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Climate change Archives

May 15, 2007 - Vancouver

Four days in Vancouver, courtesy of Alcan and Simon Fraser University. Such a good city. 750,000 people (so not exactly a big city), lots of water and mountains all around. Made one feel pretty good about urban living.

Came in on the back end of a bit of a shock, in that the Premier of British Columbia (deeply conservative, apparently, bordering on neo-con even) has suddenly “got” climate change. Very ambitious new targets on energy efficiency and climate change, “inclusive approach”, long term vision and so on.

It made me wonder how we might mass-produce these epiphanies. They seem to arrive so arbitrarily at the moment. Decades in denial, then a chance encounter with reality. And guess who provided the reality on this occasion? No less an Evangelist than Arnie Schwarzenegger himself – he of Hummer fame again. With his own unique brand of muscular environmentalism, full of scorn for boring environmentalists (“like prohibitionists at a fraternity party”), seeking to redefine sustainability in terms of passion for life rather than guilt. He has got a good point there, I have to admit. Sadly, Arnie is said to have given up on converting George Bush. Even the Governator has his limits.

Posted on May 15, 2007 4:50 PM | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

June 26, 2007 - The Ashden Awards

For me, last week’s absolute highlight was the Ashden Awards event for Sustainable Energy – now in its sixth year. I may be biased (well, I am biased, as I’m a Trustee of the Awards!), but it’s hard to beat an evening where all one has to cope with is a succession of inspiring stories from “energy entrepreneurs” of every description from China, Peru, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Ghana, Tanzania, Laos, the Philippines and, of course, the UK.

To take one of these stories - Sunlabob Royal Energies Ltd in Laos. Most of the rural poor are not connected to the grid, and are not likely to be in the foreseeable future either. Firewood and kerosene are the fuels of choice – or of necessity at least. Sunlabob have come up with this amazing scheme to rent out home-voltaic systems to Village Energy Committees (as well as portable solar lamps for individuals) - at less than the equivalent price for kerosene. The scheme involves just 73 villages at the moment. But every village could and should be benefiting from this, and it’s hoped that Sunlabob may well be able to provide answers to much of that need.

gore_ceremony1.jpg

Imagine eighteen stories similar to that one, and you get a feel for the evening. Al Gore graciously did the honours – including a miraculously short speech – and for the sixth year in a row every single person went off home asking themselves why all these wondrous renewable technologies aren’t serving the needs of billions of people rather than just tiny minorities.

Posted on June 26, 2007 3:18 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

July 12, 2007 - The Great Global Warming Swindle

So that’s it: any residual idea that Channel 4’s notorious documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” has the remotest vestige of good science about it is now permanently scotched. A new analysis of data on the energy radiated from the sun over the last 25 years shows that solar activity has been decreasing, not increasing, during that time – which is exactly the same time as the Earth has been getting hotter, with ten of the last twelve years the hottest on record.

The idea that rising emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are being caused by rising temperatures from increased solar radiation – rather than the other way round – is now as dead in the water as Alistair Campbell’s literary pretensions. Professor Lockwood’s data (published on Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society) must also be the final blow to the professional reputation of the lying, bullying, over-rated little git that is Martin Durkin – the producer of “The Great Global Warming Swindle”.

If I sound a touch bitter, it’s because I am. It’s down to dorks like Durkin (including, I’m sorry to say, my old friend David Bellamy, who has turned into another of those flat-earth denial merchants) that an almost unbelievable 56% of people in the UK still believe that there’s a major scientific controversy about what’s causing climate change – according to the latest Ipsos MORI opinion poll. These people have a lot to answer for.

Posted on July 12, 2007 11:05 AM | | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

July 27, 2007 - The Floods

I live in Cheltenham, just down the road from Tewkesbury and Gloucester, both of which have been affected much more seriously than Cheltenham itself. It’s still bloody miserable for tens of thousands of people in the region, exacerbated by the fact that water supplies are likely to be off for another week or so.

It’s amazing how quickly the “lots of energy” of “all being in it together”, solidarity in adversity and all that, wears off, as does the novelty factor of having no water. It’s just a pain in the neck, especially as our water butt is about to run empty. But the question that’s preoccupying me is how long-lived will the impact of this trauma be? Will it sway the waverers, bring them out of their bunkers of denial on climate change (no, it’s not going to be fun, and who cares if we are able to grow wine in Wigan), and stop them heading off to B&Q to buy their wretched patio heaters?

It’s been encouraging to hear Ministers (including the Prime Minister) linking the floods directly to climate change, which will help, but amongst my many nightmarish visual memories of the much-missed John Prescott is one of him in his green wellies in flood waters in Chichester (or somewhere in Sussex) at least five years ago, categorically asserting that those particular floods were the direct, indisputable, cast-iron consequence of climate change. So why didn’t everybody believe him then? (I don’t really need an answer to that one, by the way!)

BBC - Floods at a glance
Guardian Flood Pictures

Posted on July 27, 2007 9:34 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

September 19, 2007 - BBC axe falls on Planet Relief

Hallelujah! The great Professor John Marburger (George Bush’s leading scientific advisor) has robustly confirmed the principal findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – including the “more than 90% likely that climate change caused by mankind” bit.

In his recent interview with the BBC, he went a lot further than that, revealing his worst Lovelockian fears: “The CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere. There’s no end point – it just gets hotter and hotter, so at some point it becomes unliveable”. That’s irreversibility for you, John.

I wonder how the BBC billed Professor Marburger, internally, in their forward planning: climate mainstreamer or climate contrarian? (He’s often been in the latter category before now, so the BBC is going to be really cross that he’s gone over to the other side at this stage).

Over the years, the pool of potential contrarian contributors has dwindled year by year – there’s only so much incontrovertible science one can go on denying in order to suit the media. This is going to get increasingly problematic for the BBC, given the apparent editorial decision to maintain some kind of Reithian balance in its reporting on climate change.

All this surfaced when the BBC decided to axe its plans for Climate Relief – a day of programming focusing on climate change, including quite a lot of advocacy and even “campaigning”.

Great stuff, but the BBC lost its nerve: “it is absolutely not the BBC’s job to save the planet”, said Peter Barron, Editor of Newsnight.

Rather than axe Planet Relief, I’ve got a much better idea for the BBC that seems to be terminally muddled about all this stuff. Why not carry on with Planet Relief, and at the same time commission an alternative “Screw the Planet” day, providing a truly balanced love-in for all climate deniers, chaired by Bjorn Lomborg, duped by Martin Durkin, whimsically entertained by Richard D North, bored rigid by the Institute of Economic Affairs, lectured by Philip Stott, reduced to uncontrollable hysterics by David Bellamy – and regaled by wise and far-seeing US politicians like James Connaughton, Bush’s leading adviser on climate change, who believes that adopting mandatory targets for reducing emissions of CO2 would “mean shutting down the US economy”.

There you are, Mr Barron. What better way of protecting your precious reputation for balance than by lining up the galacticos of today’s ever-so-balanced contrarian movement? And what a fantastic contribution you’ll be making to climate change awareness in the process.

Posted on September 19, 2007 1:06 PM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

October 18, 2007 - Carbon Free Homes

Readers may be interested in an article I wrote for Building Design:

“Compare Germany’s retrofit of its existing stock with our own seriously clunky energy commitment”

Why put a price on the priceless importance of carbon free homes?

Posted on October 18, 2007 11:51 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

October 19, 2007 - Climate change and peace

Al Gore has finally (finally?!) declared that he’s absolutely not going to put himself forward as the Democratic presidential candidate. Thank God for that. The thought of Al reverting to his rather wooden, very risk-averse, not particularly friendly pre-2000 persona was an absolute nightmare. If he had failed (either at the first or the second hurdle), his stature would have been substantially diminished – as in “Nobel Peace Prize Winner and failed Presidential candidate twice over”. If he’d won, he’d have had a few other things on his plate other than climate change – and I suspect we would have lost him as the undisputed world leader in this area at the moment.

But hats off to the Nobel Prize Committee. By explicitly linking the worsening impacts of climate change with threats to peace and security (particularly through displaced people and growing numbers of environmental refugees), it reinforces the message that climate change is not an environmental issue, but much more to do with security and economics.

There’s been a predictable spate of hostile comments from Gore-haters and climate contrarians, questioning the sanity/ideology of the Nobel Prize Committee, just as there was a couple of years ago when Wangari Maathai, Founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya and redoubtable environmental campaigner, also won the prize. “What has planting trees got to do with promoting a more peaceful world?” This was a common-place response from these lame-brains.

But the Committee didn’t just honour Gore. The joint winner was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an unprecedented honouring of one little cog in the monolithic machinery of the United Nations. And such a good decision. Even if you believe (like me) that the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report significantly underestimates both the speed of climate change and its severity, the sheer grinding slog of establishing a scientific consensus across all UN countries, and then getting countries like Saudi Arabia and the United States to buy into that consensus (even when that’s absolutely the last thing they want to do in the world) beggars belief.

The IPCC is a unique scientific body which has had a quite unique impact on the global debate.

And what a powerful way of telling critics of the IPCC like Bjørn Lomborg to bog off.

Posted on October 19, 2007 1:43 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

November 30, 2007 - Another inconvenient truth

Hilary Benn will be mightily upset by the United Nations official report prepared for next weekís Bali Conference. Apart from the fact that it's a very grim read indeed (particularly in the focus it brings to bear on just how disproportionately grim things are going to be for the world's poorest people), it also has some extremely harsh words for the UK Government.

With a startling lack of tact, it kicks off by reminding people of the inconvenient truth that the UK's success in meeting our Kyoto targets is almost entirely due to Mrs Thatcher's passion for decarbonising the UK economy by closing down all our coal mines. Not that much of substance has happened since then.

Even less tactfully, it then wades into the Climate Change Bill, the constantly buffed-up jewel in the Government climate change crown. Whilst acknowledging that it is indeed a “bold and innovative step”, in terms of putting CO2 abatement targets in statute, it points out that it won’t be worth a hill of organic beans without much more radical policies than the Government has currently put in place – particularly on renewables, where the UK is miles behind many other EU countries.

Unfairly, it doesnít seem to have taken proper account of the Carbon Reduction Commitment, a mandatory trading scheme for all organisations whose energy spending amounts to more than £500,000 a year, a measure which should come into force by 2009/2010.

Finally, it powerfully reinforces NGO efforts to persuade the Government to include aviation and shipping in the UK targets, working on the assumption that emissions from these two sectors would increase the UK's budget by around 27% by 2050 - more or less cancelling out half the planned 60% reduction. So it was encouraging that the Prime Minister recently accepted the importance of thinking through the implications of including these aviation and shipping emissions in the budget.

It sums it all up as follows: “If the rest of the developed world followed the pathway envisaged in the UK’s Climate Change Bill, dangerous climate change would be inevitable”.

Ouch!

Posted by JP on November 30, 2007 7:16 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

December 10, 2007 - Bali

Bali discussions duly chuntering on. And my heart goes out to all those poor NGO stalwarts who have to sit there day after day listening to the mind-crushing mediocrity of most government delegations.

By way of inspiring contrast, I have just discovered WWF's excellent publication, 'Climate Solutions: a Vision for 2050'. It does a lot of the usual stuff, tracking out different scenarios in a very low-carbon future through to 2050, elaborating on the so-called 'Princeton wedges' (devised by Pacala and Sokolov) and highlighting in the process just how urgent it is to turn Bali-esque hot air into instant greenhouse gas abatement schemes.

Without a huge amount of enthusiasm, 'Climate Solutions' also emphasises just how crucial it is going to be to sort out two aspects of the journey to a low-carbon economy which environmentalists are understandably somewhat uncomfortable about: carbon capture and storage, and the extensive use of gas as a 'transition fuel'.

Oddly enough, both of these are really all about coal. How many times have you heard eminent energy experts pontificating about the 'inevitability' of massive increases in the use of coal over the next two or three decades? The International Energy Agency, for instance, estimates no less than a doubling of the use of coal by 2030, basing their predictions on the fact that coal use has gone up by 23% over the last five years! If that 'inevitability' happens for real, then we're all as good as stuffed.

So, according to WWF, two things have to happen. First, gas has to be substituted for coal wherever and whenever possible. A combined-cycle gas turbine plant emits no more than 40% of the emissions of a standard coal-fired station. With the biggest reserves of gas in just three countries (Russia, Iran, and Qatar) that inevitably means a massive increase in LNG (liquefied natural gas) facilities all around the world. And thatís quite challenging from an environmental point of view.

Secondly, we have to get stuck into capturing the CO2 which would otherwise be emitted from coal and gas-fired power stations, and sticking it back underground in old oil and gas reservoirs or saline aquifers. Substantial additional costs (at least $50 a tonne), huge logistical and legal issues all now loom - but as WWF uncomfortably reminds us, there's absolutely no way of getting through to a low-carbon world by 2050 without billions of tonnes of C02 being kept out of the atmosphere in that way.

And that's quite a challenge from an environmental point of view! But WWF never said it was going to be easy.

Posted by JP on December 10, 2007 9:28 AM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

December 19, 2007 - Bali - the final analysis

So that’s Bali done: a binding timetable agreed – for more talks through to the end of 2009. And an agreement for something more substantial to slow deforestation - by 2013.

Against such meagre pickings, I wonder how Bali will be remembered in the annals of climate change diplomacy? A "good beginning" as Ban Ki-Moon put it, conveniently forgetting that this was exactly how the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was described, and exactly how the Kyoto Protocol was subsequently described as well.

A “tawdry, ineffective compromise”, as I heard one NGO representative describe it, bitterly aware of the fact that what was being compromised, yet again, was the integrity of the life support systems on which we all depend.

Or maybe as “a crazy game of global chicken”, with the EU and the US eye-balling each other through deadlocked negotiations, determined not to be the one to flinch first.

My favourite, at this stage, is “the final shaming of America”. Al Gore’s words, not mine, uttered in despair at the implacable intransigence of the Bush administration’s negotiators, offered with his right arm stretched over his chest as if he was standing in front of the American flag, as if seeking some inner strength in order to say such ‘unpatriotic’ things.

But the thank God a few Americans are actually saying them. I spent quite a bit of this year reading books about the role of America in a post-9/11 world – John Gray’s Black Mass:Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, and most recently, Naomi Kline’s astonishing Shock Doctrine. It numbs the mind to have to come to terms with the utterly hateful force and reach of today’s US imperium, a truly ‘evil empire’ if ever there was one.

To have so comprehensively lost America as an international ‘force for good’, at a time when the world needs more than ever that kind of energy and generosity of spirit that America brought to bear on post-war Europe in the 20th century, has to be just about the most depressing aspect of today’s disintegrating world.

Anyway, I have got cheerier books set aside for the holiday season, lots of novels (for which there is normally never enough time), lots of diversions and distractions – as well as a few upbeat eco-tracts as well!

All of which means that I am temporarily taking leave of absence from the Blog for the next three weeks, by which time I can only hope the debacle that was Bali will have already faded fittingly away.

Posted on December 19, 2007 9:27 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

June 20, 2008 - Greenpeace versus Unilever (Round Two)

“Gratuitously stirring a pot that absolutely didn’t need to be stirred just to make a phoney effect” – I guess that was one of the more polite comments I received from colleagues about my piece (posted 1st May) regarding Greenpeace’s direct action against Unilever as part of its palm oil campaign. I certainly plead guilty to the pot-stirring, but there was nothing phoney about it: the interface between business and NGOs is one that I spend a lot of time reflecting on, and this provides a particularly interesting case study.

To say that these things “all come out in the wash” would not just be a cliché, but a rather insulting cliché. However, there is something of a coming-out-in-the-wash effect going on in terms of the ‘working relationship’ between Greenpeace and Unilever.

The prize for Greenpeace in taking on Unilever was not just to be sure that the company was doubling and re-doubling its efforts on securing “sustainable palm oil”, but that Unilever would undertake to spearhead a business-led call for an immediate moratorium on further deforestation in Indonesia linked to palm oil cultivation.

That’s exactly what Unilever is now doing – with the only bone of contention between them the question as to whether Unilever would have done that without its headquarters being invaded by troops of orang-utan lookalikes. Unilever said it would; Greenpeace says is wouldn’t. Whatever, as some would say.

But things move fast these days. A couple of days after Unilever made its announcement (at The Prince of Wales’s May Day Summit on Climate Change) Greenpeace issued its latest report, The Hidden Carbon Liability of Indonesian Palm Oil – the front cover of which has a big tick against Unilever on “support a halt to deforestation”, and a big cross against Nestle, P&G and Kraft.

It’s an excellent report (adding a lot more context and specific detail to the earlier report, Burning up Borneo), and key reading for anyone interested in this debate. I’m sure it won’t make Unilever colleagues feel any less uncomfortable about the pressure they’re now under, but they will at least see it as a more ‘level playing field’ in terms of the share of the clod of earth that Greenpeace is now hurling at all the big palm oil players.

One really interesting divide emerges. Some time ago, Unilever decided to direct (almost) all its efforts through the RSPO – the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil. “It is essential that all those involved sign up to agreed criteria to make sustainability work on the ground – but this is not an easy process, and is taking longer than we would all like. That is why we chair the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil”.

Greenpeace thinks the RSPO is a total waste of space: “the organisation’s impact on the ground in terms of halting industry expansion into rainforests and peatlands has been negligible. At present, the RSPO scheme does not prohibit palm oil producers from being involved in forest conversion, and has no assessment of, or limits on, GHG emissions from the development of palm oil plantations.

Again, you’ll have to judge for yourself on this one. At the risk of being accused yet again of grotesque bias, I have to say that Unilever really didn’t have much choice here. Unilateral action on its part would have counted for very little – even if it is the world’s biggest consumer of palm oil .

And it’s simply not true to say that nothing has happened, In just three years, producers responsible for 40% of total palm oil production have joined the RSPO, have agreed on a Certification Programme for sustainable palm oil (which is more than can be said for most other agricultural commodities in the world today), which includes sanctions against companies that flout the certification standards – and those companies do include expansion onto land of high conservation value.

Here’s the fit between Greenpeace’s demands and the RSPO:
(1) No new plantings within mapped forest areas
(2) No plantations resulting in the degradation of peatlands
(3) No plantations post-November 2005 resulting in degradations of High Conservation Value forests
(4) No plantations established on indigenous people’s land without Free, Prior and Informed Consent
(5) Establish full supply chain traceability.

Unilever has pointed out that the first four of these are included in the new standards, and Unilever itself (though not other RSPO members) has committed to (5). As it has to be if it is to achieve its goal of ensuing that all the palm oil it uses is sourced from sustainable producers by 2015.

Too slow? Probably. RSPO still pretty dodgy in terms of its membership? Couldn’t agree more. Best way to go in an imperfect world? I think so.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on June 20, 2008 2:12 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 17, 2008 - One Billion Trees

As I mentioned in my blog on June 11th (Protecting the Rainforests), there is a great buzz at the moment about REDD – Reducing Emissions (of CO2 ) from Deforestation and Degradation. This is great, and getting something sorted on this before the Copenhagen Conference at the end of 2009 is going to be crucial.

But people are weird. Just because policy-makers are focused for the first time on reducing emissions from cutting down existing trees doesn’t mean that taking up emissions from planting new trees has suddenly become completely irrelevant! Or boring even.

OK, so there are indeed a number of dodgy tree-planting schemes being done as carbon offsets, and it is now widely accepted that forestry-based offsets need to be treated with a great deal of caution. But that absolutely doesn’t mean that all tree-planting has ceased to be important.

I was powerfully reminded of this last week when the official report of the Billion Tree Campaign dropped through my letterbox. If anyone reading this piece RIGHT NOW is feeling a little bit depressed, then RIGHT NOW you should check this out http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign.

