MP at COP26: World needs to go cold turkey on hydrocarbon use to avert a catastrophe
The world needs to tackle its addiction to hydrocarbons quickly to limit the impact of the climate crisis, a West Sussex MP attending COP26 has warned.
Andrew Griffith, who represents Arundel and South Downs, was appointed the UK’s Net Zero Business Champion by Boris Johnson this time last year.
He is at the COP26 in Glasgow this week and spoke to us about how we are facing a ‘climate crisis’ and the conference is the ‘last chance’ for the world to take action to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
Without action he warned of more volatile weather events and climate change on a ‘catastrophic scale’ globally.
Although we are a ‘small cog in a very large wheel’ he encouraged everyone to take action and have a role.
This could range from shopping more locally and seasonally, wasting less food and water or asking pension providers to invest in companies ‘that are part of the low carbon future’.
In his role, he has been working with businesses to see how they can become more resilient and sustainable or cater for customers making more sustainable purchasing decisions.
Businesses are also looking at their own activities and seeing how they can decarbonise.
At COP26 he is hoping to discuss actions on a global scale.
Mr
Griffith said: “We need to see the world halve its emissions over the next decade. Personally I think that’s possible.”
He pointed out how the UK has committed to 78 per cent by 2035.
Some of the actions countries should sign up to include eliminating coal, switching to nil emission vehicles, more funding for the developing world and the planting of trillions of new trees.
Asked about potential stumbling blocks, he described how the world had to go ‘fairly cold turkey’ on its ‘addiction’ to hydrocarbons quickly. He thought it would not be possible to stop their use overnight, but action should be agreed to phase them out giving replacement technologies such as hydrogen fuel an opportunity to scale up.
For Mr Griffith tackling the crisis was ‘90 per cent will’ and he did not think people would be paying a lot more.
Investing in more renewable energy would both reduce costs and emissions.
He described how nobody would have their gas boiler ripped out and told to buy an expensive heat pump for tens of thousands of pounds.
But like electric vehicles he expected the costs to come down significantly with technological improvements and production at scale, making both a realistic option for many when they are considering replacements in the near future.
In the meantime he suggested ‘we can all take action that will get the ball rolling’. While the technology already exists to remove carbon from the economy, the challenge is to scale it up and deploy it.
Mr Griffith is hopeful this can be achieved by human ingenuity and investment assisted by government policy and consumers armed with more information.
He concluded: “There is a role for government, but there is a role for us all.”