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MP says hardliners of both sides should reflect on effects of being strident, but that immediate action is ‘sensible’ Hardliners on opposing sides in the battle over climate change are guilty of a weird “religiosity” which hinders a sensible debate, energy minister Greg Barker has said. In a Guardian interview, Barker said sceptics were failing to accept the “broad base” of scientific opinion, while climate change campaigners could be guilty of behaving in an arrogant manner. Amid frustration in Whitehall at the tone of the debate, Barker said: “If you look at the extremes of the climate debate, whether it is the extreme climate sceptics or the extreme climate zealots, there is a slight religiosity there which is weird.” He said hardliners on both sides should reflect on the consequences of adopting such strident stances. “I think the broad base of sound scientific opinion, of sensible and respected science, supports urgent climate action,” he said to sceptics who question the need for action. “Of course science is constantly evolving. The notion that you need to have 100% certainty on any given issue is unhelpful anyway. Acting now on climate is the prudent sensible thing to do.” But Barker warned that climate change campaigners needed to be careful not to dismiss sceptics such as the former Conservative chancellor Lord Lawson of Blaby. “We need to make sure don’t behave in an arrogant or offhand way because that really pisses people off,” he said. Barker, a close ally of the prime minister, has been a key figure in building up Tory credibility on climate change since being given the brief by David Cameron after his election as Tory leader in 2005. This allows Barker, who travelled with Cameron on his famous “huskies” trip to a Norwegian glacier in 2006, to deliver messages that could alarm climate change campaigners. Barker, who sits next to a cushion in his Whitehall office emblazoned with the words “Save Our Planet”, said: • Mistakes made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the email scandal at the University of East Anglia had put the climate agenda “on the back foot”. • In rebalancing the economy away from an over-reliance on service industries to new green technology, the government needed to be careful not to penalise traditional industries which were “energy intensive users”. Barker, who announced an extra £20m to encourage the growth of marine energy during a visit to Edinburgh, indicated that ministers believe climate change scientists have done themselves few favours in recent years. The IPCC faced intense criticism after its fourth assessment in 2007 included the mistaken statement that the Himalyan glaciers could disappear by 2035. Climate scientists at the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia were accused in an official report last year of being “unhelpful and defensive” in response to “reasonable requests for information”. But they were cleared of accusations that they fudged results and silenced critics. Barker said: “Over the last two years the climate agenda has been on the back foot. The IPCC scandal last year, the email leaks from the University of East Anglia – all were grist to the mill of the climate sceptics. “Although their significance was greatly exaggerated and the actual substance of those incidents did nothing to undermine the science, the impact on the reputation of climate science was huge. We underestimate it at our peril. There is a need for new voices and a new coherence for those advocating urgent action on climate change. Hopefully that will have shaken us out of that slight complacency that the climate establishment had wandered into. I do not underestimate for a second that all of us who are passionate about finding urgent solutions to the global issues have got a big job to do and need to be incredibly responsible at the COP [UN Conference of the Parties climate change negotiations in Durban later] this year.” Barker was careful not to talk in detail about the emails at the UEA, but he said: “That was symptomatic of a view that you must win at all counts. In science, it is really important that dissenting voices are heard and listened to.” Barker acknowledged that the Conservative party includes one of the most prominent climate change sceptics – Lawson – who needs to be handled with care. “Nigel has got a long history in this area. The important thing is those of us in office shouldn’t dismiss out of hand people that have concerns or refuse to engage.” There was a clear explanation why sceptics are more likely to be found in his party, he said. “The climate debate, which was started by Margaret Thatcher who was the first world leader to call for concerted action on man-made climate change, was subsequently almost hijacked by the centre left,” Barker said. “They gave it the narrative and it became a post-cold war means of advocating large-scale government programmes. It almost instinctively drew the antipathy of free marketeers and the centre right who felt uncomfortable with some of the language of the climate change agenda.” Barker was speaking to the Guardian after a busy period on climate change which has seen the government announce ambitious targets for the fourth carbon budget, to run from 2023-27, outline how the £3bn Green Investment bank will work and introduce plans to insulate 14m homes by 2020. The climate change minister believes he has built up enough credibility with the green lobby to make clear that the government is keen to make space for “energy intensive users” such as the steel and aluminium industries. “The big shift in thinking on climate change policy is a recognition that we need to rebalance our economy. But decarbonisation must not mean de-industrialisation,” he said. “On the contrary, we actually need to build an economy that has more advanced manufacturing where we stop just reducing our carbon emissions by sending stuff offshore to less regulated markets and actually see the energy challenge of the next two decades as a real opportunity to see more advanced manufacturing here in the UK, importing less and looking to successful advanced economies like Germany as the way forward rather than thinking we can simply be ever more dependent on the services sector.” Climate change Climate change Climate change scepticism Green politics Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk