[A-List] Green papers, white lies, hot air

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Britain's policy on global warming remains mired in confusion, with too
much debate and too little action. But there is a solution ...

by Mark Lynas

New Statesman (September 20 2007)


When the most powerful woman on the planet speaks, it's a good idea to
listen. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who recently knocked
Condoleezza Rice off Forbes's top spot for powerful women, suggested an
innovative solution to climate change late last month. Speaking in the
Japanese city of Kyoto, where the 1997 protocol was signed, the German
chancellor proposed an equal-rights framework for carbon emissions,
where each country would get emissions entitlements assigned on the
basis of its population.

The UK's Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, shows no sign of having
heard Merkel's words.

The idea that a global deal to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions must
involve a convergence to equal per-capita allocations is not new: it is
textbook "contraction and convergence" (C&C) - a climate policy
framework first advanced by Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute
more than a decade ago, and subsequently supported by numerous
influential people, from the Indian prime minister to the Archbishop of
Canterbury. As Merkel pointed out, only C&C offers a fair basis for
bringing developing countries such as India and China into a future
post-Kyoto emissions framework. Yvo de Boer, the UN's top climate-change
official, believes the plan to be the "only equitable, ultimate solution".

We have only eight years to go before the UN's target date when
greenhouse gases must start to decline if we are to have a realistic
chance of limiting eventual global warming to two degrees Celsius above
pre-industrial levels (as the EU, among many others, demands). Yet
Britain's climate policy remains mired in confusion.

Gordon Brown and Hilary Benn have inherited Blair's old target of a
sixty per cent reduction by 2050, but the truth is that, under an
equitable framework such as C&C, Britain would need an 85 per cent cut
because of our relatively small population and high emissions. This is a
simple piece of mathematics that government ministers show no sign of
having considered.

At this year's Labour party conference, with policy proposals flying
around for every issue under the sun, this is perhaps the most
important. If Brown's government were to join Germany, India and most
African countries in proposing a C&C framework to supersede Kyoto when
its first phase expires in 2012, the world would have taken its biggest
step forward since the Climate Change Convention was first agreed at the
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, way back in 1992.

Brown talks of equity as one of his guiding moral principles, and global
warming provides a chance like no other. Equity is not just desirable,
but essential if climatic equilibrium is to be maintained.

To their credit, the Liberal Democrats have already recognised this.
Their Zero Carbon Britain policy document, released to media
indifference last month, explicitly puts C&C at the heart of government
policy - recognising that without setting a global framework for
calculating Britain's fair share of a worldwide emissions budget, any UK
target is meaningless.

Even without a clear long-term target, some very big decisions are
looming that will have consequences for decades - and, indeed, centuries
- to come. First, Gordon Brown needs to make it clear to the electricity
industry that the era of coal as a fuel source for power generation is
over. It is insane that, while we lecture others at international
gatherings about their need to go low-carbon, a single British power
station (Drax in Yorkshire) is allowed to continue emitting more carbon
dioxide from a single chimney than at least 100 countries.

Worse, the government seems poised to agree to a new round of coal-fired
power generation: RWE npower is proposing to spend GBP 1 billion on
building a coal-burning plant at Tilbury in Essex, while E.ON UK (which
owns Powergen) wants to replace its ageing Kingsnorth plant in Kent with
two new 800-megawatt coal-burning units. Other power companies are
watching closely, ready to advance plans for yet more new coal plants.
Never mind the bitter row over nuclear power: the government's decision
on whether to allow this new coal rush is far more significant in terms
of Britain's impact on climate change.


Blue-sky thinking

With dirty power plants on the horizon, the clean energy revolution
looks stalled. Onshore windfarms are held up by Land Rover-driving
nimbies worried about their postcard views; offshore wind investment is
languishing because of a lack of government incentives. The Renewables
Obligation scheme is complex and gives little long-term certainty and
most experts now agree it should be replaced by a feed-in tariff system
as used in Germany and Spain.

Tellingly, both these countries have surged ahead with renewable power
in recent years. For small generators, government policy has been little
short of disastrous: the poorly funded Low Carbon Buildings Programme
(LCBP) has succeeded so far only in putting off prospective householders
and driving solar companies into bankruptcy. Here, too, a feed-in law
could help, by guaranteeing a high long-term return on investment for
anyone who decides to make the leap of investing in rooftop solar arrays
or other microgeneration technologies.

Every mile of M1 widening soaks up the same amount of government money
as the entire LCBP, as I have written before. Yet this hosing of public
funds at hugely polluting motorways may be about to get worse: the
government is considering awarding a GBP 3 billion contract - the
largest ever - for widening the M6 between Birmingham and Manchester.
This appalling waste of money can still be stopped, and we should look
to this decision for a true indication of whether Labour intends to get
serious about global warming.

The long-awaited Climate Bill is supposed to straighten out these
contradictions by setting a national budget for carbon emissions and
then forcing the government to make us all stick to it. Whether this is
done by ramping up carbon taxes or by bringing in personal carbon
allowances, the government is going to have to take measures at some
stage to discourage excessive carbon consumption at the individual level.

The Climate Bill as proposed also contains a loophole - one big enough
to fly a jet airliner through. By exempting aviation from our national
carbon budget, the government will allow millions more tonnes of carbon
to leak into the atmosphere, negating efforts in other sectors of the
economy.

International negotiations will be key to closing this loophole but, in
the meantime, Brown could send a clear sign of the changing times by
putting the brakes on airport expansion. This is where true climate
policy is made - in tarmac and hard cash, not green papers and white lies.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200709200027


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