Age of Stupid - take action now

I went to the premiere of ‘Age of Stupid’ at the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle last night. It’s a film looking back from 2055 to now and asking why we did not do anything about climate change while we still could.

The key message for me was the timescale we have to work with. It isn’t enough just to set a target of 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2050 and work slowly towards that. Apparently, unless carbon emissions peak by 2015 and then are reduced rapidly – the global temperature increase will be enough to release greenhouse gases trapped in permafrost and the ocean depths, and climate change will be unstoppable.

2015 – that means action, not just commitments, need to be taken by the Government elected at the next General Election, by the European Parliament elected this June and by the current US President. It is the biggest threat we have to face and every political and policy decision taken from now on, must move us towards a local carbon economy.

The Stop Climate Chaos Coalition, a multi-NGO the protest group backing ‘Age of Stupid’, are pinning their hopes on the UN Climate Change Conference to be held Copenhagen in December. And they are looking for people to lobby government.

I’m happy to support them – but I know the only real way to get politicians to take action is through the ballot box. If they feel their vote is threatened, they’ll listen. So my message is – vote Green in the upcoming European elections, in Mayoral elections, in local elections – at every opportunity. You might not get a Green elected (every time, though it sometimes happens) – but whoever does get elected should get the message.

Climate Change - is it natural or manmade?

My twopenn’orth on whether climate change is natural or manmade - drawing on climate models from geological history remembered from a Geology degree thirty years ago.... (OK – it won’t convince someone who believes the earth was created just a few thousand years ago – but you’ve got to start somewhere)

Earth seems to develop negative feedback systems to return its surface conditions to a steady state when disturbed – this is the (non-mystical) basis of the Gaia hypothesis.
Forget carbon dioxide levels varying over the past thousand, ten thousand or hundred thousand years (and try to ignore the suggestion that we are about 40,000 years overdue for an ice age on past indications), we are talking about processes taking tens if not hundreds of millions of years. I’m thinking of the Carboniferous Period (354-290 million years ago) and the Cretaceous Period (144-65 million years ago). From what we can glean from the geological record (it’s called ‘palaeo-climatology’) both were marked by small or non-existent ice caps, extensive shallow seas and higher average temperatures than now.
And both Periods are named for mechanisms which absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and trapped it in the earth’s crust.
In the Carboniferous, 'trees' from mangrove swamps were buried over tens of millions of years forming coal (oil and gas were formed in a similar way - though not from trees).
In the Cretaceous, micro-organisms flourishing in the warm seas deposited chalk and limestone trapping the carbon as calcium carbonate – again over tens of millions of years. I’m interpreting this in each case as periods with high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and a negative biofeedback mechanism which trapped it in the crust and – eventually – reduced CO2 levels, the earth cooled and the sea levels dropped as ice caps grew again.

So – it’s a natural process?

Trouble is – what we’re doing, by burning fossil fuels, is releasing carbon dioxide that took tens if not hundreds of millions of years to deposit in a matter of a one or two centuries (and that’s not counting carbon dioxide released when we make cement or concrete from limestone). This is simply too fast for the earth to develop new feedback systems!
We're getting the 'greenhouse effect' – global warming, ice caps melting, sea levels rising – including dramatic weather during the (geologically brief) transition period.
And this may well be enough to put paid to what we call ‘civilisation’ – and maybe also to the human race.
But unless the process is so extreme that the earth loses a lot of its water into space (in which case Earth will become like Venus), I think we can rely on negative biofeedback mechanisms developing to remove the carbon dioxide naturally, though it make take a few hundred million years!

To summarise – even though we are releasing carbon dioxide in one-millionth of the time it took to deposit it, it’s likely that biofeedback mechanisms will develop to re-trap the carbon dioxide naturally – but over rather a long time. It is not really the earth that is at risk from climate change – it is humans and human civilisation.

Oh – and a thought about offsetting carbon emissions by planting trees. It took the mangrove swamps of the Carboniferous – hundreds of millions of years, thousands of millions of generations of trees growing over most of the planet – to trap enough carbon as coal to make a difference to CO2 levels. Planting trees will trap a little CO2 while the tree is actually growing, though not when it reaches maturity – but unless the ‘offsetters’ have plans to turn their trees into coal – its nothing like a longterm solution.

Climate Change & Biodiversity

Just been to a very interesting seminar by Prof Bryan Huntley of Durham University - I was floundering a bit, but as I understood his case:

climate change is happening so rapidly that there is little chance of many species evolving to adapt, so the only prospect of survival is for species to migrate into new areas as climatic conditions change

he's mapped likely changes in climate (mean winter/summer temperatures, rainfall etc) across Europe - and then correlated similar habitats in present and future. He assumes that the future potential range of a given species is the future habitat which most closely relates to their current habitat - but it will become their actual range if they can move and adapt in time

he then argues that conservationists should be enabling species to make the move as their habitats shift. This means a major change in mindset from conventional conservation which seeks to protect 'native species' and existing ecosystems

Transport and Mr Bateman

My friend Norman Bateman has written an interesting letter in the Morpeth Herald (23rd August “Rail: Time to think again”) attacking Government policy on fuel and road tax duty and the prohibitive cost of rail travel. Characteristically he makes a provocative aside claiming that the Green Party policy on CO2 emissions is anti-car to the exclusion of all else.

I have, of course, written a rebuttal letter for the Herald – but I can develop some of the ideas more here.

Transport does generate about a third of CO2 emissions in the UK, but it is the only sector where emissions are growing – and growing fast. And of course, air travel is the most damaging because not only does it generate high levels of CO2, it emits them in the upper reaches of the atmosphere where the ‘greenhouse effect’ occurs. So policy needs to focus of emissions arising from transport.

