|
Climate
Change: Prognosis And Courses Of Action
Phil England
As the USA launches an illegal invasion and occupation of the country
with the world's second largest proven oil reserves, it's as
good a time as any to step back and look at the state of the bigger environmental
picture. Fifteen years after NASSA's Dr James Hansen first warned
a congressional panel that the world was warming are we any closer to
addressing the problem of climate change? Where is unchecked warming leading
us? Have we, as a global community, achieved a commitment to action that
is sufficient to avoid global catastrophe? If not, what can we do about
it?
The science
Since the facts about climate change are often shrouded in fog to the
extent that many people are in doubt as to whether or not global warming
is benign, first: what is the state of the science?
The world's leading authority on the science of climate change is
the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, established in
1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the UN Environment Programme.
The IPCC brings together over 2,000 of the world's leading climate
scientists and its Assessment Reports represent summaries of the latest
scientific consensus.
Its Third Assessment Report published in 2001 is a document to give pause.
The 0.6C increase in global mean temperature over the 20th century, it
says, is likely to have been the largest increase of any century during
the past 1,000 years and has already produced observable, dramatic changes
including widespread retreat of mountain glaciers, a decline in Arctic
sea ice thickness of about 40% during late summer to early autumn, a 10%
loss of snow and ice cover, warming oceans, sea level rises of between
0.1 & 0.2 metres, more frequent and intense warm El Nino episodes
and changes in patterns of rainfall, cloud cover and temperature.1
News of observable impacts on the natural world - such as "thawing
of permafrost, later freezing and earlier break-up of ice on rivers and
lakes, lengthening of mid to high-latitude growing seasons, poleward and
altitudinal shifts of plant and animal ranges, declines of some plant
and animal populations, and earlier flowering of trees, emergence of insects,
and egg-laying in birds" - has become part of the background noise
of our society. Yet, out of everyday sight, some natural systems that
are particularly vulnerable to climate change may be undergoing significant
and irreversible damage including "coral reefs and atolls, boreal
and tropical forests, polar and alpine ecosystems, prairie wetlands, and
remnant native grasslands."
But climate change also has wide ranging impacts on the human systems
of "water resources; agriculture (especially food security) and forestry;
coastal zones and marine systems (fisheries); human settlements, energy
and industry; insurance and other financial services; and human health."2
The UK government has funded its own assessments of how climate change
will impact over the coming decades. The temperature over central England
has risen - beyond the global average - over the course of last
century by 1ºC and the mean temperature is expected to rise by a
further 2 to 3.5ºC by the 2080s depending on the emissions scenario.
Winters will continue to become wetter and intense rainfall events will
continue to increase in frequency. High temperature extremes will become
more common and low temperature extremes rarer. Sea-level rises and extremes
of sea level will occur more frequently. And whilst the thermal growing
season will increase, the summer soil moisture will decrease.3
But while we are relatively well placed to adapt to these changes, it
is the world's poorly resourced majority that will suffer most. The
IPCC notes the low adaptive capacities of the poor and their high vulnerability.
It details the expected changes for each region - an increase in droughts
and floods in Africa, for instance - along with the degree of confidence
with which they can be predicted. It is in the developing world that loss
of life will be greatest and the impacts of climate change will serve
to "increase the disparity in well-being between developed countries
and developing countries."
In 2001 a Red Cross report noted that natural disasters had doubled between
1995 and 2000. Eighty-eight percent of those affected and two thirds of
those killed during the 1990s lived in the least developed countries.
The report warned that "Recurrent disasters, from floods in Asia
to drought in the Horn of Africa, to windstorms in Latin America, are
sweeping away development gains and calling into question the possibility
of recovery." Aid agencies capacity to adequately respond will soon
be exhausted.4
But we can expect worse to come since the IPCC predicts that without additional
measures to combat climate change the global average surface temperature
will rise a further 1.4 to 5.8ºC depending upon the development scenario
used. Such a projected rate of warming, they warn, "is much larger
than the observed changes during the 20th century and is very likely to
be without precedent during the last 10,000 years."