It’s an astonishing story. Back in 2005, the wonderful Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize (the first environmentalist ever to win) started campaigning around the idea of planting a billion trees. This was taken up by UNEP and a constellation of organisations all around the world, and duly launched in November 2006. I must say, I did wonder at the ambition level – that’s one hell of a lot of people out there planting one hell of a lot of trees.

I needn’t have worried. Since the launch, not just one billion, not just one and half billion, but more than two billion trees have been planted!

The overall impact of this must be extraordinary – in terms of biodiversity, soil protection, watershed management, sustainable livelihoods and so on. And that doesn’t even include the CO2 benefits: depending on the location and size of its trees, one hectare of forest can absorb approximately six tonnes of CO2 a year.

The Report is stuffed full of brilliant case studies, drawn from all over the world, involving every sector and every conceivable kind of organisation – particularly young people.

You can just feel the spirit of Wangari Maathai behind all of this. She was over in the UK a month ago to present the Awards of the annual Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy – itself an amazing organisation (of which – to declare an interest – I’m a Trustee) with its own amazing portfolio of inspirational award winners – this year from Ethiopia, Tanzania, India, Uganda, Brazil and China, as well as Mid Wales, Cornwall, Sussex, Yorkshire, Ayrshire and Oxford!

So if the Billion Trees haven’t done it for you, then check them out too at www.ashdenawards.org

“No one can attend an event like the Ashden Awards and fail to be inspired……these Awards have told us how to illuminate the path to a sustainable future together”

(Al Gore)


Posted by Jonathon Porritt on July 17, 2008 10:45 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

January 9, 2009 - The New Politics of Climate Change

"But people just don’t get how urgent it is, Jonathon!" This from a harassed Government Minister looking at the latest survey of public opinion on climate change, with all the usual disturbing data about people’s uncertainty, confusion, ambivalence (saying one thing and doing another) and continuing denial of the now incontrovertible fact that addressing climate change effectively will literally transform all our lives.

Tons of reasons for the continuing confusion, of course – the Clarkson/Daily Mail effect; an army of denialists filling the blogosphere with a combination of vitriol and errant rubbish; a tendency not to believe politicians on anything, let alone climate change, and so on.

But the upshot of all this is that politicians (and this government in particular) feel unable to intervene as decisively and substantively as they need to – for fear of getting punished electorally. The gap between the rhetoric on climate change (world class) and the programme of measures in place to address it (bog-standard) is still very large.

So it was good to see the latest publication from the Green Alliance on The New Politics of Climate Change. The basic thrust of it is that individual action by the "converted" is never going to be sufficient, and that we now need to mobilise the whole of the so-called Third Sector (voluntary organisations, local community groups, trade unions and co-ops, NGOs beyond the environment world, faith communities and so on) to enable a collective shift in both attitudes and actions. Without this, we will never generate a sufficient momentum to encourage/compel our politicians to do what they know they should be doing but still feel they can’t get away with.

"So the critical issue is not simply our behaviour, but the impact of our activism, behaviour and attitudes on political action. The political effect of this action depends not simply on the numbers of people involved but on who those people are and their political influence."

This makes a lot of sense to me. The Third Sector in the UK is hugely influential. Tot up the income of all those different groups and it exceeds £100 billion, with a massive multiplier effect throughout society. But in terms of climate change, it’s a great slumbering monster, largely sitting on the sidelines of the debate on the grounds that its "not my issue", leaving it to the transparently inadequate green groups to keep battling away on their behalf. As Stephen Hale (the author of "The New Politics of Climate Change" and Director of Green Alliance) says: "we need to mobilise action networks that influence individual and community behaviour, and build the social foundations for success."

But how best to mobilise this slumbering monster? I think we will be seeing a lot more action on that front throughout 2009 from many different angles – hopefully with a correspondingly large impact on our political parties.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on January 9, 2009 12:27 PM | | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

June 18, 2009 - Ashden Awards

The Met Office is going to be publishing its detailed projections for the impacts of climate change on the UK today – in unprecedented geographical detail. It’s not going to be pleasant reading.

So I’ve been cheering myself up by reminding myself, all over again, of the power of positive thinking. Just a week ago, the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy held their annual bash at the Royal Geographical Society, with the Prince of Wales handing out the Awards and giving a stirring speech.

For me, this event is one of the highlights of the annual calendar – it’s just incredibly uplifting to hear about the kind of cutting-edge success going on around the world from the people who are actually making it all happen.

In the context of climate change in the UK, I just want to highlight two of the 2009 winners. First is Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council – one of the unsung heroes of local government who have been doing their "sustainability bit" for the last 20 years. But their current home insulation initiative has really made people sit up and listen as it has succeeded in achieving real scale – where so many of the current measures are just picking around at the edges. Here’s what the Award citation said:

"In 2007, Kirklees Council committed £10 million to providing free loft and cavity-wall insulation for every home in the borough where it can be used. The scheme targets one council ward at a time, using the local Councillor and local advertising, then individual home visits by assessors. By May 2009, 66,000 out of the 172,000 households in the borough had been assessed, 54,000 referred for surveys, 26,000 surveys had been completed, and 21,000 had insulation installed. This avoids an estimated 18,000 tonnes a year of CO2. 140 jobs have been created by the scheme."

