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Bell Ribeiro-Addy's Speeches In Parliament Related to Climate

We've found 10 Parliamentary debates in which Bell Ribeiro-Addy has spoken about climate-related matters.

Here are the relevant sections of their speeches.

• 13 May 2026: Debate on the Address

  17:50

  I understand that some things take time, but other things are not hard. I would have liked to see steps to address the continued private sale of human remains. At the start of this year, I presented a simple Bill that ought to have ended the vile practice of human remains, many of which have unknown provenance, being bought and sold by private individuals. It would have been relatively straightforward to end this practice, but the Government have no plans to close this loophole and implement such legislation. As I said, I understand that these things take time, but there are some simple things that we could just get done. It feels like the Government may be inclined to capitulate to the right and row back on some of their climate goals, but I remind them that we lost more votes to the left of us than we did to the right of us; if we carry on doing the bare minimum on climate issues, this could only get worse.

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• 14 May 2025: Artificial Intelligence: Environmental Impact

  We know that AI has the power to transform civilisation, but its huge drain on the environment is a problem. For example, ChatGPT has an estimated 57 million daily users, but for every five to 50 questions it is asked, 500 ml of water are used to cool down its data centres. The Minister has explained some of the work that is being done and I understand that the AI energy council is looking at energy solutions to align the Government’s AI ambitions with our net zero goals, but with the increased incidence of drought and the overall climate emergency, what steps are the Government taking specifically to manage water consumption and sustainability with their AI ambitions?

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• 6 Feb 2025: Low-income Countries: Debt Cancellation

  15:35

  Reparative justice is about addressing disparities that are starkly evident in the fight against climate change, particularly in the context of our international financial system, which is, quite frankly, a relic of the 20th century. Worsening droughts in east Africa, tropical hurricanes in the Caribbean, and tsunamis in Asia show how Britain’s former colonies remain disproportionately vulnerable to the frontline effects of crises that they did little to cause. Not only did we engage in colonial crimes, but we remain a leading historical emitter.

  The UK could take responsibility by reframing reparative justice within the context of climate justice. We could fund large-scale restoration projects, compensate for biodiversity loss, and help nations to adapt to climate change. That form of reparative justice could remove the burden of debt that is preventing those countries from fighting the climate emergency themselves, by building infrastructure to defend against some of the environmental challenges that, if we do not get our act together, will be permanent.

  In 2022, I joined a parliamentary delegation to Kenya with CAFOD and saw at first hand the impact of famine and drought on the people living in Marsabit County. Their agriculture and their livestock had been decimated—the country had been decimated—by one of the worst droughts in living memory. The situation that we all saw on the ground in Kenya brought home the devastating ramifications of the climate crisis, and the inequities that it is rooted in—inequities that we benefited from and have sustained since.

  Kenya is not a notable emitter of carbon dioxide and does not drastically contribute to climate destruction. In fact, it is responsible for just 0.03% of global carbon dioxide emissions to date—around 160 times less than the United Kingdom. Yet man-made climate change, for which the UK has historical responsibility, is causing untold levels of destruction in that nation, and its debt crisis means that, like many other countries mentioned today, it is unable to take meaningful steps to address it. In 2021, its debt repayments were more than five times the amount of money the Government were spending on measures to tackle the climate crisis. Like many other countries, it is fighting this crisis with both hands tied behind its back.

  I call on the Government to enhance the UK’s commitment on international climate finance overall and to encourage other countries to do the same. That should be done through a comprehensive financing facility to offer unconditional grants, not more debt, to countries facing climate disaster, to push for automatic debt payment suspension and relief for countries in the event of a climate-related disaster, and to introduce legislation to stop private creditors from suing those same climate-vulnerable countries. The UK’s role as a major historical emitter, a former colonial power and a current global leader places a special obligation on us to put climate justice at the heart of the global response to the disaster we now face.

