climate change | ukwatch.net

Channel 4 ‘did not mislead’ on global warming

Ellie Keen — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:31:39 +0000

Ofcom will rule next week that Channel 4 did not mislead the public over the science of climate change with its programme the Great Global Warming Swindle, according to Owen Gibson in the Guardian this morning.

There is some criticism of Channel 4 and the GGWS programme, produced by Michael Durkin:

Ofcom is expected to censure the network over its treatment of some scientists in the programme… Complaints about privacy and fairness from the government’s former chief scientist, Sir David King, and the Nobel peace prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be upheld on almost all counts…

But the bigger story is around what Channel 4 won’t be censured for:

But it is understood that Channel 4 will still claim victory because the ultimate verdict on a separate complaint about accuracy, which contained 131 specific points and ran to 270 pages, will find that it did not breach the regulator’s broadcasting code and did not materially mislead viewers.

Have a look at an example complaint made to Ofcom from Josie Wexler (via Flet) which suggests the programme broke the “Broadcasting code clauses: 5.5, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, 5.10, 5.11, 5.12, 7.1, 7.6, 7.9, 7.10, 7.11 and 7.13.”

As Josie points out in her letter:

The director Martin Durkin is well known for his unscrupulous approach as shown by the fact that he has a previous ruling against him for his programme “Against Nature.” And yet despite having had to apologise for broadcasting this Channel 4 have now broadcast another of his programmes on the same subject without warning the public. [my emphasis]

So, Channel 4 had already had to apologise for a previous misleading programme of Martin Durkin’s?

What is even more worrying is that, again, the ’six-to-one’ evidence (six times more people supported the programme when phoning in or leaving messages on the message board) was used as a justiification of airing this programme:

Channel 4 justified the broadcast by saying it was a useful contribution to a timely debate… The producers claimed that after it was broadcast, Channel 4 received a record number of phone calls that were six to one in favour of the arguments made. The film was subsequently sold to 21 other countries.

Why this justification is wrong

This justification suggests that a particular percentage of a particular number of members of the pubic with a phone and a gripe is enough to warrant a progamme that flies in the face of over 2,000 of the world’s leading scientists publishing the 4th Assessment Report for the IPCC. So, a couple of questions for Ofcom and Channel 4.

1. How many people phoned in exactly, and what percentage of the audience figures is this?

2. What is the average repsonse to a political/provocative programme such as this?

3. What kind of people would self-select to watch a programme called the Great Global Warming Swindle?

4. What kind of people would want to phone in to support or criticize such a programme?

5. The Royal Society, scientists, academics, press, columnists, at least 1/7th of people who watched the programme, and media monitors have all come out against the programme. Do around, for example–and I’m guessing here–600 people who phoned in to watch the programme, 6/7ths of all those that phoned in, mean that Channel 4 can extrapolate out so that “6/7ths more people in the country” are behind them on this?

6. Or, in reality, do ONLY, say, 600 people who watch Channel 4 support them on this? In total. And if Channel 4 get this many viewers for one programme, does it justify its airing?

(That last one is probably unfair. Different polls at different times show different levels of support and understanding for, or disbelief and scepticism in, global warming.)

But I think Ofcom has made a mistake here. I’d like to see the numbers, so will come back to this when the report is out. I’m also going to do some digging around the code, and the definition of ‘material’ misleading.

But it may be the case that they a) either do not have the scientific experience to weigh up whether or not the programme misled the public, or b) they’ve been cowardly.

Want more? Some reviews from the time:

Robin McKie in the Guardian condemns Channel 4

Martin Durkin defends his programme

The Royal Society’s Rebuttal

the Independent attempts a he-said-they-said balancing act

A Just Transition?

Ellie Keen — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 12:38:17 +0000

In the past few months, outbreaks of industrial unrest and protest have been occurring throughout Europe in the industries most affected by the rising price of oil. Starting with Grangemouth refinery, Unite workers in went on strike over reduction in pension rights. Workers in haulage companies delivering to petrol forecourts followed in a dispute over pay. More recently we have seen the protests of the haulage companies themselves demanding special reductions in tax on fuel – by the time this article goes to press, we will know whether Gordon Brown has held his nerve on that. In France, railway workers and fishermen have been involved in industrial action and in Spain public transport workers have likewise struck over the impact of the rising price of fuel. Meanwhile, oil companies continue to make record profits. These are signs of things to come. At the end of June, the list of oil companies invited to tender for lucrative contracts in Iraq was published. On the same day, the price of oil increased to $140 a barrel, the highest ever recorded. Each month for the past six months, the price of oil has been the highest on record. As we approach peak oil, when supply cannot meet demand, the price of oil is spiralling upwards, and the distribution of the costs and benefits of this are profoundly unequal and increasingly contested. Ten years ago, the economist James O’Connor described how states treat oil as not just a commodity but as an extension of state security, backed by military apparatus.

These are elements of the supply side of the oil industry. If we look at the waste stream, the carbon dioxide emissions which are accumulating in the atmosphere and disrupting the climate, we are seeing increasing frequencies in the occurrence of cyclones, hurricanes, floods, although the debate often takes an apparently more arcane, esoteric form. Is it possible for the climate to withstand a carbon dioxide concentration of 450 parts per million, or will it be necessary to reduce to 350 ppm or less? Just how disrupted will the climate be with each 0.1 degree Celsius and at what point do the changes become irreversible? Essential though these debates are – and each scientific report which hits the public domain points towards more worrying scenarios – it should not be forgotten that two thirds of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere originates from the G7 countries, with currently 13 per cent of the world’s population. There is no doubt that there is a crisis, and that the rich countries need to cut oil consumption almost to nothing.

Currently, the principal mechanism for cutting carbon dioxide emissions is carbon trading, which essentially entails enclosure of the last remaining commons – the carbon absorption capacity of the atmosphere – by allocating property rights to those who are already destroying it. This is none other than a neoliberal extension of commodification of the atmosphere, whilst shifting costs onto the poorest who are dispossessed by ‘green development projects’. Ideological justification is provided by individualising responsibility as a form of consumer choice. Climate disaster is happening because western consumers made the wrong choices! Whatever happens to the climate, the interests of global capital cannot be jeopardised.

How are we going to get out of this mess? In short, we don’t know, but the solution must be radical, it must be socially just and it must challenge the interests of big business. We can transform this oil-drenched economy and overturn poverty and have decent jobs. Potential solutions are emerging in debates across the left, but a solution must emerge from social processes more than ideas. As we stand in Scotland, the only party in Parliament which is opposed to the interests of big business is the Green Party whose support comes, more or less, from the professional middle classes who support the NGOs and the ‘new’ social movements of which they are part. The most directly affected working class movements are challenging the oil companies, but in terms that ignore the climate crisis that we are facing. The other left parties are recognising the ecological challenge, and despite their current relative weakness, remain active in community and working class struggles. We need the collective knowledge of all political movements critical of or operating out with the neoliberal framework of economic growth, all groups whose interests are being actively damaged, in Parliament, in communities, in the social movements and in the trade unions. Only by working towards some kind of bloc will we shift the hegemony sufficiently to implement change. We need such a broad alliance like never before if we are to work out a just transition to a sustainable solution.

Justin Kenrick, in SLR earlier this year, argued for a transitional alliance to tackle climate change. This has been interpreted in different ways and stimulated an important debate, generating significant connections across the left as well as raising fears. As a result of these debates, a conference is being organised by activists from across the left and green movements to explore how we can move forward. None of the parties which might form a government in the foreseeable future will implement a radical changes needed on their own, and to imagine that they can be persuaded otherwise before the damage is done is unfortunately a false dream. The damage is already well underway, and it’s time for a new dream.

Conference: transition to tackle climate change, Edinburgh, 18th – 19th October 2008

Eurig Scandrett is a member of the Scottish Green Party and Democratic Left Scotland

G8 summit marked by impotence and division

Ellie Keen — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Facing what is arguably its most serious crisis since the end of the Second World War, the global capitalist economy has never been in greater need of co-ordinated policies from the world’s major national governments.

But unity and collaboration in the face of the mounting problems posed by climate change, oil and food price hikes and the ever-present threat of recession, have been conspicuously absent from the meeting of the G8 major industrial nations being held in Hokkaido, Japan, this week.

Nowhere were the divisions more apparent than in yesterday’s statement on climate change. After much behind the scenes negotiations, the G8 meeting finally agreed to a communiqué in which the major industrial powers agreed to a “vision” of “achieving at least 50 percent reduction of global emissions by 2050.” However, in order to secure agreement from US President George Bush, who has refused to name any target in the absence of commitments from India and China, the statement added a rider “recognising that this global challenge can only be met by a global response, in particular, by the contributions from all major economies.”