The professional deniers
"There is no debate among any statured scientists of what is happening.
The only debate is the rate at which it is happening."
James McCarthy, Chair of the Advisory Committee on the Environment of
the International Committee of Scientific Unions5
Faced with action to curb emissions the fossil fuel industry has conducted
a war on reality in order to preserve their trillion dollar business.
By doing so they have put the very future of the planet in the balance.
A handful of sceptics have been promoted by the carbon industries to try
and present the climate science as uncertain and flawed. They have peddled
scientifically spurious arguments and have often put forward economic
objections to change. Ross Gelbspan of the Boston Globe has shown
that the principal US sceptics such as Fred Singer, Patrick Michaels,
Robert Balling and Richard Lindzen have been bank rolled by fossil fuel
interests.6 But these scientists and their arguments are not
taken seriously by the climate scientists that lead the field.
One of the tactics of the sceptics was to play up the uncertainties in
IPCC reports. Scientists are by nature cautious in their assessments and
areas of uncertainty that were expressed in the earliest IPCC reports
have been replaced, as the science has improved, with more firmly expressed
statements. But as Ross Gelbspan noted: "Uncertainty cuts both ways
[...] Our scientific knowledge, in other words, may even be lagging behind
nature. The momentum of globally disrupting climate change may be further
advanced than earth science, with its areas of uncertainty, is currently
able to prove." This was the case with the ozone hole. When atmospheric
measurements of ozone were finally made, the results were much worse than
anything the modelling had predicted.7
International action
So what action has been taken at an international level and is it enough?
The warning signal of IPCC's first report in 1990 was enough to spur
the international community into action. The United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed at the Rio Earth Summit
in 1992 and came into force in March 1994. It established the objective
of stabilising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at levels that
would avoid "dangerous anthropogenic [i.e. human] interference with
global climate." Significantly, it recognised that scientific uncertainty
must not be used to avoid precautionary action and that industrial nations - with
the greatest historical contribution to climate change - should take
the lead in addressing the problem.8
In 1995 however, the signatories to the UNFCCC concluded its commitments
were inadequate and launched talks on a legally binding protocol. The
1997 Kyoto Protocol commits industrialised countries to an overall reduction
in emissions of 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2010. The US committed itself
to a 7% cut and the EU 8%. On announcing the agreement, the Chair of the
negotiating session, Raul Estrada claimed that "the overall target
of 5.2% is 30% below business as usual [...] This we can celebrate."9
However, Kyoto's target of an overall 5.2% reduction was much less
than the 15% originally argued for by the European Union or the 20% that
the Alliance of Small Island States wanted to see. The withdrawal of the
US - representing 36.1% of industrialised countries' greenhouse
gas emissions in 1990 - from the treaty in 2001 means that the overall
figure of 5.2% reduction is no longer relevant. Furthermore the inclusion
of 'flexibility mechanisms'10 (successfully pushed
for by the US with Japan, Australia and Canada), weaken the potential
for reductions still further, since they effectively provide get-out clauses
for any country who fails to meet their targets. In effect the Protocol
now allows for an increase on 1990 levels which perhaps even go beyond
business-as-usual projections.11
After the US pulled out of Kyoto in March 2001, 178 nations finalised
many of the protocol's key rules in Bonn in July 2001. Many compromises
were made to keep countries on board. Canada and Japan who formerly sided
with the US's negotiating position have now ratified the Protocol,
though Australia - another key US ally - has not. As soon as Russia
has ratified the Protocol - which it has stated its intention to do - it
will become law.12
In terms of emissions reductions, eleven years of international negotiations
have achieved disappointingly little. Whilst acknowledging that the current
agreement is "totally inadequate", NGOs such as the World Wildlife
Fund and Greenpeace argue that it nevertheless provides "a sound
legal architecture" upon which to build future reductions.13
UK Government
On the face of it the UK government has a relatively good record regards
climate change. It accepts the science; has a programme of action to deal
with it; lobbied along with the EU at climate negotiations for strict
targets; by setting itself a voluntary target of 20% it has gone further
than its original Kyoto commitment of 12% reduction in greenhouse gas
emissions from the 1990 level by 2010; it now has a white paper on Energy
which proposes a reduction of 60% of CO2 emissions by 2050.
