The Challenge
Of Change
By Crispin Tickell
15 January, 2005
Resurgence
Many
people find it hard to believe that a small animal species - our own
- could change anything as vast as the sky and the atmosphere. It was
only recently that the relationship between the quantity of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere and average global surface temperature was fully
established. Some still want to deny this, but there is now a commanding
consensus that human activities have a significant effect on the planet.
The root cause lies
in the way we produce and use energy. Energy is at the core of human
activities and their impact on the natural world. It has contributed
to the enormous changes on the surface of the Earth since the last ice
age: clearance of forests, agriculture, settled communities and cities,
exploitation of resources, and loss of biodiversity. The human species
continues to multiply with demands for yet more energy, and an industrial
society based on fossil fuels remains the ideal to which nearly all
humans aspire.
How we generate
energy in the future is fundamental to humanity's existence. Yet climate
change is not the only threat: we have to reckon with the effects of
population increase, degradation of land and accumulation of wastes,
water pollution and supply, and destruction of biodiversity. Then there
is the way in which we treat each other. There is a widening gap between
the world's rich and the world's poor, and a disproportionate consumption
of the Earth's resources.
All these issues
are interlinked: all relate to energy and climate, and all concern the
future of humanity. We are pushing Gaia beyond her limits. Of all the
ways in which we are doing so, the most important is climate change.
At present the trend is unquestionably towards global warming, but the
biggest danger in an overcrowded world is change itself, which by all
reckonings is accelerating. On a global scale the effects include different
patterns of rainfall and drought, more extreme events along the boundaries
between climatic zones, and changes in ocean currents and sea levels.
All natural ecosystems will be affected as living organisms try to adapt
themselves to new circumstances.
There are also two
jokers in the pack: there is a possibility that an increase in fresh
water in the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans may weaken the Gulf Stream
that brings warmth to Western Europe. There are indications that this
process may already have started. Thus warming could produce cooling.
The other possibility is that the melting of tundra could release vast
quantities of methane and methane hydrate. These are powerful greenhouse
gases, and global temperatures could rise as a result.
NOT SURPRISINGLY
THE scale of the disruptions that climate change could bring has brought
the world together as no other environmental issue has. Governments
have realised the need to work together. There were the World Climate
Conferences of 1979 and 1990. Following the report of the Bruntland
Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change was set up. It has since reported in 1990, 1995
and 2001, and its next report is due in 2007. One of the main achievements
of the UN Summit Conference on Environment and Development at Rio in
1992 was the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its objective was
- and is - to stabilise "greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere
at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with
the climate system".
How this should
be done has been discussed at nine successive meetings at the Parties
to the Convention. Recent meetings have concentrated on the implementation
of the Kyoto Protocol agreed in December 1997. This was never more than
a modest beginning. It committed thirty-eight industrial countries,
including the United States, to a global carbon dioxide emissions reduction
target of 5.2% between 2008 and 2012. Since then the United States has
refused to ratify the Protocol.
Until recently the
rest of the world, including India and China, regarded the problem as
one for industrial countries. But increasingly such countries have realised
how much their own future welfare is involved. China, with its massive
population, is soon likely to overtake the United States as the world's
largest carbon emitter. In fact the Chinese, unlike the Americans, have
actually reduced their carbon emissions in real terms over the last
five years as a product of the reorganisation of Chinese industry and
attempts to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels.
All this may look
positive. But even if the Kyoto commitments are met, greenhouse-gas
emissions would still be some thirty per cent up on 1990 by 2010. But
none of this has been accepted by the biggest polluter of all, the United
States: with less than five per cent of the world's population it emits
around twenty-four per cent of global greenhouse gases. With American
society still based on cheap energy and with vested interests so close
to the current US Administration, it is no surprise that President Bush
has refused to ratify the Protocol. Nevertheless a combination of several
individual US states, both Republican and Democrat, have taken steps
to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency.
The European Union
countries, including Britain, ratified the Protocol in New York in May
2002. The Union now has an overall emissions target of eight per cent
below 1990 levels for the period between 2008 and 2012. The British
government has decided to do better still and has adopted a legally
binding target of twelve and a half per cent. Since then, as global
warming seems to be proceeding faster than expected, the government
has also adopted a voluntary target of a twenty-three per cent reduction
by 2010. More recently it has set itself a still more ambitious target
in line with the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Environmental
Pollution: a sixty per cent reduction by 2050.