The statement was dismissed by scientists as lagging far behind what was needed to arrest global climate change.

“They could have made progress here by being more specific on the near-term commitments that industrialised countries were willing to make to reduce their own emissions, but they don’t have agreement on that,” Aiden Meyer, a spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said.

“They could have been more specific on reductions by 2050 from what base year, but they don’t have agreement on that.”

James Hansen, a leading climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said it was “a pretence that [industrialised nations] understand the problem. In reality, they are taking actions that guarantee that we deliver to our children climate catastrophes that are out of their control.”

The G8 statement failed to make any commitment on emission reductions over the next decade, action that is regarded as vital. The chairman of the UN’s panel of climate scientists, Rajendra Pachauri, said “very vital details” were missing from the statement. “The sooner we start reducing emissions, the greater the likelihood of avoiding some of the more serious impacts and temperature increases that are going to take place a decade or so down the road,” he said.

The statement was met with immediate criticism from the G5 group of so-called developing countries—Brazil, China, India, South Africa and Mexico—that are scheduled to meet with G8 today.

“Responsibility shouldn’t fall on developing countries for what is an unavoidable responsibility of developed nations,” said Mexican president Felipe Calderon.

South Africa’s environment minister Marthinaus van Schalkwyk called the G8 statement an “empty slogan without substance.”

“While the statement may appear as a movement forward, we are concerned that it may, in effect, be a regression from what is required to make a meaningful contribution to meeting the challenges of climate change. To be meaningful and credible, a long-term goal must have a base year. It must be underpinned by ambitious mid-term targets and actions,” he said.

In any case, even if such commitments were made, they would not prove any more substantial than those made on world poverty. Three years ago, amid great fanfare at the Gleneagles meeting in Scotland, the G8 leaders agreed to increase aid to Africa by $25 billion by the year 2010. As the Hokkaido meeting was being convened it was revealed that a mere 14 percent of the target had been met.

World economy

The G8’s commitments on the world economy were no more specific than those on climate change. The organisation was set up in 1975 to develop co-ordinated action to meet the problems posed by recession and the financial turmoil resulting from the oil price shock of 1973-74. Three and a half decades on, with the world economy facing what the International Monetary Fund has designated as the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression, such action would seem to be in order.

But the G8 statement contained no concrete measures. After noting that the world economy is facing “uncertainty” as “downside risks persist” and expressing “strong concern about elevated commodity prices, especially oil and food,” the statement went on to assert that “we are determined to continuously take appropriate actions, individually and collectively to ensure stability and growth in our economies and globally.”

It contained a veiled call to the Chinese government to allow an upward movement in the exchange rate of the yuan in order to alleviate global imbalances.

“In some emerging economies with large and growing current account surpluses,” the statement declared, “it is crucial that their effective exchange rates move so that necessary adjustment will occur.” The inclusion of the word “some” marked a change from the communiqué last year, which simply referred to “emerging economies” in general.

The exchange rate issue is only a symptom of more deep-seated problems. A spokesman for Bush declared at the outset of the meeting that the president was in favour a “strong dollar”. However, that would necessitate a rise in US interest rates, a move that would almost certainly set off a new financial crisis in the US and globally. On the other hand, an increase in the value of the dollar would require a lowering of interest rates in other regions, especially in the eurozone. But rather than cutting rates the European Central Bank is maintaining a relatively tight monetary policy in order to combat global inflationary pressures.

The impotence of the G8 is not a product of the individual leaders and governments but the expression of vast changes in the world economy. As the Financial Times noted in a comment published on Monday, the G8 is not master of its own destiny but is being buffeted by “forces and policies from elsewhere.”

“While the G8 accounts for almost half the world’s economic output, developing and emerging economies produce 70 percent of economic growth. Their dynamism outweighs the G8’s size. And by dint of its 10 percent growth rates, China alone contributes as much to the world’s economic growth every year as the US.”

The slippage of the “leading industrial nations,” as the members of the G8 like to designate themselves, is illustrated by the economic decline of the United States. As a comment published last Thursday by Bloomberg News noted: “The dollar’s 41 percent drop against the euro during Bush’s term writes the economic epitaph of an administration that set out to restore American pre-eminence.”

An even more scathing comment, authored by the well-known British historian and journalist Max Hastings, was published in the Guardian on Monday.

The gathering in Hokkaido, he began, conjured up images of a political accident and emergency ward on a Saturday night.

“President Bush, leader of the greatest nation on earth, is discredited and almost time-expired. Gordon Brown leads a government most of whose own members want him to disappear into a hole. Silvio Berlusconi presides over a gangster culture that renders it impossible for Italy to present a serious face to world. Nicolas Sarkozy should enjoy the prestige of a French president secure in office until 2012, but he has grievously injured his own power base by his first-year antics. Russia’s new president Dmitry Medvedev, may well add up to nothing, in the absence of Vladmir Putin to tell him what to think.”

Hastings’ concern over the state of the world’s political leadership was prompted by the fact that the G8 was charged with addressing the “gravest issues of modern times”, including the “shocking evidence on climate change”, world poverty and the economic slowdown in the wake of soaring energy and food prices.

However, it was becoming more difficult to “mobilise an international quorum in support of any objective, however worthy and important.” This was a reflection not only of the loss of authority by the US but was also a consequence of “globalism, which makes it ever harder for any nation to forge a consensus in support of decisive action”.

Things had been much easier for capitalist societies in the Cold War era “when it was perceived as essential to follow strong US leadership”. Hastings forecast that the “global predicament” would have to get a “great deal worse” before the members of bodies such as the G8 “acknowledge that common action against shared perils must transcend the familiar, disastrously outdated pursuit of national interests.”

Hastings’ hope that global events will alert world leaders to the dangers of the unfettered pursuit of national interest—rather in the manner of an English schoolmaster knocking sense into a class of rowdy students—is completely misplaced. As the current G8 meeting demonstrates, far from bringing greater international unity and co-operation, the global economic and environmental problems will bring greater national divergence and conflict among the capitalist powers.

This is because the divisions are not the product of individual politicians or the result of lack of knowledge or understanding but are rooted in the very nation-state structure of the world capitalist order.

The global warming deniers

tim — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:27:08 +0000

I am finding it increasingly difficult to maintain my optimism that we can stabilise global temperature increases below the “danger level” of 2°C. First, there is no sign that emissions are being reduced; rather, the opposite is happening. Second, it is becoming clear that the danger level for temperature increase is a good deal lower than 2°C.

The Arctic Sea ice cover is already approaching a new low. The new topic of speculation is not whether the Arctic ice will disappear completely in the summer months by 2080, but whether this will happen by 2018. An ice-free North Pole will have a significant effect on the planet’s energy balance, given the important role this huge white “mirror” plays in reflecting incoming solar radiation. Once it is gone, the warming process can only speed up further. Already, a new study suggests that an ice-free Arctic Ocean will dramatically increase warming in surrounding land areas, accelerating the degradation of permafrost and resulting in huge releases of carbon and methane – driving yet more warming. Setting a danger level of 2°C, as the UK and EU have done, now looks dangerously optimistic.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported last year that emissions cuts within a decade could still keep temperature hikes below 2°C. But global emissions are rising year on year, not falling. Many climate models are underpinned by an assumption of 1.5 per cent increases annually in carbon releases. Instead, they have been running at more than 2 per cent.

In the words of the Tyndall Centre scientist Kevin Anderson: “Since 2000 the world has gone ballistic in terms of carbon emissions.” Anderson has recently revised his projections for climate change and now thinks that the “best we can expect” is stab ilising atmospheric concentrations at 650 parts per million CO2 equivalent, equating to warming of about 4°C. He suggests we “mitigate for 2°, but adapt for 4°”.

Adapting to 4°C of warming would be quite a challenge. With this level of temperature change, we can expect a huge increase in drought-prone zones, a mass extinction of half or more of the life on earth, hundreds of millions of refugees from areas deprived of fresh water or inundated by rising seas, and widespread starvation due to food and water shortages.

The Stockholm Network’s Carbon Scenarios report (which I helped draft) reaches a similar conclusion, projecting a warming of nearly 5°C if global policy on climate continues to fail. Against this terrifying backdrop, the denial lobby flourishes, its success almost calling into question the capacity of mankind for reasoned thought.

Nigel Lawson’s dreadful book, laughably entitled An Appeal to Reason, has been riding high in the sales charts and is only one of several denialist tomes on global warming. The last time I looked, four out of five of Amazon’s top sellers on climate were penned by deniers. And these are not just views from the fringe. A MORI poll reported by the Observer last month found six out of ten people think, wrongly, that “many scientific experts” disagree on whether human beings are causing climate change. Four out of ten people asked believed that the impact had been exaggerated.

