6. 5. Plaid Cymru Debate: Climate Change

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:53 pm on 2 November 2016.

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Photo of Mr Simon Thomas Mr Simon Thomas Plaid Cymru 3:53, 2 November 2016

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I’d like to thank everyone who took part, and begin by particularly thanking the Cabinet Secretary for her endorsement of today’s motion, and particularly the way she set out how our own legislation does in fact help us deliver our commitment within Paris, something that I set out at the beginning as well. I was particularly interested to hear what she said about the RegionsAdapt initiative and how we can play our role there. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear, and that’s exactly, I think, what we want to unite behind when we send a Minister to somewhere like Marrakesh. This is not a party political issue in that sense, which is why I was a bit disappointed with Lee Waters’ contribution, which seemed to be more designed to react to Plaid Cymru bringing this forward rather than the content of what we brought forward. But, there we are.

The rest of the contributions were varied and positive on the whole. I particularly want to start with David Melding’s contribution, because I thought he made a very important point: that this has gone beyond countries. It’s gone beyond state actors; this is now something that we all own. I think I’d particularly like to bring the attention of the Chamber to the fact that Paris before Christmas was followed by Paris in the springtime with the business and climate summit, where 6.5 million businesses were represented, which also agreed to bring forward their own business plans in line with the Paris objectives. This is reality. This isn’t arguing the toss about 1922 newspaper cuttings. This is what business is doing today, and this is what the voluntary sector, community NGOs and the wider sectors are doing, and that’s what we really want to work with. David Melding also reminded us that NASA figures now show that we’ve passed that very important threshold of 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide. The last time we had that threshold we had dinosaurs roaming the earth and no ice at either of the poles.

That brings me to UKIP’s contribution, to which I have to say: you know, you can take a 1922 newspaper clipping if you want and you can put that against 97 per cent of the scientific community who say that climate change is happening. Yes, it’s happened over millennia; yes, it’s happened for billions of years; but it’s happening now and it’s exacerbated by man’s effect on the environment. And that’s the thing we have to get into contact with. And, yes, there are vested interests, David Rowlands. Let me tell you about the vested interests: £26 million spent lobbying EU parliamentarians, just between October 2013 and March 2015, by oil and gas companies. That’s the vested interest that’s holding us back.

There’s no conspiracy here. A low-carbon future for Wales is good for our health, it’s good for our economy, it’s good for our environment, it’s good for the next generation, and it gives us more independence because we’re not reliant on importing oil and gas. What conspiracy is here to somehow say that climate change is being used to bash people? This is about the future. Sorry, you’re in the past. Stay there, because we don’t want to change the trajectory that we’re going on.