ED MILIBAND, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change

At just about every public meeting I have attended in the run-up to the UN climate change summit at Copenhagen I have found myself talking to someone wearing a T-shirt that asks ‘how old will you be in 2050?’

We are already starting to feel the effects of global warming at home and around the world. But if we don’t get a grip of the problem soon, by 2050 we could face devastating changes around the world.

By then, I will be using my Freedom bus pass (I’ll be 81). So it is not my generation but yours and the one after that has most to gain from tackling climate change.

The benefits are not just about avoiding a Hollywood movie style catastrophe. If we make the right decisions now, the world of 2050 can be one where we live in a cleaner, healthier and more just society.

Investment in new low-carbon industries can create jobs for 2050, and will also create jobs in the next few years in fields from engineering to accountancy.

I don’t think we should act just because it is in our interest. We should protect the people around the planet who have done the least to cause climate change but have the most to lose from it.

People from Bangladesh to Kenya, whose carbon emissions are a fraction of ours, but whose very survival is threatened by risks of greater flooding and more frequent drought.

As the UK minister responsible for our negotiations in Copenhagen, it is my job to get the best global deal we can. So I will be arguing for a deal that puts us on a path to turn emissions around for the first time in the world’s industrial history, is consistent with what the scientists tell us we need to do, provides finance for developing countries, and protects forests.

At home, we have set in law the requirement to cut our emissions by 80% by 2050 with legally binding limits on the way. We have plans to move to virtually zero-carbon electricity and homes, and to make very significant cuts in emissions from transport.

It will take tough decisions. Greenwash won’t sort the problem of dirty coal or the need to invest in renewable power. So I think we should be concerned that far from supporting our plans to invest billions in transforming our country, the opposition want to cut investment. We need to face up to the hard choices that have to be made.

Even if we win round the opposition round that would not be good enough. The lesson from every great transformation in history is that at the end of the day it is not government ministers that decide our future. It is people.

The people in the 2050 T-shirts at meetings haven’t just dressed up, they have been organising marches, running petitions and taking action in their local communities. We can’t all be as committed as them, but we can sign up to act in our own lives.

So I’d like to urge everyone to sign up at www.edspledge.com. The more people who say they want an ambitious deal, the stronger my hand will be in Copenhagen. Please add your name to the thousands who say they want to stop dangerous climate change.

GREG BARKER, Conservative Shadow Minister for Energy and Climate Change

It will be hard to view the approach of Copenhagen with too much optimism.

However, with every country entering the talks with their cards held to their chests, much is still unknown. We will certainly be urging our Government to push harder for an effective, fair and binding deal, and when the talks finally begin, we need strong leadership and a sense of global ambition.

Whatever Copenhagen has in store for us, the Conservatives believe that UK needs nothing less than a low carbon industrial revolution. It is vital that we put in place a new, low carbon economy which will not only tackle climate change, but also ensure energy security, efficiency and create opportunities for new investment and business.

In our green paper, The Low Carbon Economy, we set out an ambitious roadmap for a low carbon UK.

Government carbon targets have been set with Conservative support; however targets mean nothing without implementation. It took the Conservatives’ early policy of a moratorium on coal fired power stations without carbon capture to force the Government into a similar position earlier this year.

The outcomes from a government with no clear direction or ambition for the energy sector have been dithering and inaction.  The reality is that, despite a lot of talk, we are woefully trailing European leaders on renewable energy, green jobs and energy efficiency.

Consider Germany: $5.2bn spent retrofitting houses, leveraging $19bn of private investment and recouping $4bn in tax and 140,000 new jobs.
The UK is left with barely a fifth of Germany’s green jobs, an expensive and unpopular subsidy regime and is failing in its responsibility not just to cut carbon, but to seize the opportunities of the new, low carbon sector.

Why is our country, blessed with some of the best universities and research houses in the world and the best natural assets for wave, tidal and offshore wind in Europe, not forging ahead?

For too long a thicket of overlapping and interrelating measures meant that even the most dedicated new energy investor has been thwarted. Business can respond, trillions of dollars of investment can flow, and new technology can come forth if Governments set a firm, long term policy direction.

The potential benefits to the UK are manifold but we are reaching a crunch point.

So when the international community meets in Copenhagen, we will need an urgent commitment to act. That means making sure that the world’s poorest people are treated fairly.

It means full engagement with the developing nations of not only China, but also others like India and Brazil. It means securing the protection of the world’s rainforests. But most of all, it means that any agreement on carbon pollution must be capable of limiting global warming to two degrees.

