Christian Aid Welcomes Miliband's Speech on Climate Change

Christian Aid has welcomed the speech by Environment Secretary David Miliband at the Labour conference in Manchester yesterday. Mr Miliband said people "should be scared" of global warming - and be ready to take action to help tackle the problem.

He also noted in his speech that people were more aware of the problem as they recognise that "something funny is going on with the weather".

|PIC1|Mr Miliband later said the government was putting £10m into a scheme to boost its use of renewable energy, particularly wind power.

He said the scheme, run by the Carbon Trust, planned to generate enough renewable energy to serve the houses of Exeter, Oxford, Norwich and Newcastle combined.

"The Carbon Trust has shown how plans for renewable installations, mainly wind power, on the land of local authorities and hospitals can be held back because public and private investment are not working together," he said.

Christian Aid, which has recently reported that 180 million poor people could be at risk from climate-change induced diseases, said that Mr Miliband has shown a real grasp of how important it is that the developing world tackles climate change.

"It is absolutely right that Britain, which is a major emitter of dangerous greenhouse gases, has woken up to the fact that the atmosphere recognises no boundaries and that what we do in Britain can harm poor people," said Andrew Pendleton, Christian Aid's senior environmental policy analyst.

"Mr Miliband's recognition that we all live on one planet is extremely welcome and we applaud the fact that he is now taking action on cutting UK carbon emissions as well as urging a Carbon Fund for Africa. It is only by adopting a twin-track approach of cutting our own dangerous greenhouse gases at the same time as encouraging a low carbon development in poor countries that we can create an environment in which poor countries can flourish," Pendleton said.