The climate change minister in Britain’s Conservative government, Greg Barker, has said no “serious voice” in government questions climate change or Britain’s stringent green targets.
The Conservative minister acknowledged “lively debate” over the best ways of tackling climate change but insisted there was consensus in government over the causes of global warming.
According to the British newspaper The Telegraph Mr Barker said this was despite accusations that some of his Conservative colleagues were climate sceptics.
Appearing before fellow MPs on the energy and climate change select committee, Mr Barker said: “I don’t know any serious voice in government that is questioning the Climate Change Act or the overall science of climate change.”
The Climate Change Act of 2008 requires Britain to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent on 1990 levels by 2050 in order to tackle global warming.
It is the basis of the cross-party drive toward green energy policies such as building wind farms.
The Telegraph reports Mr Barker’s comments appear to be at odds with statements by Owen Paterson, the environment secretary.
Mr Patterson caused controversy in October when he said: “People get very emotional about this subject and I think we should just accept that the climate has been changing for centuries.”
The opposition Labour Party seized upon Mr Paterson’s comments to suggest he is a climate change sceptic.
Mr Barker’s Tory colleague Michael Fallon has also appeared reticent to be drawn on climate science and recently criticising “unthinking climate change worship”.
Mr Barker told MPs there was “increasing acceptance of the basic science of climate change” and accused the media of giving undue prominence to climate science sceptics.
“I think the number of people who are refusing to accept that the climate is changing or that man has a role in that are diminishing and I think are given disproportionate airtime on the media,” he said.
The Telegraph reports he said the media should not present sceptics’ arguments as “equally valid” when in fact they were a “relatively small minority amongst the climate scientist community”.
However, he acknowledged that people were now “more ready to in particular to question the cost” of responding to climate change.
“That’s not least because, as we go up the trajectory of emissions reduction, you get beyond the low-hanging fruit, the easy wins, and you get to some more challenging and potentially costly or potentially more cost effective solutions, and that will excite debate,” he said.
