20 Questions to a fellow blogger

Paul Burgin over at Mars Hill invited me to answer ‘Twenty Questions to a fellow blogger’ which I did in my normal concise style (!!) You can read it here.

The magnificent man still in his flying machine: Tony Blair vows to fly on.

Tony Blair has announced that he has no plans to stop using long haul flights, although under pressure he has announced that all his flights, both ministerial and personal will be ‘carbon neutral’.

Offsetting Carbon emissions by planting trees is fine as a short term mechanism and certainly better than nothing, but what happens in 40 years when the trees rot and decay? The carbon in them is released again. These articles and diagrams from the New Internationalist show clearly why offsetting will salve some consciences, but is not a long term solution.

It is true that not flying is the biggest single action that an individual can take to reduce their carbon emissions. One short haul flight can wipe out hundreds of saved car journeys and thousands of energy saving lightbulbs. Flying already contributes 3% of the UK’s CO2 emissions and is expected to grow significantly. Blair argued that not flying would damage the economy, but the Stern Report showed that not dealing with climate change would have a far bigger and possibly devastating impact on the world economy.

If we’re going to change our lifestyles in any way reducing our flights is the best option.

In addition to not flying we ought to choose not to fly we ought to write to an airline explaining our decision: Carbon free flying is estimated to be 35-50 years away at the moment – if airlines became worried about their profits that timescale could be dramatically reduced. (Incidentally this is also why I support airlines being bought into the Carbon emissions trading scheme with tough year on year reductions in credits to incentivise green innovation.)

However, I’ve argued before that we must seek largescale scientific and political solutions to climate change that involve China and India whose emissions of C02 are rising exponentially – we don’t have time to be messing around recycling.

The unsightly media scrum descending on Tony Blair’s personal choices is therefore not only slightly distasteful and puerile, but more importantly misses the point. Unlike most of the rest of us, there are dozens of political decisions that Blair could prioritise that would have a massive impact on the environment. I would happily swap Tony Blair commuting from Sydney every morning by private Concorde if he prioritised:

a) pushing a tough EU wide carbons emissions trading scheme,

b) investing the same amount of money into clean energy technology as into Trident

c) facilitating fast, effective and cheap technology transfer to China and India

d) a tidal barrage on the Severn (5% UK electricity), a new generation of Nuclear power stations and a solar panel and wind turbine on every new home.

If he did all this he could even take John Prescott, his long-lost great-aunt-Doris and the entire England Cricket team with him if he wanted.

Should we renew our Nuclear deterrent?: Two arguments based on different attitudes to risk

1: The minimise risk argument

“I believe climate change is, without doubt, the major long-term threat facing our planet.” Tony Blair, February 2006

“Terrorism is the greatest 21st century threat.” Tony Blair, November 2003

The two greatest threats to the security and stability of our planet and the UK are climate change and extremist-Islamic terrorism. The rise in global temperature of anywhere between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century will cause flooding, starvation and migration on an unprecedented scale unless we act now. Dirty bombs or biological terrorist attacks could destabilise the world’s economy and prompt retaliatory attacks which could plunge the planet into a growing cycles of violence. In this framework how do we decide whether or not to renew the UK’s nuclear deterrent?

Our current system of approximately 200 trident missiles based in four vanguard submarines is due to expire in the mid-2020s. It will have cost us £15bn in today’s prices to acquire (about £0.5bn for every year of service) and between £1.2bn and £2.2bn per year to maintain. Costs of upkeep are budgeted at 3 and 5.5% of the MoD’s annual expenditure and come out of the department’s standard budgets. As a comparison the annual budget of the NHS in 2007/8 is predicted to be £105.6bn, a bill exceeded only by Social security expenditure. A new system would cost around £20bn, again probably for a lifespan of around thirty years in addition to an ongoing maintenance budget. It is clear that if we want a new system or we wanted to extend the lifespan of trident we could afford it.