In my view, every Local Authority in the country is going to have to introduce schemes along those lines over the next couple of years. That’s the consequence of the ambitious targets that have now been adopted through the Climate Change Act.

But, for many, "seeing is still believing", and there are lots of people who are not yet persuaded that doing full-on home insulation actually makes much difference. And that’s where the Sustainable Energy Academy comes in – by persuading those who’ve already done it to demonstrate how they did it to those who’d like to do it.

"The Sustainable Energy Academy has set up a network of homes, mostly built before 1919, whose owners have installed measures to reduce carbon emissions by 60% or more. Measures include roof, cavity-wall, solid-wall and under-floor insulation; triple-glazed windows; draughtproofing; heat-recovery ventilation; solar and biomass heating; efficient lighting; and solar electric supply. The SEA provides training and support to enable owners to open their homes to the public, providing real demonstrations of how to achieve significant carbon savings. To date, 25 homes belong to the network, and over 36,000 people have visited them. SEA wants to increase the network to 200 homes across the UK so that people can easily visit one."

Kirklees Council
Phil Webber
Kirklees Council
Civic Centre 3
Market Street
Huddersfield
HD1 1WG
www.kirklees.gov.uk/warmzone
phil.webber@kirklees.gov.uk
01484 223568

Sustainable Energy Academy
John Doggart
National Energy Centre
Davy Ave
Milton Keynes
MK5 8NG
www.sustainable-energyacademy.org.uk
john.doggart@s-ea.org.uk
020 7431 9314

By the way, the International Awards are equally, if not more inspiring. Check it all out on the Ashden Awards website

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on June 18, 2009 2:22 PM | | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

July 8, 2009 - Sandbrook Lecture

I’ve just finished reading Oxfam’s new report on climate change and poverty, Suffering the Science, prepared especially for the G8 meeting now underway in Italy. Gloomy, but hugely powerful stuff:

"Climate change's most savage impact on humanity in the near future is likely to be in the increase in hunger. The countries with existing problems in feeding their people are those most at risk from climate change. Millions of farmers will have to give up traditional crops as they experience changes in the seasons that they and their ancestors have depended on. Climate-related hunger may become the defining human tragedy of this century."

It's not all doom and gloom. The Report replays a lot of Oxfam’s excellent proposals on sustainable agriculture, with a new emphasis on adaptation to climate change. There's just so much that could be happening right now.

Coming hot on the heels of the equally impactful report from the Global Humanitarian Forum, The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the development/poverty/equity end of the spectrum of NGOs involved in this area is playing a massive part in civil society’s efforts to spur politicians on.

And that brought to mind, yet again, my old friend Richard Sandbrook – a former Director of the International Institute for Environment and Development, and Trustee of both Forum for the Future and The Eden Project for many years before his untimely death. He’s been in my thoughts a lot lately (having just given the second Richard Sandbrook Memorial Lecture a couple of weeks ago), wondering how he would be responding to the growing levels of activity in the run up to the Copenhagen Conference.

Although Richard was himself an NGO-man through and through, he spent a disproportionate amount of time giving them a very hard time for their negativity, territoriality and all-round lack of creativity in bringing forward new ideas to accelerate the solutions agenda – particularly as regards their inability to work properly with business.

Most NGOs took it all in good heart ("don’t worry, it’s just Richard off on another bout of NGO-bashing"), but others used to get quite grumpy about it, even accusing him of having ‘sold out’ to big corporates like Rio Tinto, big forestry companies and so on.

Forum for the Future gets more than its fair share of the 'selling out' critique, and we just put up with that as part and parcel of operating in this high risk area. But we too were a bit mystified at Richard’s anti NGO tirades.

And I wonder if he would still be taking that line today? So many NGOs now work in one way or another with the private sector, including quite radical NGOs like the Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade. Even Oxfam is deepening its relationship with some of the biggest companies in the world.

And on a macro-scale, in terms of the balance between government, business and civil society, as agents of change in their respective spheres, I would also argue that the continuing failure of governments to drive a completely different model of wealth creation leaves even the most progressive companies struggling to do much more than mitigating the worst effects of business-as-usual economic growth. Which means, logically, that the onus is even more on NGOs (as embodiments of civil society) to make it possible for governments to do what they are absolutely going to have to do – sooner or later.

So I ended up using my Memorial Lecture to suggest that Richard's deep frustration with NGOs might, by now, have moved into a rather different place. But it would, no doubt, have been equally challenging!

Posted by JP on July 8, 2009 5:08 PM | | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

October 22, 2009 - US position on Copenhagen may be treaty-wrecking

You can’t fault our Government for its ongoing efforts to get people to focus on the Copenhagen Conference. Both the Prime Minister and Ed Miliband are out there emphasising the ‘make or break’ nature of the event: governments either seal the deal now, or we could be into drift for a couple of years.

