Lord Patten of Barnes has been visiting New Zealand as a guest of the Centre for European Studies at Canterbury University.

During his stay he talked to the Wellington’s Dominion Post reporter Andrea Vance in a wide ranging interview. An excerpt below is what he had to say on the subject of Climate Change.

Andrea Vance …Turning to Climate change. I also wanted to ask you ..Climate change is a huge issue here …Do you think that Copenhagen will be a watershed ?

Lord Patten: Well I think  the  likeliest outcome  will be an agreement on a way forward, agreement on a process.

I am not sure there  will be  an agreement in which every country is  nailed down to specific targets …Some of the NGOs understandably think that has to happen but that is a huge call. I chaired the 1990 conference on what is called the Montreal Protocol to ban the production of CFCs to save the Ozone layer. Now we were able to put in place a global agreement, but that was a much more straightforward limited issue. This question of carbon emission of methane and greenhouse gases as a whole is so much more complicated and we are expecting the world to sign up to something that is probably more complicated then the Versailles Treaty of 1918.

Does it matter? Well it matters hugely if we were to hold global warming to 2° Celsius. If you go above that it really starts to get you into some pretty scary territory. I am not saying it is not important.

But what I am saying is that we have to be realistic about what you are expecting states to do. Let me give you an example of two of the problems. First of all are we prepared to accept its per capita emissions rather then aggregate emissions, which is the real key? Unless we do that it will be very difficult to get the Chinese and the Indians on side.

The Chinese are the biggest emitters now, but America and Australia emit five times as much per head as China. And how do we take account of what is up there already. Developing economies haven’t done that -developed economies have done it.

And yet much of the increase in emissions over the next year will come from developing countries not developed countries .So its hugely complicated but I think at the very least we will agree on an infrastructure for tackling the issue. which will commit all the states to particular sorts of environmentally friendly policies. This will involve some transfer of resources and technology from developed countries to developing ones.  

That will enable some developed countries to give a lead to some developing countries in some areas. To give you an example methane is a particular problem for New Zealand but the agricultural impact of climate change is an issue for a lot of poor developing countries not for just a developed country like New Zealand.

I am sure New Zealand will able to work with poor countries to look at technological answers to the consequences of animals on the environment. So there will be relationships like that, which will be hopefully forged in Copenhagen

I would love it if it could came out of Copenhagen that every i was dotted and every t was crossed and we had everybody signing up to measures that would without question halt global warming to 2°.

Andrea Vance: Are you in favour of using technology to hold back the Climate change Tide?

Lord Patten: No I am not a technological determinist. I don’t subscribe to the view that technology will sort this out sooner or later which is the position that some people have got themselves into. I think we are all going to have to change the way we live to some extent and change the way we define success. People talk about sustainable economies but they still measure success in terms of the growth of GDP. And GDP is very often a measure of things that damage the environment and do not save the environment.

So I do not think we can deal with climate change without having domestic policies that involve greater cost and the way we do things. I do not think it’s a case of us all having to have cold showers and wear hair shirts. But I think does involve change in a 1001 small ways,

I think in Britain we are now far more aware of the importance of energy efficiency and I think we are much more aware of the impact of the way we conduct our lives. However there are some bogus arguments as well that we have to deal with. For example one that New Zealand has been very good at shooting down is the rather bogus argument put about over food miles. So you can not abandon your reason in this debate.

Background:

Lord Patten was appointed Governor of Hong Kong in April 1992, a position he held until 1997, overseeing the return of Hong Kong to China. He was Chairman of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland set up under the Good Friday Peace Agreement, which reported in 1999. In September 1999 he was appointed European Commissioner for External Relations, a post he held until November 2004. On leaving office in Brussels he was made a life peer and took his seat in the House of Lords in January 2005.

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