Many climate-change sceptics like to think they are proudly independent people, refusing to be cowed by UN-sponsored orthodoxy from the IPCC. In fact, the arguments of climate sceptics have largely been moulded by a far more sinister force – the US-based conservative think tanks. A recent academic survey of environmentally sceptical books found that 92 per cent were linked with these think tanks, which include the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Since the early 1990s, these and other industry-funded front groups have been leading an anti-environmental backlash, changing the tenor of the political debate on environmental issues and bombarding the media and the public with disinformation.

The authors of the study, published in the June edition of a journal called Environmental Politics, argue that, far from being a true grass-roots movement, “environmental scepticism is an elite- driven reaction to global environmentalism, organised by core actors within the conservative movement”. The “self-portrayal of sceptics as marginalised ‘Davids’ battling the powerful ‘Goliath’ of environmentalists and environmental scientists is a charade”, given that the “sceptics are supported by politically powerful conservative think tanks funded by wealthy foundations and corporations”.

Next time someone insists global warming isn’t happening, ask yourself where their views come from – and whose interests they serve.

Ending Poverty in a Carbon Constrained World

Ellie Keen — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:12:07 +0000

Rapid Transition and New Development Directions

Several years ago the International Red Cross sent me on behalf the World Disasters Report to assess the early impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations. What I saw in Tuvalu, in the South Pacific, and learned from other small island states, about being resilient in the face of an unpredictable and extreme climate, may hold lessons now for how many millions more can withstand the upheaval of global warming on our small island planet. Tuvalu is living a uniquely modern paradox. It won the lottery of the internet age being awarded the domain name ‘.tv.’ Allegedly it has a bigger delegation in Los Angeles to sell rights, than it has here at the UN to protect its political interests. But, lying just a few metres above sea level, Tuvalu is in acute danger of losing its real home, just as it benefits from its new, virtual one.

We can learn a lot from the mere fact that island communities like this survived for so long on remote shards of land, exposed to the full force and vagaries of nature To do so, first they had to respect their obvious environmental limits. Next they evolved resilient local economies that helped them cope with extreme and unpredictable weather. These were, of necessity, based on reciprocity, sharing and co-operation, and not unlimited growth fed by individualistic, beggar-thy-neighbour competition.

Today, as collectively we face and exceed the limits of the earth’s bio-capacity, we are challenged at the global level to learn in a few short years, lessons that such small communities often took millennia to arrive at. Our task is enormously complicated by the intricate interdependence of the modern global economy, the unbalanced distribution of power and benefits within it, and a pace of international decision making that, until the ice started to melt so rapidly, I would have described as glacially slow. Fortunately there is much that we already do know to guide our actions, drawing on decades of experience in dozens of countries and through thousands of community based organisations around the world.

For example, the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, a coalition of leading NGOS based in the UK, that we helped to form, spelt out in a series of reports looking in detail at different global regions, how climate change, if unchecked, stands not only to block further progress on the Millennium Development Goals, but to reverse gains hard won over many years. Our conclusion was that irreversible global warming, which appears perilously close, would mean not just greater hardship for millions, but the end of development as we have understood it for the last half a century.

One severe drought in Australia has already partly triggered world-wide food shortages and high and rising prices, creating shocks that ripple from the High Street in Britain to the markets of Dhaka and Port au Prince. And the UK’s official Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, recently concluded based on a moderate scenario for change, that the percentage of the Earth’s land surface prone to extreme drought having already trebled to three per cent in less than a decade, will rise to fully one third by 2090, with droughts also longer in duration.

More worrying still, the edge of the climate cliff is not clearly visible. Scientists such as NASA’s James Hansen believe we may already be tipping over. This means not just stabilising atmospheric greenhouse gases, but reducing them, with unimagined implications for the global economy. Oddly-named ‘positive environmental feedbacks’ are volatile, hard to predict and may be terrifyingly sudden. So we must act on precaution and the best estimates available.

Because the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the biosphere we have no choice but to act, using precaution and the best information available. An individual may recover from financial bankruptcy, but if we allow our ecological debts to bankrupt a climate conducive to human civilisation, geological history shows that it could take tens of thousands of years to be restored if, indeed, it ever is.

We already know that people living in poverty are hit first and worst by global warming. This and the challenge of reducing poverty in a carbon constrained world calls for a new development model which is climate proof and climate friendly. From now on, all decisions will need to be scrutinised for whether they will increase or decrease vulnerability to climate change. We must look through the lenses of building resilience at the community level, and reducing risk. And, it is the communities at risk who must shape our plans.

Parallel to the approach of the IPCC, the recent report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology showed that a massive shift of support to small scale farmers using a diverse range of agro-ecological methods would be one of the most efficient ways to build resilience, inoculate against food crises, and insure against increasingly hostile weather patterns. Community-based coping strategies such as the use of seed banks, water management, vulnerability mapping, storm and flood protection that works with the local environment, and the conservation of forests and other ecosystems – all represent effective ways for threatened communities to adapt.

If replicated and scaled-up, small-scale renewable energy projects promoted by governments and community groups can help both to tackle poverty and reduce climate change. But this needs political commitment, significant new funds from governments and a major shift in priorities for energy lending by the World Bank and other development bodies. There is no either/or approach possible; the world must meet both its commitments to achieve the MDGs and tackle climate change. The two are inextricably linked.

Here we crash headlong into another, equally large problem. It is clear that conventional economic growth will happen in poor countries as a consequence of effective poverty reduction. But at a global level, the policies designed to pursue growth have become a mask for making the rich, richer, whilst leaving the poor with few benefits and abandoned to deal with growth’s environmental consequences. During the 1980s – what was called lost decade of development – from every $100 worth of global economic growth, around $2.20 found its way to people living below the absolute poverty line. A decade later that had shrunk to just $0.60c, and the actual mean income of those living under $1 per day in Africa also fell.

There has been, in effect, a sort of ‘flood-up’ of wealth from poor to rich, rather than a ‘trickle-down.’ It means, perversely, that for the poor to get slightly less poor, the rich have to get very much richer, implying patterns of consumption which, in a world facing climate change, cannot be sustained. It now takes around $166 worth of global growth – made up of all those energy-hungry giant flat screen TVs and sports utility vehicles – to generate a single dollar of poverty reduction for people in absolute poverty, compared with just $45 dollars in the 1980s. Earnings of between $3 and $4 per day is the approximate level at which the strong link between income and life expectancy breaks down. So, let us ask what would happen if we agreed $3 per day as the minimum level of income to escape absolute poverty?

Using the ecological footprint measure, if the whole world wished to consume at the level of the United States – a consumption pattern which has been fuelled, incidentally, by the credit binge which led to the current economic crisis – we would need, conservatively, over 5 planets like earth to support them. But, under the current pattern of unequally distributed benefits from growth, to lift everyone in the world onto a modest $3 per day, would require the resources of around 15 planets like ours. Where, you might ask, will the other 14 come from?

To tackle poverty in a carbon constrained world, then, we need a new development model, based on better measures of progress, and a shift from relying on unequal global growth to serious redistribution. If we think of the planet as a cake, we can slice it differently, but we surely cannot bake a new one. Climate change is not the only reason that we have to learn to live with far fewer fossil fuels. Development must also contend with the high and rising price of oil, and the imminent global peak and long decline of oil production.

What, if any, guides do we have to surviving these multiple shocks?

One country, much maligned, provides a glimpse of a near future that many more may face. Almost like a laboratory example, positioned on the flight path of the annual Hurricane season, since 1990 Cuba has lived through the economic and environmental shocks that climate change and peak oil hold in store for the rest of the world.

The sudden loss of cheap Soviet oil and its economic isolation were so extreme at the end of the cold war, and its reaction to the shock was so contrary to orthodox approaches, and relatively successful, that it was dubbed in Washington the ‘anti-model.’ Then oil imports dropped by over half. The use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers dropped by 80 percent. The availability of basic food staples like wheat and other grains fell by half and, overall, the average Cuban’s calorie intake fell by over one third in around five years.

But, serious and long-term investment in science, engineering, health, education, plus land redistribution, reduced inequality and research into low-input ecological farming techniques, meant the country had a strong social fabric and the capacity to act.

At the heart of the transition after 1990 was the success of small farms, and urban farms and gardens. Immediate crisis was averted by food programmes that targeted the most vulnerable people, the old, young, pregnant women and young mothers, and a rationing programme that guaranteed a minimum amount of food to everyone. Soon, half the food consumed in the capital, Havana, was grown in the city’s own gardens and, overall, urban gardens provide 60 percent of the vegetables eaten in Cuba. The threat of serious food shortages was overcome within five years.