Personally I’m not so sure about this kind of rhetoric. It probably wouldn’t be the end of the world if it took another six or nine months to get the right deal sealed – and that means a deal with the US on board. And that probably won’t happen until some kind of climate bill has got through the US Senate.

That, at least, was the prevailing view at the end of the most recent round of talks in Bangkok a couple of weeks ago. The Senate is bogged down in health insurance stuff; Obama doesn’t want to use his political capital to try and force it through the Senate prior to Copenhagen; and he absolutely doesn’t want a re-run of the Kyoto process, where Al Gore signed off on the Kyoto Protocol only to find that the Senate would have nothing to do with it later on.

And that’s the reason Obama hasn’t accepted the invitation to go to Copenhagen himself in order to bring his own personal leadership to bear on the negotiations.

Because the focus of a lot of this discussion is about Obama and most people just seem to have bought into this approach. That’s just the way it is: unfortunate timing and all that. America doing its best in difficult domestic circumstances.

I must say, I don’t quite see it like that. I think this represents a massive failure on Obama’s part. As the rest of the world raises its game (particularly in key countries like China, India and Brazil), the United States’ negotiating position, in essence, doesn’t seem to have advanced much beyond George Bush’s negotiating position.

US negotiators still refuse to acknowledge historical responsibility. They’re still trying to force developing countries to do what America itself has totally failed to do up until now – and doesn’t show much readiness to do it even now. They’re still trying to change the baseline date from 1990 to 2005 – and, in essence, want to tear up Kyoto rather than build on it by allowing each country to determine its own path to greenhouse gas reductions.

For US negotiators, read Obama. I don’t know why everyone (and particularly Government ministers) is being so ‘understanding’ about this. It’s a despicable, immoral, self-serving, treaty-wrecking negotiating position which, in the current context, where the need for action is so much greater, and so many other countries are now playing ball, is no better than what George Bush was doing during his eight poisonous years in the White House.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on October 22, 2009 4:12 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

October 30, 2009 - Leaders will be shocked into climate action

Even today’s climate optimists acknowledge that there are going to have to be some traumatic ‘shocks to the system’, induced by accelerated climate change, to jolt politicians the world over to move up a gear (well, several gears).

These shocks will come, and from the perspective of our long-term prospects, they need to come as rapidly as possible. And to be as traumatic as possible – otherwise, politicians and their electorates will rapidly revert to the current mix of non-specific anxiety and inertia.

Post-Katrina, for instance, public opinion in the US provided the best example of this phenomenon. It took just two years for Fox News and other right-wing shock-jocks to straighten out deviant US citizens who’d started to think that it really might be time for the US to get stuck in on climate change.

But Australia provides an even more compelling story. Over the last few years, it’s had more than its fair share of traumatic shocks. Earlier this year, Melbourne broke its record February temperature by a full 3°C to hit 46.8°C. This was also the day of Australia’s worst ever bush fires, with 173 people killed and 2000 homes destroyed. The Murray-Darling Basin (Australia’s food bowl, with nearly 40% of Australia’s agricultural production based around its waters) has been in so-called ‘drought’ since 2002. Flow levels are now down to 5% of their long-term average. As a result, it’s now assumed that the globally significant wetlands and lake system at the river’s mouth will face ecological collapse over the next few years.

And now there’s a new report out in Australia, featured in the Guardian on Wednesday, (‘Managing Our Coastal Zones in a Changing Climate’) which reveals that more than £80 billion of property is at risk from rising sea levels and more frequent storms – and that’s going to send a bit of a shock wave down the backbones of the 80% of Australian citizens who live along the coastline! The report’s principle policy proposal is that there should be a ban on any further development at beach level.

So what’s been the net impact of all these shocks on Australian politics? The victory of Kevin Rudd over John Howard in the most recent general election in Australia was attributed in part to his relatively progressive stance on climate change. But since then, there’s been one set back after another in terms of introducing appropriate policy interventions, with Australia’s mining and coal industries in full-on defensive mode, and its equivalent of the CBI acting exactly like our CBI did under the Neanderthal leadership of Digby Jones a few years ago.

The outcome of which is that Australia is still doing very little on climate change, and has no chance whatsoever of meeting its Kyoto targets. It still pursues its dreams of unbridled affluence, California-style, and is about as far from adopting a leadership role as it is possible to get.

Clearly the shocks to their systems just haven’t been bad enough – which gives us some sense of just how bad future climate shocks are going to have to be to drive any serious transformation.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on October 30, 2009 4:02 PM | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

December 10, 2009 - Booze and bracket-bashing – inside the real Copenhagen ‘junket’

As you read the daily reports from Copenhagen, spare a thought for the hundreds of environmental and development activists out there, keeping the cause of ‘climate justice’ under the noses of government delegations, UN Officials and the media.

It always amuses me when I hear sarcastic journalists refer to these conferences as ‘junkets’ or ‘jamborees’.

In reality they are more like a descent into hell, with delegates surrounded on the one hand by the demons of utter mind-numbing tedium, and on the other by the gremlins of mischievous government delegations intent on emasculating any final agreement.