Dig a little deeper however and it emerges that the bulk of the UK's
CO2 emission reductions to date have been as a result of an economically
driven switch in emphasis away from coal towards gas in electricity generating
stations. The government's existing programme of measures designed
to deliver its emissions reductions14 has been criticised for
being inadequate. A report by the government's Sustainable Development
Commission reached the conclusion that although the UK's Kyoto target
would be met, "without further measures, the UK will fall well short
of the Government's goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by
20% of 1990 levels by 2010."15
Published earlier this year The White Paper16 contains many
encouraging signs taking on many of the recommendations made by the Royal
Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) in its report 'Energy:
The Changing Climate'.17 According to the SDC it "goes
a long way to filling the gaps identified in the Sustainable Development
Commission's recent audit of the existing Climate Change Programme."18
Its main guiding consideration is that: "Significant damaging climate
change is an environmental limit that should not be breached. We need
to keep the UK on a path to 60% cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050."
It also recognises that: "If we do not begin now, more dramatic,
disruptive and expensive change will be needed later." On the international
level it declares: "A concerted international effort is needed. We
will continue to work with other countries to establish a consensus around
the need for change and for firm commitments to this ambition [...] We
want the world's developed economies to cut emissions of greenhouse
gases by 60% by around 2050."
Highlighting the importance of energy efficiency and renewable energy,
nuclear power was put on hold as an option. The government has already
announced (January 2000) an aim that renewable sources of energy will
supply 10% of UK electricity by 2010 and now aims to double that by 2020.
Interest groups are still picking over the White Paper and their responses
to it. Friends of the Earth's cautiously optimistic response is characteristic:
"For the first time it seems that climate change has been placed
at the heart of energy policy and this has to be congratulated. We are
however concerned that the government has got a long way to go to deliver
the policies and measures that will ensure the vision outlined in the
White Paper is met."19
The White Paper includes a promise of an extra £60M for the development
of renewable energy supplies in addition to the £38M extra announced
in the 2002 spending review. Much greater amounts are needed to kick start
the renewable industry in the way the government suggests. (Compare this
amount for example to the chancellor's £3B reserves to pay
for the war on Iraq and its £7B bail out of nuclear energy20).
The Science and Technology Select Committee issued a scathing condemnation
of the White Paper as "a document full of sentiments with few practical
policy proposals that give us any confidence that its targets (and aspirations)
can be met." It argues for a massive increase in investment in renewable
energy technologies funded by a Carbon and Renewable Energy Tax (Science
& Technology Select Committee, Fourth Report "Towards a Non-Carbon
Economy: Research, Development and Demonstration", 3/4/3.
Most worrying from the UK's point of view is that any gains in CO2
savings at home have been far outstripped by emissions it has helped create
abroad. Since Labour came to power the Export Credit Guarantee Department
has put $1B into financing eleven coal-fired stations in the developing
world. BBC2's Newsnight programme calculated that for every tonne
of C02 emissions the government had saved at home, three tonnes had been
produced abroad.21
The Problem with the US
The funding and promotion of sceptics in the US has been but one prong
of a campaign fought by the fossil fuel industry to confuse the public,
play up the economic implications of the Kyoto protocol, make it politically
unacceptable to introduce a carbon tax or cuts in emissions and ultimately
impede and disrupt the international negotiations.