Ultimately the UK should, and can, take action regardless of Copenhagen. Facing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create the low carbon economy this country so dearly needs, you can be sure that David Cameron’s Conservatives have the ambition, leadership and clarity of vision to deliver the real change needed to seize it.

SIMON HUGHES,  Lib Dem Shadow Secretary for Energy and Climate ChangeClimate change is the greatest of generational challenges. The logic of climate change is that tomorrow’s generations will be living in a greenhouse filled not only by the carbon emissions of today, but also with the consequences of years of pollution dating back to the beginning of the industrial revolution.

These emissions are already having a profound effect on our world. Recent scientific surveys show that the Arctic could be free of ice in the summer within a couple of decades and a UN report has estimated that 300,000 deaths are attributable each year to climate change.

This is why a robust agreement at Copenhagen is so important. An international conference of this type is one of the few opportunities for world leaders to come together and shape the development of the world for future generations.

Our policy on Copenhagen has this at the forefront. We want a deal that will keep the global concentration of CO2 levels, or the density of the greenhouse, at a level that will prevent the world from heating up more than the crucial 2 degrees above pre-industrial revolution levels – and ideally not more than 1.7 degrees.

It is at this level where some of the more catastrophic consequences of climate change become irreversible. We also want generous international funds which will among other things allow developing countries to adopt the kind of technologies that help them to reduce their own carbon emissions – or move away from activities like deforestation which harm the planet.

These policies, along with the rest of our energy and environment agenda, are the most ambitious environmental policies in British politics today.

We in the Liberal Democrat energy, transport and environment team are going to be arguing, campaigning and lobbying as hard as we can in Parliament, in our local communities, in the media and on the streets for the best deal in Copenhagen.

Among other events, I plan to attend the day of action planned for the 5th of December and hope there will be a massive Liberal Democrat presence at events on that day.

We as Liberal Democrats believe that today’s society has to live up to its responsibilities to future generations. We cannot stop climate change, but with strong international action we can help reduce the burden on future generations and avoid some of the more serious consequences of the climate crisis.

JEAN LAMBERT, Green Party MEP for London

The Copenhagen climate summit offers the best opportunity for securing a clear, international action plan for tackling runaway climate change.

However, there is a real risk that little progress will be made and that the key principles of the previous Kyoto agreement could even be forgotten or substantially weakened.

According to climate experts, industrialised countries need to reduce their emissions by 25-40% by 2020, based on 1990 levels, to ensure that we have even a 50-50 chance of keeping warming below the 2ºC level.

The Green Party believes that, in fact, we need to cut emissions by 90% by 2030, but this figure is clearly far beyond what is on the agenda. At the very least, we need EU countries to meet the top end of the 25-40% scale – so the Greens are calling for a 40% reduction target for the EU as an absolute minimum.

Crucially, these reductions must be made on our own territory and not outsourced to poorer countries to offset our emissions while we continue with business-as-usual at home.

Currently the EU has a reduction target of 20% by 2020, or 30% following the conclusion of an international climate agreement. Now is the time to step up this commitment, particularly since Japan has already indicated its willingness to set more ambitious targets.

Leaders must also agree to urgently establish a fund for climate mitigation and adaptation to help vulnerable, developing countries avoid and overcome disasters, like extreme flooding and droughts, caused by climate change.

The European Commission has seriously underestimated the scale of financing needed, suggesting €66-80bn per annum, while leading NGOs and top UN economists have called funding in excess of €110bn to meet needs.

Finally, governments must commit to the fundamental message that cutting back our reliance on polluting, finite, fossil fuels could hugely benefit our wider society and economy, as well as the environment. For example, schemes to insulate homes create jobs and reduce energy bills, and renewable energy projects have the potential to produce millions of new green jobs in highly-skilled industries.

It is essential, however, that we avoid apparent solutions, such as nuclear or CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage), which could simply pile up other problems for future generations.

We urgently need a new energy model, one based on respect for the environment and for human beings. There are viable solutions out there: now we need the political commitment and large-scale investment to begin the transformation.

MICHAEL CHESSUM, President of UCLU Stop the War: “Stop the killing and stop the lies. Bring the troops home now”

Afghanistan is supposed to be Britain’s good war. When invasion became official policy, the plight of the Afghan people, suffering under the brutal Taliban regime, became front-page news. Eight years on, almost every conceivable indicator shows that the invasion has been a disaster for the Afghan people: life expectancy in the country has dipped to 44, and it  now   has   the  second   worst   rate   of infant mortality in the world.

Started under the preposterous title of ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’, the war in Afghanistan was at the core of the War on Terror. It was, to begin with, a war of vengeance, committed without UN sanction on the back of the 9/11 atrocities.