Time magazine recently called for a ‘War on Climate Change,’ and, interestingly, Cuba’s experience echoed what America achieved in a more distant time of hardship during World War II. Then Eleanor Roosevelt led the ‘victory gardening movement’ to produce between 30-40 percent of vegetables for domestic consumption, and public education campaigns warned that wasting fuel was like fighting for the enemy. Cuba demonstrated it is possible to feed a population under extreme economic stress with very few fossil fuel, but there were other surprises too.

As calorie intake fell by more than one third, of necessity the proportion of physically active adults more than doubled and obesity halved. Between 1997-2002, deaths attributed to diabetes halved, coronary heart disease fell by 35 percent, and strokes and other causes by around one fifth. The approach was dubbed the ‘anti-model’ because it was both highly managed and led by communities, it focused on meeting domestic needs rather than exports, was largely organic and built on the success of small farms. The same countrys approach to disaster preparedness and management is also instructive.

Compared to the deaths and destruction in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, when Hurricane Michelle hit Cuba in 2001 only 5 lives were lost, and recovery was quick. It was due to proper planning, and a collective approach managed by government, but owned at the local level. Disasters expert Dr Ben Wisner commented on the evacuation of 700,000 of Cuba’s 11 million population, ‘This is quite a feat given Cuba’s dilapidated fleet of vehicles, fuel shortage and poor road system.’ At least one analyst suggests that the Cuban experiment, ‘may hold many of the keys to the future survival of civilisation.’

Currently, according to our calculations, in a given calendar year the world as a whole goes into ecological debt around October 7th – by which time we have consumed more and produced more waste than ecosystems can deal with. The results are seen in climate change, oceans emptied of fish, and desertification. Forty years ago Robert Kennedy said that economic growth measured everything apart from that which really matters. But it is possible to assess if we are achieving human development whilst living within our environmental means.

nef’s own ‘Happy Planet Index’, compares the relative success of nations at delivering long life expectancy and high levels of well being, compared to their size of ecological footprint. The results reveal many middle income countries performing well, with good life expectancy and well-being, and relatively low footprints. Strikingly, some of the best performers are small island states. Somehow, they have worked together to produce more convivial communities, whilst respecting environmental limits.

The UN faces huge challenges. Not least is how to recognise and protect the large and growing number of people we can expect to be displaced in a warming world. The climate refugee crisis will dwarf that of political refugees. What will happen to the nationhood and economic areas of countries that could disappear entirely, like Tuvalu? How can we change our locked-in thinking about economic development, and reorganise around the principles of resilience, social justice, sufficiency, ecological efficiency, and the capacity to adapt?

We might begin by asking, as acid tests:

Will what we do make people more or less vulnerable?
Will it move us toward truly sustainable, one-planet-living?
Will it move us fast enough to prevent irreversible, catastrophic climate change?

When the people of Tuvalu first encountered Europeans in the 19th century, they gave them the name palangi. Victorian travellers translated the word to mean “heaven bursters,” a reference to their ship’s guns. Now, some of our lifestyles truly threaten to burst the heavens. At the very least, to achieve poverty reduction in world threatened by climate change, we know that rich countries must radically cut their own consumption to free-up the environmental space in which others can pursue, as a first step, the Millennium Development Goals.

The good news is that we now know from the literature on human well-being, that making the rich, richer does nothing to increase their life satisfaction. On the contrary, numerous studies confirm that once your basic needs are met, you are just as likely to have high life satisfaction, whether your ecological footprint is large or small. My conclusion is that a new development model is needed as much, if not more, in countries like Britain and the US as the majority world. We have to demonstrate that good lives do not have to cost the earth.

Impassable ecological obstacles lie on the path down which we chase the shadows of over-consumption to deliver our well-being, expecting the poor to be grateful for and crumbs that fall from our plates. The good news is that another way is not only possible, as the philosopher A.C. Grayling writes, it is better, richer and more enduring.

Andrew Simms is policy director and head of the climate change programme at nef (the new economics foundation). This article is from a speech he gave to the UN ECOSOC special session on climate change and the MDGS, New York, 2 May 2008.

Just a Middle-Class Issue?

Tim Holmes — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 01:03:36 +0000

The news was depressing, to say the least. Two weeks ago, a poll conducted for the Observer found that a majority of the British public still think that the scientists are arguing about the causes of climate change. The reality, as I and many others have repeated more or less ad nauseum, is that the debate was settled a long time ago, and that the major areas of scientific uncertainty are about how far and how fast, not whether climate change is happening at all.

I blame the media almost entirely for this discrepancy between public understanding and scientific reality. The Daily Telegraph, for instance, still pumps out climate-denialist articles on a regular basis, and carries frequent antideluvian commentary on the subject from the likes of Christopher Brooker (whose latest piece excoriates “fanatical upholders of the [climate change] dogma”). The Mail does likewise, though Melanie Phillips has been curiously silent on the subject for several months.

Like the tobacco lobbyists who spent years denying the links between smoking and cancer, global warming denialists don’t have to win the debate – they simply have to confuse the public indefinitely to successfully undermine any political action which might hit the interests of their backers in the fossil fuel industries. The arguments change all the time: this year it is “global warming has stopped“, while last year it was “hurricanes aren’t linked with warming”, and the year before “satellites don’t show any warming of the atmosphere“. As each argument is laboriously refuted by scientists, the deniers simply drop it and skip onto the next one.

The second headline finding from the Observer poll further underlines this confusion. An equal number of people (about 40% in each case) think that “climate change might not be as bad as some people say”. Again, the frequent cries from the anti-environment right about global warming “alarmism” have clearly hit home.

There is further bad news on the environment versus economy debate. While concern about the economy is seeing its highest score since 1993, concern about the environment is flatlining in the June 23 Mori poll, and is well down from the higher levels seen during the launch of the Stern and IPCC reports in early 2007.

But with polls, detail is everything. Today’s new poll result shows that a clear majority favours government action on the environment v the economy, while an even larger majority supports the introduction of green taxes. So why the contradiction? The discrepancy may lie with different techniques used by different pollsters – the Observer poll was carried out by Ipsos Mori, while the latest Guardian survey was conducted by ICM. It may also lie with the exact wording of the question, which in the latter case probably leaves more room for individual interpretation. Also, people know that they are “supposed” to be concerned about the environment, so may prioritise it when questioned by a pollster, but fail to volunteer it in their own list of suggested priorities.

The ICM poll does throw up some other interesting results. When asked whether they thought their friends would now by cheaper groceries – rather than more expensive environmentally friendly alternatives – given the recent rises in the cost of living, a majority of nearly 60% went for the cheaper option. This suggests that in buying patterns at least, the economic downturn is indeed having a clear impact on ethical choices.

But perhaps the most fascinating result of all emerges from the small print of the different social classes of the ICM survey respondents. Environmentalists are constantly accused of being middle-class lifestyle faddists, who don’t understand the day-to-day financial pressures faced by “ordinary” working people. But the number of people who thought that environment should be the government’s priority rather than the economy was substantially higher (56%) among the lower income, less well-educated DE demographic than among the better-off ABs (47%). Lower-income social groups also have a much lighter environmental footprint overall: only 42% of DEs took a foreign holiday over the last three years, whilst 77% of ABs did. Better-off people also own more cars, as you might expect – only 5% of DEs have three or more cars, whilst 15% of ABs do.

So perhaps anti-environmental class warriors like the editors of Spiked need to find a new cause to champion. The working-class people who they claim “can’t afford to be concerned about climate change” actually care more about the future of the planet than the rich – and are doing a lot less damage to boot. So next time you hear someone defending motorway expansion or cheap flights on behalf of the British poor, ask yourself the question: whose side are they really on?

Green Lifeline

Tim Holmes — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:48:41 +0000

Almost everyone seems to agree: governments now face a choice between saving the planet and saving the economy. As recession looms, the political pressure to abandon green policies intensifies. A report published yesterday by Ernst and Young suggests that the EU’s puny carbon target will raise energy bills by 20% over the next 12 years(1). Last week the prime minister’s advisers admitted to the Guardian that his renewable energy plans were “on the margins” of what people will tolerate(2).

But these fears are based on a false assumption: that there is a cheap alternative to a green economy. Last week New Scientist reported a survey of oil industry experts, which found that most of them believe global oil supplies will peak by 2010(3). If they are right, the game is up. A report published by the US Department of Energy in 2005 argued that unless the world begins a crash programme of replacements 10 or 20 years before oil peaks, a crisis “unlike any yet faced by modern industrial society” is unavoidable(4).