ExxonMobil and others have pumped millions of dollars into think tanks
and lobby groups (including the Global Climate Coalition, George C Marshall
Institute, American Petroleum Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute)
and conducted high profile media campaigns and direct lobbying to massage
the public, legislative and business communities in the US.22
And the campaign has seen some considerable successes. In 1995 Republican
congress member Robert Walker successfully argued for cuts in funding
of climate change science programmes (although these were subsequently
partly reinstated)23; and in 1997 Congress passed a key resolution
recommending that the US not sign an international climate agreement unless
it included new commitments for developing countries.24 The
fossil fuel lobby's persistent work inside the international negotiations
to bring about the weak agreement that we are left with today has been
well documented.25
Today, the fossil fuel industry no longer needs a lobby - it effectively
became the government when Bush appointed a cabinet with a majority of
its members having ties to oil and gas corporations. Since Bush came to
power his administration has pulled out of Kyoto (March 2001), unveiled
an alternative to Kyoto consisting entirely of voluntary measures by business
(February 2002), launched an energy strategy that promotes a massive increase
in fossil fuels (May 2001)26 effected the removal of Dr Robert
Watson from the chair of the IPCC (April 2002), dismissed a report written
by its own Environmental Protection Agency confirming the science of climate
change (June 2002), snubbed the Johannesburg Earth Summit by sending Colin
Powell instead of George Bush (September 2002) and now launched a war
for oil in Iraq in the face of overwhelming international opposition and
against international law (March 2003).27
With just 4% of the world's population using a quarter of the world's
energy, the US remains the largest stumbling block to effective action
to counter climate change. But perhaps the tide is turning. In January
2000 at the World Economic Forum, a vote amongst hundreds of chief executives
put climate change as the number one issue of concern to business in the
future and some predict that international diplomatic pressure and increasing
domestic pressure may yet force the US to re-engage with the Kyoto process.
The ultimate gamble
The impacts of climate change are already catastrophic: extreme weather
events are commonplace and will continue to increase. The most worrying
characteristic of the climate system is the danger posed by 'feedbacks'.
Once set in motion these have the effect of accelerating the rate of warming.
Although each of the IPCC's assessments have contained warnings about
such feedbacks The Ecologist's science editor, Peter Bunyard, believes
that the IPCC has underestimated the role of these processes by leaving
them out of its modelling. New climate modelling by Peter Cox at the Meteorological
Office's Hadley Centre suggests that if no further action is taken
to curb greenhouse gas emissions then within the next fifty years we will
reach a threshold beyond which climate will start accelerating irreversibly
and out of control.28 This threshold occurs when the Amazon
rainforests start to turn from a 'sink' (buffering the effects
of climate change by absorbing excess atmospheric CO2) to a 'source'
(releasing CO2 back into the atmosphere through an increase in forest
fires).
In Cox's modelling this occurs when levels of CO2 concentrations
in the atmosphere reach 550ppmv and according to the RCEP this level should
be considered an unbreachable upper limit. The world is not currently
on track to stay within this threshold. In order to be so, cuts of 60%
in industrialised countries' CO2 emissions from 1990 levels by 2050
would be needed.29 To achieve this will require radical changes.
Both the UK government and the EU are saying that they want to adopt these
targets and promote them at an international level. How they will achieve
this and secure the participation of the US and limit the weakening role
of flexible mechanisms remains to be seen.
Up until now, action at intergovernmental level has been characterised
by an attitude of 'How little can we get away with?' But increasingly
there is a realisation that the economic imperative alone requires a fast
pace of change. We now know that the longer we wait the more painful,
difficult, drastic and financially costly the changes will be.
Ways forward
The gravity of the climate situation means that we can't just wait
around to see whether or not governments and big business get their act
together (though we need to put pressure on them to ensure they do). We
need to start now to take action at every level we can. Beyond the obvious
things like registering for electricity from renewable sources (all it
takes is a phone call and it can be cheaper)30, considering
modes of transport and fuels31, cutting down on international
flights, ensuring our homes are properly insulated, using energy saving
light bulbs, etc. we should be raising awareness and encouraging action
with friends and relations and at the workplace.
