His comments that "surely it would make sense for humanity to move, sooner or later, from dirty centralised old and fossilised energy to clean, decentralised new renewable energy, delivered by the sun, wind, waves and tides direct to point-of-use? Why remain chained to the limiting infrastructure of the past, when new technology allows extraordinary opportunities for the future?" reminded me a recent article under the heading: An electricity generation system the Victorians would be proud of.
On a related note, see also paper by Prof John Twidell entitled The political and ethical case for renewable energy, available via http://prowa.org.uk/links.html.
All in all, surely the conclusion has to be that the time-wasting and tedious ongoing debate about man-made climate change should be over? The sooner the media, including and in particular the BBC, stop wheeling out climate dinosaurs, the better!
Let's not
forget the moral case for climate action
Friends of the Earth argues that
while the economic case for climate action is compelling, business leaders need
to remember there is also a moral argument to be made
By Craig Bennett, Friends of the Earth
20 Nov 2013, published at http://www.businessgreen.com
Those of us in the business of advocating urgent action on climate
change are well practised at using a wide set of evidence based, rational
arguments in support of our cause. And, my goodness, there's a lot of them, as
demonstrated in the news stories and comment pieces appearing on a daily basis
through media channels such as BusinessGreen.
There's the whole Nick Stern type argument which, if boiled down to a
tweet goes something like; "There's nothing cheap about runaway climate change.
Tackling it will cost our economy far less than ignoring it and is the
pro-growth option".
In his original seminal review on The Economics of Climate Change published
in October 2006, Stern estimated that climate change threatened to knock 20 per
cent off global GDP, equivalent to the two World Wars and the Great Depression
combined, while a proactive strategy to mitigate climate change would cost just
one per cent of global GDP. There was a bit of a debate among economists about
discount rates and other stuff shortly after the publication of his report, but
the vast majority of academics, companies and governments broadly accepted
Stern's analysis. By this measure alone, the procrastination on climate action
by politicians like George Osborne is nothing short of shameful, and
hypocritical. Simply put; the longer we dither, the greater the climate deficit
we build up for the next generation.
It is worth noting that Stern now estimates that he dramatically
undervalued the economic costs of climate change in 2006, and believes that
delays in action since have also considerably increased the "costs"
of mitigation strategies. Yeah, thanks George.
Then there are the set of arguments that tackling climate change will
lead to a better world. Surely it would make sense to stop shivering and
properly insulate our heat-leaking homes, for example, even if scientists
weren't worried about climate chaos? And surely it would make sense for
humanity to move, sooner or later, from dirty centralised old and fossilised
energy to clean, decentralised new renewable energy, delivered by the sun,
wind, waves and tides direct to point-of-use? Why remain chained to the
limiting infrastructure of the past, when new technology allows extraordinary
opportunities for the future?
There are many other sets of arguments, of course, and underpinning most
of them is the clear message from an ever increasing chunk of the business
community that they want governments to put the long term policy frameworks in
place to provide them with the confidence they need to scale up their investments
in environmental technologies and infrastructure, and speed the transition from
a high to low carbon economy.
Regular readers of BusinessGreen will be very familiar
with this common narrative, even if some of our political elites and the
well-paid minority of mad frothy-mouthed media commentators still don't get it.
But as shocking images from the Philippines continue to appear on our
television screens every night, it's time to remind ourselves of the other set
of arguments that should drive much faster political action on climate change;
the moral arguments.
Since Typhoon Haiyan wreaked its destruction 10 days ago, there has been
a good deal of controversy about whether climate change was to blame or
not.
Let's be clear; we cannot attribute the occurrence of a specific weather event to climate change. That would be nonsense, particularly just a few days after the disaster. It may or may not be the case that, in time, scientists might feel able to point to evidence suggesting climate change played some sort of role in causing Typhoon Haiyan to be more devastating than it might otherwise have been. This week's New Scientist, for example, has pointed to sea level rise in recent decades having played a possible role in reinforcing the storm surge associated with the storm. And earlier this year, a report by the American Meteorological Society demonstrated that the severity of half of 12 extreme weather events recorded in 2012 could be linked to climate change in some way, with examples including US heat-waves, Superstorm Sandy, shrinking Arctic sea ice, drought in Europe's Iberian Peninsula and extreme rainfall in Australia and New Zealand.