If the world is sliding into recession, it’s partly because governments believed that they could choose between economy and ecology. The price of oil is so high and it hurts so much because there has been no serious effort to reduce our dependency. Yesterday in the Guardian, Rajendra Pachauri suggested that an impending recession could force us to confront the flaws in the global economy(5). Sadly it seems so far to have had the opposite effect: a recent Ipsos Mori poll suggests that people are losing interest in climate change(6). Opportunities for energy populism abound: it cannot be long before one of the major parties abandons the pale green consensus and starts invoking an oil cornucopia it cannot possibly deliver.

The British government maintains both positions at once. In his speech last week, Gordon Brown said he wanted “to facilitate a reduction in short term global oil prices” while seeking “to reduce progressively our dependence on oil”(7). He knows that the first objective makes the second one harder to achieve. The government’s policy is to build more of everything – more coal plants, more nuclear power, more oil rigs, more renewables, more roads, more airports – and hope no one spots the contradictions.

Is there a way out? Could we abandon the fossil fuel economy without provoking a blistering backlash? Two things are obvious. We need a global system, and the current one, the Kyoto Protocol, is bust. It sets no cap on global carbon pollution, its targets bear no relation to current science and are unenforceable anyway, it contains loopholes and get-out clauses wide enough to sail an oil tanker through.

Until recently I supported an alternative system called contraction and convergence. Every country, this system proposes, should end up with the same quota of carbon dioxide per person. The richest countries must produce much less than they do today; the poorest ones could pollute more. Another proposal flows logically from this one: carbon rationing. Having been assigned its carbon quota, each nation would divide up part of it equally among its citizens, who could use it to buy energy or trade it among themselves. These proposals have the merit of capping global pollution, of being fair, progressive and easy to understand and of encouraging us to think about our use of energy.

But, after reading the proofs of a book by the independent thinker Oliver Tickell, to be published this month, I have changed my view. In Kyoto2: how to manage the global greenhouse, Tickell slaughters my favourite ideas(8). He shows that there is no logical basis for dividing up the right to pollute among nation states. It gives them too much power over this commodity, and there is no guarantee that they would pass the pollution rights on to their citizens, or use the money they raised to green the economy. Carbon rationing, he argues, requires a level of economic literacy that’s far from universal in the most advanced economies, let alone in countries where most people don’t have bank accounts.

Instead Tickell proposes setting a global limit for carbon pollution then selling permits to pollute to companies extracting or refining fossil fuels. This has the advantage of regulating a few thousand corporations – running oil refineries, coal washeries, gas pipelines and cement and fertiliser works for example – rather than a few billion citizens. These firms would buy their permits in a global auction, run by a coalition of the world’s central banks. There’s a reserve price, to ensure that the cost of carbon doesn’t fall too low, and a ceiling price, at which the banks promise to sell permits, to ensure that the cost doesn’t cripple the global economy. In this case companies would be borrowing permits from the future. But because the money raised would be invested in renewables, the demand for fossil fuels would fall, so fewer permits would need to be issued in later years.

Tickell calculates that if the cap were set low enough to ensure that the world became carbon neutral by 2050, the total cost of permits would be about $1 trillion a year, or roughly 1.5% of the global economy. The money would be spent on helping the poor to adapt to climate change, paying countries to protect forests and other ecosystems, developing low-carbon farming, promoting energy efficiency and building renewable power plants.

But his figure seems too low. Like many of the world’s climate scientists, Oliver Tickell proposes that the concentration of greenhouse gases should eventually be stabilised at 350 parts per million (carbon dioxide equivalent) in the atmosphere, and his calculations are based on this target. Last week Lord Stern suggested that meeting a less stringent target (500 parts per million) would cost 2% of world gross domestic product(9). If the price of the carbon permits sold at auction were much higher than Tickell suggests, the extra money could be used for massive tax rebates and social spending, aimed especially at the poor. But could the world afford it?

This money doesn’t disappear, it gets spent. Tickell’s proposal could represent a classic Keynesian solution to economic crisis. The $1, $2 or even $5 trillion the system would cost is used to kick-start a green industrial revolution, a new New Deal not that different from the original one (whose most successful component was Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, which protected forests and farmland(10)). This would not be the first time that business was rescued by the measures it most stoutly resists: there’s a long history of corporate lobbying against the kind of government spending that eventually saves the corporate economy.

Do we want to save it, even if we can? It is hard to see how the current global growth rate of 3.7% a year (which means the global economy doubles every 19 years) could be sustained(11), even if the whole thing were powered by the wind and the sun. But that is a question for another column and perhaps another time, when the current economic panic has abated. For now we have to find a means of saving us from ourselves.

George Monbiot has received an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews.

References:

1. BBC Online, 30th June 2008. Green target ‘to hike fuel bills’. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7480204.stm

2. Juliette Jowit and Patrick Wintour, 26th June 2008. Cost of tackling global climate change has doubled, warns Stern. The Guardian.

3. Ian Sample, 25th June 2008. Oil: The final warning. New Scientist.

4. Robert L. Hirsch, Roger Bezdek and Robert Wendling, February 2005. Peaking Of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management. US Department of Energy. This was originally leaked and found its way onto this site: http://www.hilltoplancers.org/stories/hirsch0502.pdf

5. Rajendra Pachauri, 30th June 2008. The world’s will to tackle climate change is irresistible. The Guardian.

6. Juliette Jowit, 22nd June 2008. Poll: most Britons doubt cause of climate change. The Observer.

7. Gordon Brown, 26th June 2008. Creating a low carbon economy. http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page15846.asp

8. Oliver Tickell, forthcoming. Kyoto2: how to manage the global greenhouse. Zed Books, London.

9. Juliette Jowit and Patrick Wintour, ibid.

10. Neil M Maher, 2008. Nature’s New Deal. Oxford University Press.

11. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2008/res040908a.htm

In Dangerous Denial

Tim Holmes — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:59:10 +0000

According to an Ipsos Mori poll, carried out for the Observer this month, most Britons believe climate change is at least partially down to natural causes, and not solely to human activity. A majority also believe scientists are divided on the causes and more than a fifth say the whole thing has been exaggerated.

Now where would they have got those ideas from? One Channel 4 programme, claiming global warming is “a swindle”, has no doubt played a role, as have internet blogs arguing all the world’s scientists are party to a Marxist conspiracy bent on destroying western civilisation. But the press, though declining, still counts. It contributes to the framework within which public debate proceeds. It lends respectability to the opinions it highlights.

A study by the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University found US newspapers have improved their coverage of global warming. By 2006, only 8% of what they published failed to reflect the scientific consensus: that human activity is more than 90% likely to be responsible. The UK tabloids – the Sun, Mirror, Mail, Express and their Sundays – show no improvement, with 23% of their 2006 coverage at odds with what nearly every climate scientist believes.

Happily, the Murdoch empire has gone green, thanks to James Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation in Europe and Asia. The Sun and the Times now rarely give space to deniers of man-made global warming. The latter was once full of sceptics but then a leader graciously announced “the planet deserves the benefit of the doubt”. But neither paper gives consistent and/or prominent coverage. The Sun is currently dominated by UFOs, with an “exclusive” last Wednesday about a 13-strong army of alien craft over Shropshire, and other recent front-page stories about police helicopters chasing little green men over Cardiff.

These stories didn’t include even a final-paragraph quote expressing scepticism – a “balance” newspapers observe scrupulously when they report evidence of global warming. It’s harmless fun, I suppose. But Sun readers could be forgiven for concluding that, as a matter of public concern, global warming is on the same level as extraterrestrial visitations.

Several other papers continue to give a high profile to global warming denial. In the Daily Mail, Melanie Phillips, Richard Littlejohn, Tom Utley and Andrew Alexander all scorn suggestions that we need to reduce carbon emissions. None has anything beyond a science O-level. Nor does the Sunday Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker, a former Private Eye editor. He gleefully reported this month that, since January 2007, global temperatures have fallen 0.77C. This figure, from satellite and balloon readings, is correct but, down here on Earth, where we happen to live, spring 2007 land temperatures were the highest on record (the figures go back to 1880) and those for spring 2008 tied with 2000 as the third highest.

Booker is the most plausible global warming denier among regular columnists because he packs his pieces with “facts” sourced to “experts”. But he is none too particular about his experts’ credentials. Take another of his campaigns, concerning white asbestos, which the World Health Organisation regards as a class one carcinogen. According to Booker, it is harmless (he admits the dangers of blue and brown asbestos) and claims to the contrary are attributable to commercial interests that make money from disposing of it.

The most quoted “expert” for this story is a Professor John Bridle who runs something called Asbestos Watchdog. In 2006, Radio 4’s You and Yours – in a 20-minute item denounced by Booker as “reckless” and “laughable” – reported Bridle had been convicted under the Trade Descriptions Act for passing himself off falsely as a qualified asbestos surveyor. He claimed connections to an impressively titled European body that couldn’t be traced. His professorship is an honorary one from Russia. As for Asbestos Watchdog – which, writes Booker, offers “honest advice” to an “ever larger number of people” – I tried to contact it last week and both its website and telephone number were inaccessible. Bridle went to Ofcom about You and Yours; this month, the regulator rejected all his complaints.