There is also good potential for getting local government to take action.
Five hundred local governments representing 8% of global emissions have
signed up to a programme of voluntary action to address their emissions.
The Cities for Climate Protection campaign requires participants to monitor
and reduce their emissions with many adopting a target of an 8% reduction
in greenhouse gas emissions by 2005 or 2010.32 The Local Agenda
21 Initiative provides an interface with your council through which they
can be encouraged to sign up to the CCP plan.33 Alternatively,
you may have a local Friends of the Earth group who are active and could
be effective in this way.
In London, Ken Livingstone has issued a bold 'Draft Energy Strategy'
which lays out a broad programme of action and shows many of the ways
in which local councils can play a major role in encouraging the use of
energy efficiency, renewable energy and combined heat and power plants
through the planning system.34
A key lever of change in today's society is the economic one. The
Ecologist has suggested raising awareness amongst fund managers of
the risk to investments from climate change and encouraging disinvestment
in fossil fuels.35 Such action was the source of the success
of the campaign to stop the Illisu Dam and the organisers of the offensive
have written a report which shares their experiences.36 Individual
shareholders of oil companies and campaigns are an important pressure
point and campaigns against new oil developments such as the Baku-Ceyhan
pipeline37 should be supported. Development banks and export
credit agencies need to be pressurised to stop funding the development
of fossil fuel electricity plants and start funding renewable ones.38
The Ecologist discusses the option of bringing crippling
legal actions against fossil fuel companies for their knowing role in
causing the impacts of climate change, similar to the recent successful
actions against the tobacco industry.
There are limitless things that can be done. 'Stormy Weather - 101
Solutions to Global Climate Change' by Guy Dauncey and Patrick Mazza39
makes constructive suggestions for action at every level from the individual
to the intergovernmental, and the UK Rising Tide group brainstormed fifty
ideas for direct action.40 The battle for the Earth's
climate is the single most important issue facing the world today and
one way or another we need to make sure that it is not one that is lost.
Notes
1. Third Assessment Report, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Report,
Summary for Policymakers, (IPCC, 2001), http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/reports.htm
2. Third Assessment Report: Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and
Vulnerability, Summary for Policymakers (IPCC, 2001), http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/reports.htm
3. Hulme, M., Turnpenny, J., Jenkins, G., (2002), Climate Change Scenarios
for the United Kingdom: The UKCIP02 Briefing Report. Tyndall Centre for
Climate Change Research, UK - see http://www.ukcip.org.uk
for this report as well as regional and sectoral studies.
4. Disasters will outstrip aid efforts as world heats up, by Peter Capella,
The Guardian, 29/06/02.
5. The Heat is On, Ross Gelbspan, p.22 (Perseus Books, 1998)
6. These scientists received funding from Western Fuels, German Coal Mining
Association, Edison Electric Institute, Cyprus Minerals, British Coal
Corporation, Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science, Kuwait
Institute for Scientific Research, Reverend Moon, Exxon, Shell, ARCO,
Unocal and Sun Oil (Gelbspan, pp. 41-56). The American Petroleum Institute's
1998 strategy document included the grooming and promotion of five new
sceptics. See Exxon's Weapons of Mass Deception - The Assessment
of Greenpeace International, http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/5292.pdf
7. Gelbspan, p.31-2.
8. http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf
9. The Carbon War, Jeremy Leggett, p. 321, (Penguin, 2000)
10. In depth discussion of the flexibility mechanisms can be found in
Democracy or Cabocracy, Corner House Briefing No. 24, http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/briefing/24carboc.html;
and The Sky is Not the Limit: The Emerging Market in Greenhouse Gases,
by Carbon Trade Watch, (The Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, January
2003, http://www.tni.org/reports/ctw/sky.pdf)
11. See 'Extended Quantitative Analysis of the COP-6 President's
text', by Malte Menishausen and Bill Hare, Greenpeace International,
June 2001 and "Evaluating the Bonn Agreement and some key issues",
The National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) p.22.