We were told that the war would liberate women, but eight years on, fewer than 10% of women can read, less than a third of them go to school; the NATO-backed Karzai government recently tried to pass a law legalising marital rape. NATO forces spend time and blood defending one of the most corrupt governments in the world. It is a government which has allowed the narcotic industry to boom, and which commits electoral fraud on an epic scale.

The idea that Britain went to war to defend the Afghan people is just one example of the ever-changing list of reasons that we are supposed to believe. NATO’s own war crimes are rarely reported to us, but they are happening. In the village of Granai in Farah province on 4th May, as many as 140 civilians were killed by a US air strike. Such reports are surely the tip of the iceberg.

Another excuse is that keeping troops in Afghanistan makes Britain safer. But “Islamic extremists” do not bomb the west for fun; terrorism is a tactic, not an ideology or cultural trait. It is our continued occupation of other countries that makes us a target. Perhaps some abhor “our way of life,” but they also presumably abhor the “way of life” in France or Sweden, and they are not targeted.

Keeping troops in Afghanistan perpetuates racism and intolerance at home. In the minds of many, Muslims have turned into a homogeneous blob of terror and extremism. This is not because they are, but because our political establishment, the leaders of the war on terror, refuse to deal with people as people – and refuse to accept that it is the war which pushes thousands to join the Taliban and al-Qaeda, not some violent cultural impulse. The web of racism and Islamophobia that Britain now faces is inevitably aided by the war abroad.

The official reasons for the war have been utterly discredited: it has not made Afghanistan a democracy, it has not improved conditions for women, it has not made us safer. It has caused thousands upon thousands of deaths: tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed, many directly by NATO, and 1,407 coalition troops have died so far. All reports and estimates show that the death rate is rising on all sides. We are often confronted with the idea that it is our responsibility to stay to help those in need, despite that the NATO occupation of Afghanistan is manifestly doing the opposite.

The people who really call the shots in Afghanistan are the very same political elite that funded the Taliban in the first place, and who are now playing geopolitics with Afghan and NATO lives. Now they say that we must increase our numbers in order to safeguard the credibility of their violent campaigns. What began as vengeance has become vanity. If you support ongoing war, be aware that that is the force that you are supporting; and it is their war that you will get.

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HASEEB AMMAR, SOAS MSc Development Studies student: “Seeing the campaign out is our duty to the Afghan people.”

No-one on earth would like foreign troops to stay on their soil. The resistance movements against invaders throughout history are the best embodiment of this fact. However, Afghanistan’s present situation looks to be different.

The presence of foreign troops, in particular from the US and the UK, seems essential to nation-building, capacity building and the stability of Afghanistan which in turn affects the stability of the whole region.

First of all, the Afghan Army (only 90,000 soldiers) and the Police (only 82,000 policemen) do not have the ability to defend the country against its enemies, i.e. Taliban and al-Qaida, or to boost their control over Afghanistan’s vast territory. They lack equipment, soldiers and training. The withdrawal of foreign troops could result in another catastrophic civil war similar to – or even worse than – the one that we witnessed in the 1990s.

Afghanistan is a multiethnic country, where it is difficult to find a national identity. It is a country of minorities, which has never gone under the process of building a modern democratic state like some other similar countries.  For instance, it can’t be compared to Switzerland or Belgium, where minorities’ political awareness is mature and modern states exist.

Concerns are high that with the absence of a strong Afghan state, Afghanistan is prone to a civil war, an ethnic conflict which could be coupled with the interference of neighbouring countries that are attached ethnically or ideologically with Afghanistan’s different minorities and ethnicities. Not to mention that with the withdrawal of foreign troops, Afghanistan could become again a safe haven for terrorist groups.

During the 1990s civil war – before Taliban came to power with Pakistan’s strong support – it was obvious to anyone who observed the situation in Afghanistan that belligerent parties were fighting a proxy war that was fuelled by the support of neighbouring countries. Add to that the fact that the war was sustained and prolonged partly because of the lucrative economy of drugs.

Having said that, it is equally important to stress that by hesitating in empowering the Afghan police and Army, by delaying increasing the Afghan state’s capacity, while continuing indiscriminate aerial bombardments and ignoring Afghan traditions and customs as well as searching houses and making arrests, the risk of triggering Afghan anger and making them more hostile to foreigners and foreign troops is very high.

The current situation in Afghanistan is not a direct result of the foreign troops’ presence in this country as much as it is a result of NATO’s failure over the past eight years to do more about nation-building and reconstruction and neither sending sufficient troops or spending enough money, unlike Iraq.