Dig deep enough and you find that, just as Bridle proved to have connections to the asbestos industry, so many of the “experts” journalists quote on global warming receive money, directly or indirectly, from the oil industry. There’s nothing wrong in newspapers challenging consensus views, and many scientists who have been proved right in the end – for example, those who warned of how lead in petrol could affect children – began as lone mavericks. But sceptics themselves merit scepticism, and journalists should give their scientific credentials and their relationship to vested interests the most careful scrutiny. Berating the EU, as Booker frequently does, or denouncing school standards, as Melanie Phillips does, won’t kill anybody. Asbestos is different. So is measles and, as Cardiff University research has shown, MMR vaccinations fell in step with press claims that they were linked to autism.

Global warming could kill millions. If Ipsos Mori is right, the deniers are gaining ground. Its polls show the proportion of Britons who are unconcerned has risen from 15% to 23% in the past year. Many politicians believe government action to arrest climate change is still a vote loser. It is likely to remain so as long as much of the press remains wilfully ignorant of science.

So Nick is now right of the Times?

Nearly three years ago in this column, I asked of my former colleague Nick Cohen, “how far right is he going?”. At that time, I detected signs that the Observer and New Statesman columnist, once the most unshakeable of leftists, might extend the change in his political allegiances beyond his support for the Iraq war.

Last Wednesday, I was surprised to find in the London Evening Standard that my old friend is wobbling even in his previously reliable defence of civil liberties and fair trials. By ruling that anonymous witnesses could make trials unfair, the law lords, Cohen wrote, would leave themselves “with blood on their hands and the rest of us with corpses on our streets”. The contrary view was put in a Times leader: “Without knowing who a hostile witness is, no defence lawyer can properly assess his or her credibility for a jury.” Anonymity, it continued, could protect those who wished to settle scores “and prejudice a jury against a defendant as evidence of fear that he or she inspires”.

If he had written it, the old Cohen would have put it more robustly.

Dirty secret exposed

Congratulations to the Lords committee on communications for exploding the myth that media ownership doesn’t matter any more because the internet allows a thousand opinions to bloom. Opinion lacks clout without the backing of information and, as the committee points out, nearly all fresh information is generated by a handful of established news organisations. Even the most sturdy critics of the mainstream media use material from the same media to demonstrate how they are fed a pack of lies. That, as one witness told the committee, is “the dirty little secret of the information revolution”.

Reasons To Be Hopeful?

Tim Holmes — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:22:02 +0000

First the bad news. If we had thought the public debate on climate change had been firmly shifted from the basic “experts are divided” stage to the equally illusory but more propitious “it’s happening, but we’re dealing with it” phase, the public may have just given us a reality check. According to an Ipsos MORI poll, referenced in last sunday’s Observer, around 60% of people in Britain still believe that “many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change”, and another 40% “sometimes think climate change might not be as bad as people say”. Only a meagre 22% of the population seem to be aware of the current status of the scientific debate.

There are further serious obstacles when it comes to action to deal with the problem. There is widespread cynicism about green “stealth” taxes and regulation, also discerned in a recent poll for the Independent, which found over 70% of people unwilling to “pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change … while two-thirds of Britons think the entire green agenda has been hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes.” Ipsos MORI similarly finds that “only 13%” believe their personal responses “should involve significant and radical lifestyle changes”.

What’s going wrong? I suspect there are a number of things. First has been the disgraceful acquiescence of British broadcast media in the agenda of denial industry, which seems to have had a clear impact on public opinion. British broadcasters, weaned on a notion of “impartiality” that favours powerful interests, just don’t seem able to stop themselves giving time to fraudsters, industry front-men and purveyors of sheer ignorance. We’ve seen it in last year’s “Great Global Warming Swindle” on Channel 4, a documentary surely as baseless and discredited as it’s possible for any broadcast to be, aired in line with specious conceptions of journalistic “balance”, and in spite its creators’ well-earned reputation as fraudsters; in the BBC’s decision to cave on “Planet Relief”, motivated by the very same notion of “impartiality”, the belief of at least one prominent editor that the “causes of climate change” represent “a matter of controversy”, and the helping hand of “Swindle” producer Martin Durkin; in the BBC’s impromptu festival of climate change denial, “Sceptics’ Week”; and in the efforts of blissfully ignorant media clowns like Richard Madeley, Peter Hitchens and (whisper it) Jeremy Clarkson to parade their ignorance as widely as possible – the list goes on, and on, even if among climatologists the debate concluded a decade and a half ago.

Among print media the record of the broadsheets is less than perfect. The Telegraph in particular has played its part in publicising Lord Monckton and Nigel Lawson’s quixotic struggles with reality, and recently gave prominent coverage to the re-vamped, Exxon-sponsored “Oregon petition”, signed by “31,000 scientists”, some of whom, when they exist, apparently even have PhDs. This overall standard of reporting led the late John Theobald and Marianne McKiggan, in a recent study of UK media coverage, to note that the “corporate mass media are, predominantly, still presenting human-induced climate change as a basic argument between “believers” and “unbelievers”. The debate is stalled at square one.”(1)

But one of the most serious culprits is without doubt Britain’s tabloid press. In a series of studies investigating how far the scientific consensus on climate change is reflected in US and UK media, Max Boykoff of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute found that, between 2003 and 2006, there was a largely insignificant divergence from the scientific consensus in British broadsheets, while coverage also improved over time.(2) Among tabloids, on the other hand, Boykoff and Maria Mansfield found that “UK tabloid coverage significantly diverged throughout the study period from the scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change”, failing to improve in line with the broadsheets. The Daily Mail had a particularly bad record – partly a result, Boykoff and Mansfield suggest, of “the politically conservative stance of the newspaper, where economic status quo and non-regulatory preferences routinely permeate the editorial pages”; as another study of UK broadsheets found, such “similar ideological constellations indeed shaped media representations of climate science and policy issues”. If such “ideological constellations” do play a key role, it is surely significant that the polls bear the clear mark of the “common-sense” economic libertarianism that characterises so much of the discourse of the tabloid and right-wing press.

The “smoking gun” here, however, is surely that socio-economic patterns linked to patterns of newspaper readership tally exactly with those noted in the UK tabloids study. According to Ipsos MORI,

“Those in social class AB, in affluent households, and also those with a university educated/professional qualification background all tend to be more concerned about climate change, back more government intervention and acknowledge a greater need for individual responsibility.

“Newspaper readership is also strongly implicated, with broadsheet readers – particularly those who read The Guardian, The Independent and The Times [the same three UK dailies examined in the broadsheets study] – significantly more likely to cite the environment as a key issue facing the country compared to those who read the mid market and tabloid press.”

Also precisely in line with Boykoff and Mansfield’s predictions is the apparent impact of the tabloids’ misleading coverage on public support for policies to deal with the problem. “Divergent UK tabloid newspaper coverage of anthropogenic climate change found in this study”, the authors note, “may diminish public support for concrete greenhouse gas mitigation programs when the time for behavioral change comes. … Specifically, as ongoing adherence to the journalistic norm of balanced reporting has contributed to a skewed public understanding of human contributions to climate change, it may continue to significantly contribute—along with other factors—to eventual public resistance to climate mitigation and adaptation plans in the UK.” Every word of this prediction seems to be coming true.

But there is another major culprit we ought to mention, and that is the government. The extraordinary blatancy with which it has continued to plough ahead with policies entirely at odds with its public rhetoric on climate change will undoubtedly, and not unreasonably, have bred cynicism among the public. But it is through the prism of popular economic libertarianism that this cynicism is likely to be expressed. Indeed this conclusion is echoed by Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth, cited in the Independent. “People do get cynical”, he suggests, “unless they see benefits. The Government is playing a dangerous game. They are using climate change to identify potential new taxes and revenues but the public aren’t seeing anything in return.” Ipsos MORI’s Phil Downing makes a similar observation: while green taxes are “backed by the public in principle”, people are “asking the question: where is the money going?” In the context of a government that is so clearly not serious about dealing with the problem, perhaps a reaction of profound cynicism should not surprise us.

Yet these latest polling results, while on the face of it shocking and demoralising, suggest some clear points of light. Indeed, one continual finding of recent research has been that media reporting on public opinion consistently exaggerates its right-leaning components, both through selective choice of questions (something Anthony Barnett points to over the recent, widely-covered and apparently influential polling on the issue of 42 days’ detention) and selective reporting of results. Since a great deal goes unreported, and what is covered is often hopelessly skewed, we need to exercise a good deal of caution in assessing the implications of such polls.

