Erika Yarrow talks politics with the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group.

Labour MP for Morley and Rothwell, Colin Challen is a man who knows his stuff when it comes to climate change and, refreshingly, he is apt to 'tell it like it is,' be the news good, bad or indifferent.  It was for these attributes, along with his keenness to engage with environmental professionals - encouraging those with environmental skills to 'get political' - that he was declared CIWEM Environmental Parliamentarian of the Year 2008.

Meeting Colin in the Houses of Parliament, I was keen to know why the Government was not communicating to the public the seriousness of climate change and the urgency of action. 'The view in the Government is that people will consider the problem too big to deal with and carry on as they are,' said Colin. He explained that another problem is 'election anxiety.'  People vote for the Party that gives them the feel-good factor.  The problem with democracy is that Government needs voters to give them permission to do the right thing on climate change and, unfortunately, that means dramatic changes in lifestyle - changes that seem unacceptable to many devotees of our consumer culture.

A further factor is that of timescale.  People are not interested today in what will be happening in 2050. 'People ask how this will affect me straightaway,' said Colin. 'The challenge of government is to communicate the long-term trends.'

He continued: 'If I went to a constituent with a flooding problem and said it was down to climate change and that we needed more wind farms I would probably get punched.  People want to know what we are doing now to solve current problems.'

The complexity of climate change serves only to heighten the problem of communication. 'People want to find linear approaches to linear problems.  These don't work with climate change.  There will be feedbacks and urgency is of the essence,' emphasised Colin. 'This may seem like a distant problem.  It is true that people affected worst by climate change may be in Bangladesh.  But some populations are already suffering from  depleted lifestyles in the developed world.'

He continued: 'Politicians have our own Hippocratic oath.  Ours is that we will protect voters' material well-being.  It is a materialistic position that politicians offer a consumer society. Carbon emissions are closely related to consumption.'

When we got onto the subject of carbon rationing Colin pointed out that currently there is little acknowledgement of imported emissions.

He said: 'When we buy items that have been made in China there is no obvious increase in home emissions. Between 1992 and 2004 there was an 18 percent increase in imported emissions. Our increase in consumption is China's ten percent growth rate.  It is a question of how to convey this to consumers.'

He continued: 'I support carbon rationing in tradable rations with a cap that reduces. The first step is to reach agreement at international level.  This would need an agreed system of measuring emissions. People will agree that this is needed. The problem is that they don't want to define how we will get there. The only way to achieve equity is through Contraction and Convergence.  At the moment we are dividing things up unfairly.  We need to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions and to do that we need an international policy and system for doing that.  If you are buying carbon credits you need to be sure that you are buying genuine credits.  To cover Kingsnorth, for example.  Much policy in this area has been through NGOs.  This needs to be strengthened.  This is a role for professional bodies like CIWEM and others.'
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There needs to be carbon policing with sanctions.  At the moment there are no sanctions.  Many of the developed countries that were at Kyoto have exceeded their baseline emissions,  Canada by 54 percent.  Nothing has been done about this.  Developing countries must also become more assertive in international negotiations. They need to be using Contraction and Convergence to help them build resilience to climate change.'

On a more positive note, I bring up the subject of Obama's victory: 'Obama has raised everyone's hopes and I feel certain that he is determined to fulfil those hopes.  But there is bound to be compromise. Senators and congressmen will want to see jobs protected in their states.  They will want job preservation schemes.  Obama will need to demonstrate that he wants to create and protect jobs in the green sector.  Detroit is important for the Democratic vote and is a key area for car manufacturers.  He has said that he will support them but they must be green.'

Colin continued: 'He will also need to decide what to do about ethanol.  It is raising food prices, it is not clear whether it is carbon neutral and it may be a false economy.  He will upset a great proportion of the farming interest if he withdraws from ethanol production.'

As Colin rushes back to the Commons to vote - I interviewed him on the day of the pre-budget speech and all talk was of VAT reductions - I stole the opportunity to  ask him the most telling of climate change questions.  How optimistic was he that we would avoid catastrophic climate change? Unlike many others of whom I have asked this question, who postulate, fudge and shift from foot to foot, Colin told it straight: 'I am not in the least bit optimistic.  Policies globally are inadequate and people are not willing to live in a disciplined way.  There is also the problem of feedbacks.  It may be that in northern Europe we face a temporary cooling due to the Arctic melt.  How can we communicate the problem of global warming to a population experiencing temporary cooling?'