SO WHERE DOES all
this leave energy policy in Britain and elsewhere? How can these various
targets be met? There is a two-pronged approach. The first is to mitigate
the effects of the use of fossil fuels, and the second is to promote
alternative sources of energy. Obviously the two are closely linked,
and involve almost all sectors of the economy. In both there is conflict
between a powerful array of private interests and the public interest,
and between the short term and the long term. This makes for very tricky
politics within countries as well as between them.
It is already clear
that reserves of fossil fuels are limited. As reserves diminish, so
prices will rise and the incentive to look for other sources of energy
and improve efficiency will increase. There is no way in which the world
economy could rapidly switch from fossil fuels; hence the new interest
in technologies to mitigate their effects. They range from coal gasification
to geological sequestration of carbon dioxide.
Technology is vital
but can be double-edged following the law of unintended consequences.
The story of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) is a case in point. Initially
thought harmless, they were later identified as a major cause of ozone
depletion and a powerful greenhouse gas. But it does not mean that we
should not take the high- rather than the low-technology route in the
future.
How best to promote
the switch to alternative sources of energy is equally difficult. Here
governments have the major responsibility. The British government has
made some efforts in the right direction. In 2003 it published an Energy
White Paper to lay out policy for the next half-century. It was notably
coy about how targets were to be reached, and generally fudged the nuclear
issue. It also contained inconsistencies. Current transport policy,
particularly over aviation, seems to be going in the wrong direction.
But the paper did include such measures as doubling energy generation
through combined heat and power, setting a ten per cent target for electricity
suppliers, promoting a national emissions trading scheme, and calling
for greater energy efficiency.
The European Union
has a wider trading emissions scheme coming into force this January,
into which the present British scheme will fit. The scheme imposes requirements
on the largest individual emitters of carbon dioxide to monitor and
account for their emissions. The installations include all forms of
electricity generation, oil refineries, iron and steel producers, the
minerals industry, and paper, pulp and board manufacturing. Together
the installations covered by the scheme cover about half of all British
carbon dioxide emissions.
Making the cuts
will inevitably involve a new mix of energy sources and technologies.
The difficult task for government is to know where to fix priorities
and which technologies to push. Research into non-conventional fossil
fuel sources and cleaner coal seems unlikely to lead far, while renewable
technologies which already exist, from solar and wind to biomass and
tidal power, and even perhaps geothermal energy, deserve much more support
than they have so far received.
Then there is the
'nuclear' question. As chairman of a Chatham House group looking into
future prospects for the industry, I simply say this: first, I reproach
this government and its predecessor for not putting more effort and
resources into coping with the problems of high-level waste. Next, I
reproach them for fudging nuclear issues. One of the conclusions of
the Chatham House study was that public opinion was persuadable if anyone
wanted to persuade it. The present failure to confront the issues has
unfortunate effects on recruitment of new generations of scientists
and engineers.
Next, I believe
that we should be investing in new fusion technology. The problems of
true cost, safety, proliferation, security, risk and the rest should
be examined in a complete overall assessment of nuclear against other
forms of renewable energy to lay a proper foundation for debate and
future policy.
Another project
on the horizon is the development of hydrogen technology. Beginning
with transport, President Bush has announced a US$1.2 billion hydrogen
fuel initiative which aims to make it practical and cost-effective to
use clean hydrogen-powered vehicles by 2020. To achieve widespread use
of hydrogen it must obviously be produced cost-effectively in large
plants or in smaller facilities near vehicle fuelling stations, and
the technology must avoid creating carbon dioxide in the process of
refining hydrogen.
In all debate on
future energy policy, there is one central conclusion. The world is
never going to run out of energy. Our friendly neighbourhood hydrogen
bomb - the Sun - will not run out of fuel for hundreds of millions of
years to come. The question is how we move from one means of generating
energy to another. To achieve this transition there must be a wider
recognition in society of the scale of the changes which are needed.
Every individual must feel that he or she can do something and take
increased responsibility for his or her actions. But a sixty per cent
reduction in carbon use will require a real change in lifestyle. All
over the world people have to change their ways and remodel their thinking.
Otherwise Nature will do what she has done to over 99% of species that
have ever lived, and do the job for us.
Sir Crispin Tickell
is Chancellor of the University of Kent.