The Netherlands 2001)
12. http://unfccc.int/resource/kpstats.pdf,
http://www.panda.org/goforkyoto/ratification_updates.rtf
13. The Ecologist Report, November 2001, pp. 21-22, http://www.theecologist.org
14.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/02.htm
15. UK Climate Change Programme - a policy audit (Sustainable Development
Commission, 12/2/03); & Policy audit of UK Climate Change Policies
and Programmes (Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management, 12/2/03.
16. Energy White Paper, Our energy future - creating a low carbon economy,
Department of Trade & Industry, February 2002, http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/whitepaper
17. Energy: The Changing Climate (Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution,
2000)
18. Sustainable Development Commission, Press Notice: 24 February 2003,
Sustainable energy future beckons, http://www.sd-commission.gov.uk/events/news/pressrel/030224c.htm
19. Bryony Worthington, Campaigner, Climate and Transport, Friends of
the Earth
20. Liabilities - Labour's Hidden Subsidies To Nuclear Power,
Friends of the Earth Press Briefing, January 2003, http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/liabilities_nuclear_power.pdf
21. BBC2 Newsnight, report by Susan Watts, July 2002; Exporting Pollution - Double
Standards in UK Energy Exports, Greenpeace UK, July 2002, http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/5034.pdf
22. Exxon's Weapons of Mass Deception - The Assessment of Greenpeace
International, http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/5292.pdf
23. Gelbspan, p. 76
24. Between them, the two sponsors of Senate Resolution 98 - Senators
Hagle and Byrd - have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from
the oil and gas industry. The vote on the resolution was preceded by intensive
lobbying by Mobil, Exxon and their various front groups. See Exxon's
Weapons of Mass Deception.
25. Legget; Exxon's Weapons of Mass Deception; and Gelbspan, Chapter
5
26. The Tiger in the Tanks - ExxonMobil, oil dependency and war in
Iraq (Greenpeace UK, Feb 2003)
27. Carve up of oil riches begins by Peter Beaumont & Faisal Islam,
The Observer, 3/11/02; The Tiger in the Tanks - ExxonMobil, oil dependency
and the war on Iraq greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/5543.pdf;
When will we buy oil in euros? by Faisal Islam, The Observer, 23/2/3
28. The Truth About Climate Change by Peter Bunyard in The Ecologist Report,
November 2001, pp. 7-11; see also Equinox: The Day the Oceans Boiled,
Channel 4 TV, 17/6/01
29. RCEP report, p.4
30. Friends of the Earth have made a comparison of renewable electricity
suppliers at http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/press_for_change/choose_green_energy/index.html;
see http://www.powershift.org.uk
for information about clean fuel vehicles
31. Biofuels offer amazing potential see Fill 'er up Boyo by Jim
White, The Guardian 20/1/3 and http://www.northwales.org.uk/bio-power/links.htm
32. http://www.iclei.org/co2/index.htm
33. Most local councils operate some form of Agenda 21 group since central
government asked them to. The current health and effectiveness of the
group is likely to vary widely. Contact your local council for details
or see http://www.london21.org/directory.asp
for a list of LA21 groups in London and elsewhere
34. Green light to clean power - The Mayor's Draft Energy Strategy,
January 2003
35. Fast-forward: new ideas to accelerate change by Simon Rellatack in
Ecologist Report, November 2001
36. Campaigners' Guide to Financial Markets: Effective Lobbying of
Companies and Financial Institutions by Nicholas Hildyard and Mark Mansley,
(Cornerhouse, January 2002), http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk
37. http://www.bakuceyhan.org.uk
38. http://www.foei.org, http://www.bankwatch.org
and http://www.eca-watch.org/index1.html
all have campaigns
39. New Society Publishers, 2001
40. http://www.risingtide.org.uk
|