A cold climate?
15 October 2008
So the European Union is already finding ways to wriggle away from its ambitious carbon emissions reduction target.
It is a difficult time for those who argue climate change is our most pressing priority. The global recession will give Governments an opportunity to disguise a cyclical downturn in emissions as a structural reduction (rather like Labour has encouraged us to see the consequences of the dash for gas as evidence of its environmental commitment). Hard pressed consumers will be asking ‘which is the cheapest?’ rather than ‘which is the greenest?’. But the falling price of energy will mean less incentive for us to turn down the thermostat and get on our bikes. And, as I said yesterday, the public’s willingness to trust experts and obey leaders may well be further damaged by the implosion in the financial sector.
Add to this – and please someone tell me if I’m wrong – the fact that aggregate global temperatures actually fell last year. Apparently this kind of mini blip in the overall upwards trend is not unexpected and does little to disprove the climate change thesis. But this won’t stop the climate change deniers (amongst whom there are a couple of vociferous Fellows) offering us all the opportunity to hear what we want to hear; that the whole thing was got up as an excuse to make us pay more tax and have less fun.
This is the backdrop to a talk I am supposed to give in two hours to a WWF event about how you change social values and influence behaviours in the direction of sustainability. I hate being to voice of doom (well, OK, like everyone else I enjoy it - it but it’s not very responsible) but as I write I’m grasping for a more positive spin.
Dear readers (mum are you there)? What shall I say?
It is a difficult time for those who argue climate change is our most pressing priority. The global recession will give Governments an opportunity to disguise a cyclical downturn in emissions as a structural reduction (rather like Labour has encouraged us to see the consequences of the dash for gas as evidence of its environmental commitment). Hard pressed consumers will be asking ‘which is the cheapest?’ rather than ‘which is the greenest?’. But the falling price of energy will mean less incentive for us to turn down the thermostat and get on our bikes. And, as I said yesterday, the public’s willingness to trust experts and obey leaders may well be further damaged by the implosion in the financial sector.
Add to this – and please someone tell me if I’m wrong – the fact that aggregate global temperatures actually fell last year. Apparently this kind of mini blip in the overall upwards trend is not unexpected and does little to disprove the climate change thesis. But this won’t stop the climate change deniers (amongst whom there are a couple of vociferous Fellows) offering us all the opportunity to hear what we want to hear; that the whole thing was got up as an excuse to make us pay more tax and have less fun.
This is the backdrop to a talk I am supposed to give in two hours to a WWF event about how you change social values and influence behaviours in the direction of sustainability. I hate being to voice of doom (well, OK, like everyone else I enjoy it - it but it’s not very responsible) but as I write I’m grasping for a more positive spin.
Dear readers (mum are you there)? What shall I say?
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james greyson - 16 Oct 2008 12:57pm
According to the US National Climatic Data Centre http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2007/ann/global.html#gtemp 2007 global temperatures were up slightly on the previous year, +0.55C above the 20th century average. There's a lot of data on this page but it's important to notice how land temperatures are rising way faster than ocean temperatures, which is explained by their chart of arctic ice volumes which are crashing. Melting polar ice takes out massive amounts of heat from weather systems and serves as a buffer attempting to stabilise climate. The vanishing ice masks a problem which is more serious than the temperature data suggests. If we want to track how close we are to the climatic cliff edge then looking at the ice is arguably more important than looking at the temperature. When the ice is gone, so is the heat-extracting buffer and the world would lose a major heat-reflecting white surface and gain massive methane dumps from melted permafrost. The ice carries two other vital messages; ice loss is uncontroversial so stop placating the denial lobby; ice loss is proceeding far ahead of IPCC predictions so we need a new game-plan for planetary survival. Jim Hansen is on the right track. Since we're already losing polar ice like mad we know there is already too much waste gases in the atmosphere. So the game is to cut atmospheric concentrations, a vastly bigger deal than just cutting emissions - which we have failed to do globally. This is not a voice of doom but a reality check. It gives us a clue about the scale of change and the level of creative thinking needed. My research on policy options suggests that the answer is a switch in economic paradigm, from tolerating worsening global problems and running economic growth from debt to reversing global problems and building wealth from expanding nature and supporting people's needs globally. We need to get serious about cooperation with nature and between people. My NATO-published work on how to do this with just 2 new economic tools is deposited on the RSA Network site http://networks.thersa.org/person/james-greyson. Please take a look and tell me what you think.