But is it worth the money if it is not addressing the two main threats that face our planet? Should we not be prioritising huge investment in research into clean energy sources and invest resources to protect us from terrorism and address root causes around the globe? Nuclear weapons do not contribute anything to dealing with either of these threats – against whom would we retaliate if an Islamic extremist drove a barge up the Thames and detonated a nuclear device on it? Some will argue that it is not possible to know the threat that we will face in thirty years time from an authoritarian Russia, a dominant China or another state. Old fashioned interstate warfare may be out of fashion, but is likely to return in the future. We need to maintain our deterrent for such a future to ensure that we are not bullied in international affairs by those that retain nuclear weapons. There is a possibility that we could retain a ‘virtual nuclear arsenal’; that is we would retain a stock pile of fissile material without having any warheads. We could revive our nuclear weapons capability within 6-24 months. The problem with this idea is that we would not have a delivery system available – we have no plans for suitable aeroplanes (e.g. stealth bombers) and if we decommission trident, no submarines. It is a truism to say that we don’t know what the future holds, but again it comes down to an issue of priorities. If after we’ve worked out what we need to spend on climate change and international terrorism we feel we can afford a trident replacement it should be pursued.

2: The maximise peace argument

The argument for retaining the nuclear deterrent is based on the concern that if other nations have it then we need it in order to ensure that unscrupulous states cannot threaten us with weapons with no fear of reprisal. Yet everyone, including those who support maintaining a nuclear deterrent agree that we should move towards a world without nuclear weapons. Although multilateral arms reduction has significantly reduced the size of some nation’s arsenals (noticeably the USA and Russia, but also the UK) no state that has possessed nuclear weapons capability has ever renounced it (South Africa never tested a nuclear weapon) and there seems to be no likelihood of it happening in the near future through multilateral negotiations.

For the UK to renounce the nuclear deterrent would be an historic move and allow Britain to commit itself to leading the way to push for the world that we all want where we don’t think that we might have to blow each other up. Giving up the deterrent would need to be seen as a first step as we committed ourselves to ‘making peace with as much effort as we put into going to war’ (Ron Sider). To unilaterally renounce our nuclear deterrent would be a risk, but it carries the possibility of a huge peace dividend in the long term. It would be a calculated risk. It is never comfortable to do something different and lead the way. It is always easier to keep the nuclear deterrent because everyone else has, but history is not made by people or nations that don’t have the vision to challenge the status quo. The principle behind argument 1 is to maximise and manage our safety within existing political boundaries, but doesn’t believe that it’s possible to push back those boundaries and deal with the root causes of our fear. Unilaterally disarming would be a prophetic action by a nation in that we would show that we had a vision for a world without nuclear weapons.

It would have to be a decision by a nation. This could not be made by leaders alone, but would need to have the understanding and support of the country. If in forty years time we are being bullied by China into actions because they are threatening us with nuclear weapons if we don’t comply and we don’t have the capacity to retaliate, we as a nation need to be able to say that we took the decision to disarm understanding the risks because we believed that it was worthwhile pursuing peace.

We’re not in that place as a nation now and to be honest, I don’t know whether we will ever be in that position. It is the place of our leaders to open up the discussion to see whether the UK as a nation can be strong enough to count the cost, take the risk and resolutely pursue peace.

Warming up the crystal ball: climate change predictions

On Tuesday the National Academy of Sciences released ‘the most detailed report yet’ outlining the effect that a rise in global temperatures of less than 2, 2-3 or over 3 degrees Celsius would have on the planet’s plant life, sea levels and rainfall.

The main scientist, Dr. Scholze reckons that at least a two degree rise in global temperatures is inevitable which he believes will cause a world wide loss of forests, increased flooding and a significant reduction in fresh water supplies. The UK Hadley centre, a leader in climate change research estimates that a 3 degree rise would put 400m people at risk of hunger, and half the world population at risk of flooding.

These studies stick to changes in the natural world, but I thought it would be an interesting exercise to make an educated guess on what changes of a 2-3 degree rise by the middle of the century would mean for us living in the UK. I’ve tried to steer clear of being alarmist and these are just guesses so I’d be interested in your predictions.

In 2050 I think that:

1) We will live in fortress Britain. Climate change is going to create numbers of refugees unprecedented in world history. Millions will be forced to leave land that has become inhabitable because of drought, salination of water supplies or wars over ever more limited fresh water. In constant fear of tens of millions coming to the UK we will close our borders to all but the luckiest of refugees and enforce military defence measures to put off would be illegal entrants.

2) Thousands of older people will have died in summer heat waves. In the summer of 2003 in France, tens of thousands of older people died as a direct result of the heat wave. By 2050 thousands will of older people will die in more frequent and more intense heat waves in the UK.