Poll results published in May, for instance, provide a potentially illuminating contrast with the most recent results. According to this poll, “a majority of voters believe local councils should force their residents to take action on climate change”; “56% of respondents thought that councils should force people to take action on climate change while 33% did not. 64% of respondents also felt that local authorities should introduce financial incentive schemes to encourage people to reduce greenhouse gases, and 53% felt councils should also introduce penalty schemes for residents who do not act”; a “large majority of respondents – 74% – believe climate change is happening and can be attributed directly to greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activity” (my emphasis); and “61% of people would be likely to vote for a candidate” in general elections “that had policies to combat climate change”.

It is also worth remembering that a poll taken a year ago by Ipsos MORI found similar results to those of its most recent survey on the status of the scientific debate, also finding 70% support for government taking a lead on the issue, “even if it means using the law to change people’s behaviour”, and 78% “willing to do more and go further”. Since then, poll results from last September found 78% of people in Britain believing “human activity IS a significant cause” of climate change, and 70% that it is “necessary to take major steps very soon” to deal with it”; a poll in November found 81% “ready to make significant changes to the way I live to help prevent global warming or climate change”, and even 76% in favour of higher energy taxes (including 22% conditional on revenues being used to fund clean or efficient energy sources). One obvious conclusion seems to be that, when asked whether climate change is happening, people in the UK overwhelmingly reply that it is, and clearly favour government-led action to deal with it. When asked about the opinions of climate scientists, on the other hand – perhaps influenced by the media-endorsed framing of duelling scientific “experts” the question evokes – they are far more likely to convey a picture of division, uncertainty and ongoing debate.

It’s also worth noting just how far reporting of the most recent poll, troubling as it is, has taken one particular interpretation and portrayed it simply as fact. The precise scope of “many scientific experts” leaves significant room for ambiguity over their number, and their significance in the (perceived) debate; reporting in the Observer, therefore, that the “majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans” remains unproven by this poll, and as we have seen, is actually contradicted by other recent polls in which the question is posed directly and unambiguously. Similarly, the poll simply does not demonstrate, as the Observer suggests, that “many” people “believe scientists are exaggerating the problem” – in fact the question is not even posed. The question that is posed – “I sometimes think climate change might not be as bad as people say” – refers only to “people”, not to scientists. To put this in perspective, similar sentiments have in fact been expressed by members of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, leading Oxford climate scientist Myles Allen and NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, who can hardly be accused of not taking the problem seriously.

Even in the most recent Ipsos MORI poll, indeed, 77% of people “still professed to be concerned about climate change”, and 68% “want the government to do more” about it (suggesting that its list of questions on specifically individual responsibility may be a red herring). Similarly, a robust majority of 59% want more investment in renewables, “even if it increases the price of energy bills”. This finding has been replicated again and again in polls of the British public. One Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology research paper published last October, reviewing 23 recent polls and studies on public attitudes and energy policy, found “a high level of awareness of the connection between fossil fuel sources of energy and environmental problems such as climate change”; “very low levels of public support for the use of fossil fuels”; “high levels of concern about the possibility of using up finite resources”; and that “[s]ecurity of supply is a key issue and of growing concern.” Moreover, “all the reviewed polls and studies showed that renewable energy was the public’s preferred energy source”; people “were aware of the potential environmental benefits of renewable energy and recognised it as being important for climate change mitigation”; and “[t]ypically around three quarters of respondents expressed a preference for renewables over nuclear energy”.

Unfortunately if unsurprisingly, after a recent high point last year following the release of the Stern and IPCC reports, “the environment” has now been displaced by “the economy” as a more important issue in the public mind. Clearly this is not encouraging, but nor is it necessarily quite as bad as it looks. In a YouGov poll in May, a majority of 53% blamed “[i]nternational conditions, such as the credit crunch and rising oil and world food prices” for “Britain’s current economic difficulties”. On oil specifically, a WPO poll in April found 85% of people foreseeing a higher oil price in the next ten years (including 58% who see it getting “much higher”), and the same percentage believe that “[o]il is running out and it is necessary to make a major effort to replace oil as a primary source of energy”.

Overall, then, the public are concerned about the economy, which they connect at least partly to the price of oil; there is widespread understanding that the oil price is likely to keep climbing; public support for renewable sources of energy is strong and consistent, as is opposition to fossil fuels; there is a very strong willingness to replace our dependence on oil – linked to issues of depletion, sustainability, security of supply, and the environment; and the public consistently want the government to take a lead and do more on climate change. It is not too difficult to conceive of ways in which these widely-held attitudes can be translated into gains for climate campaigners. If the economy is foremost in the public mind, the issue of its precarious foundation on fossil fuels may be the key to reconnecting public concern with sustainability and environmental issues, especially if we are able to point to clear, positive alternatives. But media campaigners may also have an important task ahead, which is to start taking the tabloid press (along with papers like the Telegraph) a lot more seriously. Good use of the Press Complaints Commission in particular, as Climate Campers demonstrated in the case of the Evening Standard, can be very effective in exposing misleading and inaccurate reportage. Nonetheless, time is short, and serious obstacles remain to be overcome.

References:

1. John Theobald and Marianne McKiggan, “The Mass Media, Climate Change, and How Things Might Be”, in David Cromwell and Mark Levene (eds), Surviving Climate Change: The Struggle to Avert Global Catastrophe, London: Pluto, 2007, pp. 158-175.

2. It is worth noting this study’s slant towards the “liberal” end of the mainstream spectrum, however – four of its six sample papers (The Guardian, Observer, Independent, Independent on Sunday, Times and Sunday Times) are “liberal” papers, and it significantly excludes the Telegraph, Britain’s highest-selling broadsheet.

Big Oil's Big Lie

Ellie Keen — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 21:49:32 +0000

Of course, it’s not a crime, and it’s hard to see how, in a free society, it could or should become one. But the culpability of the energy firms the climate scientist James Hansen will indict in his testimony to Congress today is clear. If we fail to stop runaway climate change, it will be largely because of campaigning by oil, coal and electricity companies, and the network of lobbyists, fake experts and thinktanks they have sponsored.

The operation sprang directly from Big Tobacco’s war against science. It has used the same fake experts, the same public relations companies and the same tactics: as I showed in my book Heat, the campaign against action on climate change was partly launched by the tobacco company Philip Morris. But while the tobacco companies’ professional liars were smoked out by a massive class action in the US, the sponsored climate change deniers still have massive influence over public perception. A survey published yesterday by the Observer shows that six out of ten people in Britain agreed that “many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change.” This is an inaccurate perception, which results from Big Energy’s lobbying.

Almost without exception, the scientists who claim to doubt that manmade climate change is taking place fall into two categories: either they are not qualified in the branch of science they are discussing or they have received money from fossil fuel companies. Of all the self-professed climate “sceptics”, I have been able to find only one – Dr John Christy of the University of Alabama – who has relevant qualifications and who does not appear to have received fees from lobby groups or thinktanks sponsored by the energy companies. But even he has had to admit that the figures on which he based his claims were the results of “errors in the … data”.

The others are the very opposite of sceptics. Many of them are paid to start with a conclusion – that climate change isn’t happening or isn’t important – then to find data and arguments to support it. In most cases, they cherrypick scientific findings; in a few cases, like the fake scientific paper attached to the celebrated Oregon petition, they make them up altogether. But people who don’t understand the difference between a peer-reviewed paper and a pamphlet are taken in. The energy companies’ propaganda campaign is amplified by scientific illiterates in the media, such as Melanie Phillips, Christopher Booker, Nigel Lawson, Alexander Cockburn and the television producer (who made Channel 4’s documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle) Martin Durkin.

I don’t believe that the energy companies should be prosecuted for commissioning the truckload of trash their sponsored experts publish. But their campaign of disinformation must be exposed again and again. Like the tobacco lobbyists, they are not only delaying essential public action; they also create the impression that science is for sale to the highest bidder.

The awful truth is that sometimes it is.

The Elephant in the Room

Ellie Keen — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:15:56 +0000

From Plane Stupid

A 5 metre high giant inflatable elephant shocked delegates at the Edinburgh Caledonian Hilton today with a massive banner stating ‘Aviation is the elephant in the room’.

This spectacle, created by anti-aviation group Plane Stupid Scotland, is a huge visual reminder that aviation remains a massive elephant in the room as long as emissions from aviation continue to be ignored in the Climate Change Bill.

The display took place outside a Hilton-hosted conference that brings organisations and researchers together to discuss how to “deliver the national transport strategy whilst meeting… climate change targets”.