Mr Bateman is quite correct is saying that the first focus must be on reducing the need to travel. We should be decentralising our provision of health, education, shops, work, leisure etc facilities. And we should be insisting on local produce whenever possible. If we’re serious about planning ‘sustainable communities’ – then we should be providing far more than just houses – even if they are ‘eco-friendly’.

And Mr Bateman is correct in saying that current fare structures militate against using lower emission modes of transport. It is ridiculous that short hop air fares are cheaper than rail fares; that a shared taxi is cheaper than travelling by bus or that road freight is more cost effective than rail freight.

Unfortunately, Mr Bateman then succumbs to the popular usage that spending on rail infrastructure is ‘subsidy’ while spending on roads in ‘investment’. In fact, the train operating companies actually pay the Government for franchises to operate and pay Network Rail for use of the track. It is these payments and the notion that the trains should be run to make profits for shareholders that keeps train fares up, while the road network is almost entirely operated as a state-funded public service with the result that the real cost of operating a car has decreased by around 10% in the last ten years.

He also comes up with some curious ideas about discounting fuel tax on heavy lorries and increasing Vehicle Excise Duty. Since the real problem is vehicle use, not vehicle ownership – it would seem a better idea to minimise Vehicle Excise Duty and maximise fuel tax. But – not before investing in public transport – bus and rail - to make it an adequate alternative to car use, and making it easier and safer to travel by bike or on foot.

Unfortunately at present, Government policy on transport – be it aviation, rail or road – is totally at odds with Government policy on climate change and reducing CO2 emissions.

Nuclear Power, Energy Supply & Climate Change

I usually put my more strident rants on my Bile blog - but I think this one - triggered by the Energy White Paper published yesterday - needs to be here...

Of course, slowing climate change is about reducing carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gas) emissions, not purely about changing energy sources.
We could reduce CO2 emissions by

• reducing road traffic levels and aircraft use,
• building more energy efficient housing
• and by using energy more efficiently in industry.
  

And that's all before even thinking about social changes towards a lower energy lifestyle (see Transition Towns). Even when you consider electricity generation, the technology exists for lower powered computers, fluorescent lighting etc, not to mention uses (like heating) where electricity is simply inefficient.

So – when a Government is prepared to spend just £18M a year in energy conservation grants but several billion pounds on replacing nuclear weapons (which are contingency against a less certain threat than climate change) and several hundred billion pounds maintaining a military operation (partly) to safeguard oil supplies – you have to wonder at its priorities.

What I'm getting at is the suggestion that we need nuclear power to counter the threat of climate change is cr*p - I won't get into the arguments about nuclear waste, the threat of accident, the threat of terrorism, the impossibility of insuring nuclear power stations or even the fact that uranium extraction from its ore generates significant levels of CO2 - let's just say there are other alternatives in the timescale we've got.

As to security of supply – sources of high-grade uranium ore (eg West Africa, Siberia) are not exactly politically stable, any more than sources of oil and gas. And current nuclear power stations are designed to produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel by reprocessing. That’s one of the reasons why the Americans doubt the Iranian civil nuclear programme so much. Development of entirely ‘civil’ nuclear power stations will take much longer than the 20 year window we’re told we have.

Of course if photovoltaics, wave or tidal power could have been used to create weapons of mass destruction, they’d have been fully developed by now.

And I guess it is coincidence that the Government have published planning reform for major infrastructure projects and a strategy identifying the need for new nuclear power stations across the country.

Interactive Leaflet 8 - Climate Change

As the Greens have been saying for the last twenty years – climate change is not only real, but the biggest threat we have to face and we’ve got to do something about it. That includes both reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for the floods, storms, droughts and heatwaves we can expect.

Yesterday evening (April 26th) the (Conservative) Leader, (Labour) Deputy Leader, Chief Executive and councillors from all parties signed up to the Nottingham Declaration on Climate Change, which is an agenda for local action in response to the global issue. It is a bit waffly – but does commit the Council to working on climate change through all its activities – preparing an Action Plan within the next twelve months.

If re-elected, I’ll work to make sure this carried into real action even if climate change stops being ‘flavour of the month’ with the mainstream parties.

Climate Change and Local Authorities

The Borough Council agreed to sign up to the Nottingham Declaration on Climate Change at Full Council last Thursday (22nd Feb) – with a commitment to producing an Action Plan by next March (2008), but a suggestion that all we’ll be doing is ‘badging up’ things we are already doing.

Obviously, I feel we should get as committed to taking action on climate change as possible while its still ‘flavour of the month’ with the other political parties. We’ll see how things go….

Meanwhile - the Local Government Association (see www.lga.gov.uk) has set up a "climate change commission" launched today (26th Feb) intended to make sure that councils are in the lead in delivering climate change policies. Everyone can give evidence to this commission and point out what local authorities should or could do.

In my view – there’s a lot councils can do to sort out our own act before taking on a self-declared leadership role:

* bypasses are a big problem: The Lancaster northern bypass supported by Lancashire County Council produces 25,000 tonnes of CO2 each year which when costed at Treasury rates over the normal 60 year life of the road comes to £44M. There are dozens of these bypasses around the country

* airports: Councils often support airports (e.g. part of Newcastle Airport is in Castle Morpeth). Councils have to be far clearer in taking on the role of saying "enough is enough" (I understand that Uttlesford DC has just done this for Stanstead)

* cycling, walking, public transport: Castle Morpeth BC adopted a green travel plan when it relocated to Longhirst Hall, but I’m not aware it has been implemented in any real sense.

* procurement: There’s a lot of scope here. Currently, it’s getting more centralised and the main pressure is to cut costs. If we’re serious about climate change, we should be including carbon counting or eco-auditing as part of the procurement process.