3) Hundreds of thousands of homes in the south and east will be uninsurable and unsellable. A 3 degree rise would increase risk of flooding by 17 times in South and East and the Thames Barrier is already being raised significantly more often than 10 years ago. Nobody (or very few people) would die, but dealing with flood damage will be a reoccurring problem.

4) Progress in the developing economies will have been wiped out. Developing economies will struggle to maintain growth went hit by more frequent and intense problems. Our ability to promote sustainable development will vanish as we try to deal with crisis after crisis.

5) Our financial affluence will have been severely dented. The economy won’t have crashed into unending depression – no one individual shock would be big enough to precipitate this. Our economic patterns will adapt and evolve and there will still be plenty of work around to deal with the effects of climate change. Some jobs may have moved back to the UK because the world will be a more dangerous and uncertain place. Supply of goods to our kitchens and living rooms from around the world will be inconsistent and regularly disrupted.


I'm in my mid 20s: I don’t expect to witness the worst of the effects of climate change. I believe I will see extremely serious flooding, drought that will kill hundreds of thousands and create millions of environmental refugees, but not on the scale of the second half of the 21st century could produce. It will be the next generation that has to deal with those catastrophes – something that’s worth bearing in mind for those of us considering having children.

To read about how I think we can alleviate climate change see my post from late June here.

Greens - grow up

The last year has seen a huge upsurge in the intensity and urgency in the climate change debate. Hurricane Katrina, the first climate refugees in the Pacific, the next generation of nuclear power stations, dire predictions from respected scientists such as James Lovelock, and the BBC’s climate chaos series have all contributed to the sense that climate change is happening now and has the potential to be catastrophic. Many climate change scientists argue that we have thirty years maximum before we cross the ‘tipping point’ when cataclysmic climate change becomes inevitable. Some say that we may already have passed it. A year ago it was mainstream to say that environmental issues were very important, but not the number one priority. Now most prominent public figures accept that climate change is very urgent and very important. A growing number of businesses are also pushing for a greener regulatory framework to promote investment and business solutions to climate change.

The Green movement should be pleased by this new found concern, but also has to adapt to the new reality in which it finds itself. The Green movement has its roots in the new ‘identity’ personal politics that began in the 1960s, along with gender and politics of sexuality. Its emphasis has been on living sustainably, building communities and making individual ‘green’ choices such as recycling, not owning a car and buying organically. Green campaigns, directly or indirectly have predominantly been about changing individual consumer’s behaviour rather than macro green policies: do your bit – we can change the world one by one.

The problem is that China is building as many coal power stations in a year as the UK operates in total – the Chinese have plans to build a further 544 coal power stations. The growth of the car market in India makes our vehicle journeys insignificant by comparison. As James Lovelock puts it: “Nothing we do in Britain is going to make a hill of beans of difference.” Trying to reduce the number of car journeys in the UK is a bit like putting all our energy into buying egg cups for people so that they everyone can help put out a fire, whereas what we really need is to club together and get a few aeroplanes with water jets. There may be ways of avoiding the worst excesses of climate change, but it’s not going to be through each individual changing their behaviour. Instead we need to be investing billions in clean technologies such as carbon sequestration techniques and transferring them to the Chinese, Indians and Brazilians as quickly as possible. The Green movement should be lobbying our government for the biggest investment in scientific research in history. If we’re going to prevent millions of climate refugees and the world’s poorest people being hit time and again by unnatural disasters we need to think big and quickly.

But can the green movement adapt? The idea of individuals taking responsibility for their own actions by changing their own lifestyles is deeply rooted. It rests on the assumption that doing good for others is also good for our own happiness, fulfilment and contentment – it’s a win-win situation. I have no doubt that this is true, but it is not the whole picture. The Green movement has always critiqued the descent into an atomised, consumer lifestyle, but like the rest of society has reacted against organised large scale, coherent collective action. We’ve focused so much on encouraging individuals to make good environmental choices we’ve lost faith in the potency of collective political lobbying and large scale human endeavour and scientific research. It’s time to “practice the latter without leaving the former undone.” It’s time to work with businesses, engineers and research companies to find large scale solutions to catastrophic climate change, without forgoing the critique on a wasteful, materialistic society out of touch with it’s environment. It’s time for the Greens to grow up.