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• 20 Mar 2023: Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

  21:02

  Just because, unlike the previous Budget, this one has not unravelled in about 20 minutes and led to panic selling in financial markets, the Government should not think that they have vastly redeemed themselves. We now know that the Chancellor’s flagship childcare policies will see nurseries going out of business. The fuel duty levy freeze makes a mockery of any commitment to net zero emissions targets. The removal of the cap on pension pots will affect hardly any consultant doctors at all. Instead, it is a general giveaway to very high earners, and one that protects them from inheritance tax to boot. Most egregiously of all there is a £29 billion handout to businesses, the same businesses that are already swimming in profits because of price gouging and profiteering. We know that this policy will not boost investment, because it has been tried before and failed.

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• 23 May 2022: Public Order Bill

  19:47

  The Bill targets, in particular, the activism of groups who have already been mentioned many times: groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, Kill the Bill and the Black Lives Matter movement. All those groups have used disruption to draw attention to major injustices such as the climate crisis, attacks on our civil liberties and institutional racism. Rather than taking action to address those injustices, the Government want to stop people speaking out about them. We must remember that today’s protests are signposts for tomorrow’s progress.

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• 1 Feb 2022: Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax

  Therefore, in the motion before the House the Opposition have offered a way forward: a windfall tax to help fund a package of support for families and businesses who are facing this crisis. I hope that such a package would include a programme of home insulation to increase energy efficiency. Our poorly insulated homes are giving rise to higher fuel costs and increasing our carbon emissions. But the ultimate solution would be one that helps fund the green industrial revolution, as the Labour party outlined at the last general election. We committed to a just transition fund, which was predicted to generate an £11 billion support package.

  The objection that my proposal is hugely costly does not carry much weight because the Treasury, through the Debt Management Office, can borrow for 10 years at interest rates below 1.4% per annum. The energy companies’ dividend yield is currently 4% or 5% per annum, so purchasing them would generate cash for the public finances, and the excess could be used for public good. The priorities for public good are to cut bills and invest in capacity. Overall, this capacity should overwhelmingly be from renewable energy.

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• 19 Jul 2021: Nationality and Borders Bill

  00:05

  We are living through an age of mass displacement driven by war, poverty and climate breakdown. Under the refugee convention, anyone seeking asylum should be able to claim in their intended destination or another safe country. Asylum seekers are under no obligation to seek refuge in the first country they arrive in, and there are a number of reasons why they may not do so.

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• 18 May 2021: Affordable and Safe Housing for All

  16:05

  As we come out of this pandemic, the Government will have missed a major opportunity: their own target to decarbonise by 2050. Even doing this by 2050 is not good enough, so why are there no specific measures in the Queen’s Speech about driving forward all our plans on protecting the environment? We have so little time and we should be doing so much more as a country.

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• 15 Oct 2020: Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

  00:01

  as legitimate grounds for the authorisation of criminality. These grounds are ill defined and wide-ranging, not to mention open to outright political abuse. Again, I point to where they have already abused. We know that using undercover police, allegedly posing as protesters, to commit crimes and provoke violence, including a violent response from the authorities, has been reported as an ongoing tactic and discussed in the public domain in recent years, including more recently in the past few months, with regard to the Black Lives Matter protests and climate change and G20 demonstrations. All of these necessarily constitute an unlawful interference.

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• 30 Jan 2020: Global Britain

  14:15

  The case for being more internationalist could not be clearer. Fires are burning in the Arctic, the Amazon and Australia. In Indonesia, just like in parts of Italy and Britain, flash floods and heatwaves expose people and places to unimaginable risk. My right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North led this House to declare a climate emergency, but the Government have carried on as if it is business as usual. Brexit, coming tomorrow, looks set to weaken environmental protections, unless climate breakdown is confronted. What future the people on our planet have hangs in the balance.

  This time of crisis is a test of the Government’s leadership and our duty to protect our citizens. Good leadership will create jobs, with a green new deal tackling economic insecurity and ecological crisis in one fell swoop. What leadership is it if we allow the Government to bury their heads in the sand as if the neoliberal pursuit of the profit for the 1% matters more than living within our planetary means in the interests of the 99%, citizens in constituencies like mine in Streatham? Our planet does not have time for the Government to check in with Donald Trump and the fossil fuel industry about what we should do. The next generation needs real action on the climate crisis. From Britain came the industrial revolution. It is now time for us to lead the environmental revolution.

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See all Parliamentary Speeches Mentioning Climate