The message for delegates and the public was clear: we must not repeat the government’s mistake in ignoring aviation, and make it top priority when discussing transport and climate change.

Plane Stupid Scotland member Dan Glass points out that: “The elephant in the room here is that if Scottish aviation grows as predicted its pollutions will swamp all our efforts and sacrifices to reduce emissions. We can forget about 80% by 2050 – we can forget about a liveable world for our children.”

Calls to include aviation in the Scottish Climate Bill are rendered doubly urgent as the Scottish Government will imminently bring legislation to expand both Edinburgh and Glasgow airports, and to outlaw objections to these expansions whether by parliament or public unless on limited planning grounds.

There is a rising tide of dissent against aviation expansion in Scotland, leading recently to the creation of anti-aviation network AirportWatch Scotland. Plane Stupid Scotland too shut down Edinburgh’s private airport in January and occupied the Holyrood rooftops in April. These are part of a growing host of groups and individuals that see airport expansion as a blight upon the environment and upon affected communities.

Tilly Gifford From Airportwatch Scotland said:

“We are facing a runaway climate threat but the Scottish government’s reaction is to triple air traffic and expand Glasgow and Edinburgh airports whilst conveniently excluding aviation from the Scottish Climate Bill. The climate scientists have made it clear – we have to stop airport expansion. No more white elephants- real action now.”

Honda's Hydrogen Hype

Merrick Godhaven — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:05:20 +0000

Car manufacturer Honda tell us that

If you could read our minds, you’d see dreams of a greener and more environmentally sustainable world.

Judging them not by what we telepathically perceive but by their actions in the external world, we find quite a different picture.

Yesterday it was announced that Honda have begun limited commercial production of the FCX Clarity, their hydrogen powered car.

Over and over and over and over again we’re told that it is ‘zero emission’. This is true in the sense that the only emission from the car itself is water vapour. However, the car is responsible for considerable carbon dioxide emissions – as much as a petrol car.

This is because the nice clean hydrogen has to come from somewhere, and that involves a lot of fossil fuels. The cheapest and most common source is natural gas. It can also be made from water by electrolysis, using an electric current to split water’s hydrogen and oxygen components.

Here’s the maths

Honda say the FCX Clarity does 57 miles on 1kg of hydrogen. Let’s get that in metric; 57 miles is 91km.

Manufacturing hydrogen from natural gas emits 9.1 kg CO2 per kg of hydrogen.
[IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p 131]

9,100g divided by 91km = 100g/km to make the hydrogen gas from natural gas.

Electrolysis requires 39 kilowatt-hours of electricity to produce 1 kilogram of hydrogen.
[Wind Energy and Production of Hydrogen and Electricity — Opportunities for Renewable Hydrogen, US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, March 2006, p2]

That electricity is made from a variety of sources, predominantly fossils. UK grid CO2 emissions are 480g/kWh.
[Fuel Mix Disclosure Data Table, DBERR 2006-07, table 3]

480g x 39kWh = 18,720g/CO2 per kg hydrogen.

18,720g divided by 91km = 206g/km to make the hydrogen gas from electrolysis.

But it’s not over, because at this stage all we’ve got is hydrogen gas. This has about one three-thousandth of the energy density of petrol. Assuming you’re not going to have a fuel tank a few hundred times the size of your car, you have to shrink it. It has to be either cooled to a liquid, or else it has to be compressed. Honda use hydrogen compressed to a pressure of 5,000psi.

It takes 2.6-3.6 kilowatt-hours of electricity to compress 1kg of hydrogen to 5,000psi.
[Raymond Drnevich of major American hydrogen supplier Praxair, Hydrogen Delivery: Liquefaction & Compression, May 2003, p14]

2.6-3.6kWh x 480g/kWh = 1248g-1728g CO2 emissions per kg hydrogen.

1248-1728g divided by 91km = 14-19g/km for compression.

Here’s the totals

100 + 14-19 = 114-119g/km for compressed natural gas hydrogen

206 + 14-19 = 220-225g/km for compressed electrolysis hydrogen

To compare, the current petrol powered Honda Civic emits 135g/km, a Toyota Prius emits 104g/km, a Renault Megane emits 117g/km.

As David Talbot from MIT’s Technology Review said of BMW’s Hydrogen 7 vehicle

a car like the Hydrogen 7 would probably produce far more carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline-powered cars available today. And changing this calculation would take multiple breakthroughs – which study after study has predicted will take decades, if they arrive at all. In fact, the Hydrogen 7 and its hydrogen-fuel-cell cousins are, in many ways, simply flashy distractions produced by automakers who should be taking stronger immediate action to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions of their cars.

The sleight of hand that passes the emissions to the fuel factory and has people calling the FCX Clarity an ‘eco-car’ is unsurprising. If we want to know how corporations will treat carbon accounting, look at how they presently perform tax accounting.

The FCX Clarity is a decoy, deployed by people who surely know about the emissions they’re responsible for. The car manufacturers can see no way of reducing their emissions that won’t similarly diminish their profits.

As the petrol/diesel car is widely understood to be unsustainable, car makers have to offer the hope of an alternative; not so far off that we feel there’s a problem to worry about, but not so imminent that they’ll actually be held to account for failing to do it nor make anyone question why they’re still developing new oil-fuelled models.

Honda are only leasing the FCX Clarity. There are perhaps many reasons, but I can’t help suspecting that chief among them are that it’s too expensive to sell and they want the cars back before they break.

In December 2002, Yozo Kami, Honda’s engineer in charge of hydrogen fuel cells, said it would take at least ten years to get the price of a hydrogen car down to $100,000 (£50,000).

Fuel cells of the type used in cars (proton exchange membrane cells) have a short lifespan. The industry is aiming at around 4,000 hours of use, which might equate to ten years of driving. As it stands, a good prototype can only manage about 2,000 hours. Buying a car that costs £50,000 and is guaranteed to need major engine work within five years isn’t going to appeal to anyone.

Hydrogen as a vehicle fuel is thoroughly impractical, prohibitively expensive and, most importantly, does nothing to reduce carbon emissions. On the contrary, it would significantly increase them.

Honda might be able to kid journalists into thinking that hydrogen cars are ‘zero emission’ but unfortunately they can’t fool the climate.

Protest halts Drax coal train as summer of discontent against coal continues

Tim Holmes — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:41:05 +0000

From our friends over at The Coal Hole:

Media – Interviews are available with protestors: call 07944 367755

Photos from the protest at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sitefeed/

Protestors who halted a coal train carrying fuel for Drax power station in Yorkshire, the single biggest source of CO2 in the UK, are settling in to make sure supplies of coal to the power station remain cut off. The protest comes six weeks before the 2008 Camp for Climate Action at Kingsnorth power station – which will also highlight how using coal to supply energy will be a disaster for the planet.

Dressed in white overalls and canary outfits, they used safety signals to stop the train on a bridge overlooking the power station, before climbing on board and dumping coal off onto the tracks.

The train has been stopped on a branch line used exclusively for delivering coal to Drax. Protestors have used a network of climbing ropes to suspend themselves under the bridge from the train – meaning any movement while the protest continues is impossible.

Drax power station is the largest emitter in the UK – producing up to 36,000 tonnes of CO2 a day. That also makes it the third largest polluter in Europe – we are talking global scale climate disaster on this one folks.

Every year Drax burns between 7 and 11 million tonnes of coal – that’s about 23 million tonnes of CO2 released into the atmosphere a year… that’s more CO2 than the 103 countries in the world which emit less. Let’s just run that one past again – Drax emits more CO2 each year than 103 countries put together. Phew.

We Are Serious

“…it demonstrates that the Climate Camp bunch have got nerve and daring, and that their planning is absolutely meticulous. Secondly, it says very loudly We Are Serious.”

From The Guardian

The UK Government is considering giving the go-ahead to a new generation of coal-fired power plants, the first of which would be at Kingsnorth in Kent – an act which would directly contradict all of their fine words on cutting emissions, bringing in climate bills, and being a world leader on the climate issue. Meanwhile, the ice caps are melting, we’re at 387 ppmv carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (that’s very high – higher than we can sustainably stay at) and rising, and people are dying – now.

There is a problem, and there is a solution. Serious commitments to renewables, energy efficiency and a bit of global leadership from our Government could go a long way.

Yes, you’re quite right. As a movement, we are serious. Although we conduct ourselves cheerfully, we don’t think this is a game. Although we can joke, we know why we act. Although we feel anxious and nervous about the consequences, we do it anyway, because it’s important. We are serious – serious about the problem, and serious about solving it.

The protestors have told The Guardian they are intending to stay “until Gordon Brown decides to reverse his policy to expand coal-fired production in Britain.” For more information on the protest as it continues, check out The Coal Hole’s blog.