Kerry McCarthy

It is a pleasure, as always, to see you in the Chair, Ms Furniss. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) on leading the debate and on showing respect for the notion behind the petition, because that is not always the case when people come and present views. I hope the petitioners feel that she has done justice to their stance. I will set out what we are doing to tackle the issues highlighted in the petition. A lot of the concerns that have been raised today and over the last few weeks have been driven by recent research proposals to explore climate cooling technologies, as well as the media coverage that that has caused, and I will come on to those concerns in a moment. Geo-engineering is a term commonly used to refer to two groups of technologies, as has been mentioned: greenhouse gas removals and solar radiation modification. Those are two very separate, very different approaches to addressing climate change, and the UK has two very separate, very different positions on their use. Greenhouse gas removals actively remove greenhouse gases—predominantly carbon dioxide—from the atmosphere for highly durable storage, resulting in negative emissions. They are vital to achieving net zero, and we support their deployment. Solar radiation modification, on the other hand, describes a set of interventions that aim to cool the earth, largely by reflecting some of the sun’s energy back into space.