renewable energy supplier. Any electricity we use is from wind power or other renewable sources.
MOSS: What do you make of some of the large number of people who are recycling, according to our poll?
MILIBAND: I'm heartened, but I have confidence that if we can give people the information and make it easy for them, they will want to play their part - as long as business and Government pull their weight too..
MOSS: Just what is Government going to do?
MILIBAND: We have got to lead policy. The Climate Change Bill will be a world first.
We are the first country to set itself on a clear emissions reductions pathway to 2050. But we have also got to get our own house in order which is why we announced the whole of the Government estate will be carbon neutral by 2012.
MOSS: Aren't you embarrassed by pictures of Government buildings ablaze with all the lights on at night?
MILIBAND: Of course. If there are pictures of town halls or Government departments with their lights on - assuming no one is in them - it's embarrassing.
DON'T PANIC! IT'S JUST POLITICS
HERE, environmental expert PHILIP STOTT, Professor of Biogeography at the University of London, explains why we shouldn't panic - and why he believes global warming is just another political bandwagon:
LIP SERVICE: Professor Stott
EVERY ambitious politician pays lip service to the daft idea that we can control climate, using "global warming" for their own political ends, from forcing you to wear hemp underpants to establishing a new generation of nuclear reactors.
But look beyond the rising rhetoric ... what climate are these politicians hoping to produce? The biting cold of 1947, when the sea froze over?
They have abandoned reason. More worryingly, elitist green agendas, like carbon taxes and road pricing, have terrible repercussions for the poor.
Climate is chaos. It is the most complex system, driven by volcanoes, the oceans, clouds, a wobbly Earth, a pulsing sun, and cosmic rays from exploding stars. Dealing with one factor at the margins - human emissions of carbon dioxide - is utterly pointless. Climate is change. It has flipped between hot and cold, dry and wet for 4.5 billion years.
Unfortunately, our politicians have forgotten that a mammoth Ice Age ended only 12,000 years ago; that Medieval England was a balmy vineyard; that the Little Ice Age blasted Europe from the 14th Century onwards, producing the violent winds that sank the Spanish Armada.
Samuel Johnson tells us of an Astronomer who claims that he can control climate: "...the sun has listened to my dictates, and passed from tropic to tropic by my direction ..."
Unfortunately, the Astronomer was mad. And so are we if we give such nonsense credence. Nobody, not even Mr Bush and Mr Blair, can fine tune climate to a degree Celsius.
Yet, what about the future? The latest summary from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a possible rise in temperature of between 1.1 to 6.4 degC. Other groups say we shall enter a cooling phase, up to minus-two degC in 2012. That's a range of eight degrees - what's that supposed to tell us?
We should focus instead on bringing four billion people out of poverty, providing them with clean water and modern sources of energy. The richer one is, the better one can cope with change.
Our "global warming" political agenda is dangerously misguided.
