Speeches by Gardiner.

“Can I ask you to focus now on the effects of these changes on the Southern ocean, and specifically on what is happening to the biodiversity in the Southern ocean as a result of that accelerated rate of change?”

“Take us through what the Government’s takeaway should be from that. Here we are making recommendations to the Government about this science. What should our key recommendation to the Government be as a consequence of that? Lord Vallance of Balham: I think it is very clear that, while mitigation is essential, adaptation…”

“The science that has been done in the past five years in the Antarctic has specifically shown, has it not, that things are happening much faster than we had previously thought?”

“Well, actually, not just for some low-lying islands. If all that ice went, we would be—”

“But particularly with reference to the Antarctic.”

“Professor Vallance, if I can come to you first, we heard from Dame Jane Francis that thinking about the rate of change in the Antarctic has radically altered in the last five years, I think with Robert DeConto’s paper from, if I remember, back in 2022-21. That rethink about the impacts of climate change, we are talking…”

“Just in case anybody is watching and writes in to us.”

“I hesitate here, but at the beginning, in your introduction, which was a fantastic introduction, I think you said that Antarctica contained 90% of the fresh water and it is 70%, isn’t it?”

“Can I ask you to focus now on the effects of these changes on the Southern ocean, and specifically on what is happening to the biodiversity in the Southern ocean as a result of that accelerated rate of change?”

“Yes, and principally as a result of the fact that we are getting rain in the Antarctic desert, which we have not previously had, which then causes a problem.”

“By consensus.”

“I agree with you about being tough and robust, Mr Gray. I want to explore some of the things that you have said. On the one hand you say we are doing world-class science here, but then you said that is all historic and we should just be focusing on what to do about it. You say there is not enough money here but maybe w…”

“Dame Jane, would it therefore be one of the recommendations that you would like to see this Committee put forward in its report that the Government should permit that five to 10-year funding regime?”

“Thirty-five years ago, as the evil regime of Erich Honecker collapsed and the Berlin wall came down, the threat of chaos in East Germany was countered, and that country reintegrated into western Europe only with the investment of $2 trillion. The Foreign Secretary rightly speaks of the dangers to the UK that continuing…”

“I was worried that when you said it, you seemed to allude only to money and the greater financing that the Government had put in, but you recognise that we are now talking about natural capital alongside produced capital, roads, bridges, buildings and social capital. When you spoke a moment ago, you talked about needin…”

“Ms Hammond, picking up on what Mr Carter said about sweating the assets, if you have a landholding of £5 million value and you are achieving from that what the previous head of the NFU said and the DEFRA figures bore out, between zero and £25,000 a year as your income, there are only three ways of looking at that. I wa…”

“A wet year.”

“In effect, you said that perhaps it is at different levels, all three, but principally you focused on the second—somebody else getting an unjust cut of what would rightfully be due to the farmers. What regulatory action do you recommend that Government should take in order to address that specifically, that this Commit…”

“Ms Hammond, you used the key word earlier: “externalities”. The question that all this revolves around is who pays for the depletion of public goods, which are those externalities? On the one hand, it could be the person who pollutes, on the other hand it could be the public, or under an ecosystem services payment sche…”

“You posed the question, quite rightly, of how will the farmer or landowner derive an income after 30 years or, with the SANGS, 80 years. How do we think of this as increasing our stock of natural capital as a country, which benefits everybody, but also recognising that there are people, some of them farmers and landown…”