Let's be clear; we cannot attribute the occurrence of a specific weather event to climate change. That would be nonsense, particularly just a few days after the disaster. It may or may not be the case that, in time, scientists might feel able to point to evidence suggesting climate change played some sort of role in causing Typhoon Haiyan to be more devastating than it might otherwise have been. This week's New Scientist, for example, has pointed to sea level rise in recent decades having played a possible role in reinforcing the storm surge associated with the storm. And earlier this year, a report by the American Meteorological Society demonstrated that the severity of half of 12 extreme weather events recorded in 2012 could be linked to climate change in some way, with examples including US heat-waves, Superstorm Sandy, shrinking Arctic sea ice, drought in Europe's Iberian Peninsula and extreme rainfall in Australia and New Zealand.
It's an interesting scientific debate but, to be honest, a distraction
for the politicians and policy makers. That comment might surprise you, but the
point is that even if scientists concluded 100 per cent that this particular
extreme weather event was caused by Lord Voldermort throwing a hissy fit over
Harry Potter winning a game of Quidditch, Typhoon Haiyan would still serve as
an stark illustration of the appalling human suffering that extreme weather
events pose as a threat to hundreds of millions of people around the world in
the decades ahead.
There is a clear moral responsibility on all of us to work together to
lessen human suffering as a result of these weather events in the future - in
the same way that previous generations took steps to reduce the human suffering
associated with slavery, or cholera outbreaks in London because of poor
sanitation, or children working in mines.
In the case of the Philippines, lessening the human suffering associated
with extreme weather events means protecting coral reefs and mangroves (both of
which represent natural buffers from storm surges); avoiding deforestation and
the flash flooding associated with it; improving housing and sanitation;
strengthening storm shelters; improving rescue logistics; and much more
besides.
But, in the 21st century, it also means there is a moral responsibility
on all of us to try and tackle climate change because scientists are
increasingly confident of the link between a warmer world and extreme weather
events in the future (even if the current impact is still a matter of
interesting debate). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's recent
Fifth Assessment Report, for example, gave a clear indication that climate
change is likely to increase the severity (note; not frequency) of extreme
weather events. It cited "enhanced summer monsoon precipitation; increased
rainfall extremes of landfall typhoons on the coast" and "reduction
in the midwinter suppression of extratropical cyclones" (p26 of the
technical summary) amongst many other possible phenomena.
It has become unfashionable to emphasise the moral imperative for action
on climate change. In my experience, the business community never discusses it,
and even NGOs are guilty of mentioning it very rarely these days. And yet,
surely it is the moral dimension of the debate that should and - let's be
optimistic - will trump all else?
I'm not as up with my history as I should be. But I'm confident that the
debates that took place over the last couple of centuries about the abolition
of slavery and votes for women would have included ephemeral arguments, for and
against, relating to what we would now call the "business case", the
"economic imperative", and questions over
"competitiveness".
But as we look back on these debates from our vantage point in the 21st
century, it is only the moral case that seems relevant now. The abolition of
slavery, and the adoption of universal women's suffrage, now represent seminal
chapters in the story of human progress, following on from the discovery of
fire, the invention of the wheel and the development of agriculture.
And so it will be for the ability of the human species to live within
environmental limits too, with tackling climate change a key part of this
chapter.
In centuries, hopefully decades, to come future generations will look
back and mock the likes of Nigel Lawson, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot and
the other naysayers that held up human progress by attempting to keep us stuck
in the fossil-fuelled twentieth century.
And they will study the lives of the brave pioneers that helped humanity
to move forward; the academics like Nick Stern; the campaigners who tirelessly
fought for climate legislation and international climate agreements; the
activists who were locked up in a Russian jail while defending the Arctic; the
business leaders that broke rank; the entrepreneurs that set up the first clean
tech companies; the first communities that took control of their local energy
infrastructure; and many more besides.
There will be some that laugh at this suggestion, but they are a
dwindling minority. More and more people believe that living within our environmental
means is the right way to go, even if getting there might not be entirely
straightforward. Most people now believe achieving it will be one of the next
chapters in the history of humanity.
And for people in business, that should give you more confidence to
scale up your investments in environmental technologies, than anything that a
here today gone tomorrow politician might say, or do.
Craig Bennett is director
of policy and campaigns at Friends of the Earth