The formal process is focussed on the draft text, which summarises that agreement with much of its text still in brackets. These brackets can only be removed via unanimous agreement between all government delegations.

It’s often the same ones (from Saudi Arabia onwards!) that stick to their oil-drenched arguments, yielding as little as they can possibly get away with short of total opprobrium descending upon them as other delegations get angrier and angrier.

That goes on for days, until the elected politicians bowl up next week, and it starts all over again.

The only escape for knackered greenies is alcohol, liver-numbing quantities of which are consumed every evening.

That’s what life is like for the poor sods that have to do the work in the formal conference. Far more stimulation is available for those attending the informal, largely NGO conference (the Klimaforum in Copenhagen), buzzing away on the margins of the government negotiations.

Every now and again positive messages flow out of the NGO forum to cause a bit of a stir inside the conference, but nothing like as often or as powerfully as the negative energy flowing in the other direction.

Which is exactly what happened on Tuesday, when a document leaked to the Guardian revealed a ‘secret text’ put together by a group of rich countries (including the UK and the US), which pretty much undermines every single aspect of the tortuous negotiations that have been going on over the last two years.

Inside the conference venue the bracket-bashing goes on uninterrupted. But when something like that happens, everything else goes pear-shaped. Anger, incredulity, rage, despair and dark, demonic humour take over until the alcohol kicks in.

Some junket!

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on December 10, 2009 12:39 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 16, 2009 - The media and climate change contrarians

Here we are, four days away from (all being well!) a new global agreement on man-made climate change, and the front page of the Daily Express carries the following headline: “100 Reasons Why Global Warming is Natural”.

This is getting beyond a joke. I have always argued that it is critical to carry on giving airtime to dissenting scientists who find themselves completely or to some extent out of sympathy with the consensus position brokered by the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change. I am obviously talking here about serious scientists, carrying out their work in good faith, and publishing in properly peer-reviewed journals. That, after all, is how the scientific method works: any scientific hypothesis is only as good as the rigour with which it is put to the test on the basis of potentially conflicting or inconsistent data.

But there are two problems with this, and both relate to the inability of the media to understand the nature of the scientific process, and to act responsibly within that understanding.

First, so much of the dissenting stuff does not emanate from scientists of that kind. Much of it is based on speculation, exaggeration and manipulation of other people’s data. It’s never been published in proper journals, never been subjected to proper peer-review, and completely fails to meet any of the basic tests for “sound science”. Much of it lives and breathes through the blogosphere. And almost all of it is arrant nonsense.

Second, when the science moves on, the contrarians (and the scientifically-illiterate media that love to front those contrarians) refuse to move on at the same time. So yesterday, for instance, The Independent’s Science Editor, Steve Connor, did a brilliant two-page spread demonstrating how the all-time favourite thesis of the contrarians (that climate change is not in any way man-made but is a consequence of variations in solar activity - particularly sunspots) has been comprehensively dismantled since the two principal scientists involved in this theory (Svensmark and Friis-Christensen) first published their findings. And those two have been completely unable to refute the dismantling that has been done.

Without that critical contrarian prop in place, much else falls. But we wouldn’t expect the Daily Express to follow the science that closely, would we?

Which makes it really difficult to go on being “inclusive” about these contrarian views, or indeed tolerant of the malign media forces that sustain them.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on December 16, 2009 10:27 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

February 5, 2010 - Time to press the panic button?

Apologies for the six weeks blog-oliday. Put it down to Copenhagen blues!

I’m still reeling from the surreal sight of Lord Whacko Monckton (the climate contrarians’ eccentric of choice), captured on Newsnight last night doing an imitation of Al Gore at a public meeting in Australia. Frightening stuff.

Whenever I see Monckton at work, it reminds me just how desperate people must be to have their doubts and prejudices about climate change affirmed by some public figure – indeed, by any public figure at this stage of the debate.

The politics of climate change in Australia are even worse that they are here in the UK. That may well be, paradoxically, because changes in their own micro-climates over the last 10 years have been so much more visible. And painful. And this has polarised the debate about whether these changes are primarily a consequence of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, or primarily natural climate variability. The end result is that the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, might have to call a general election to break the impasse on his proposals for a carbon-trading scheme.

Could it get that bad here in the UK? Very improbably, but the whole tenor of the debate has deteriorated so badly, so rapidly, that it's now a serious political headache, rather than a minor irritant.

The combination of the ‘climate gate’ fiasco at the University of East Anglia and the growing concerns about the workings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), broader concerns of the whole peer review process (the so-called ‘Gold Standard’ of scientific research), and the utter failure of Copenhagen has transformed the climate debate here in the UK.

Where they were once thought as contrarian outliers, both the Daily Mail and the Daily Express are now thought to be closely aligned with public opinion. Ed Miliband (the Secretary of State in the Dept of Energy and Climate Change) must be in despair.

So should we be pressing the panic button? I think we should. The damage done to the credibility not just of climate science but also of the UK’s entire approach to climate change is already serious – and getting worse. This could be extremely problematic in the run up to the general election.

So if I was Gordon Brown, I would be asking David Cameron and Nick Clegg to issue a joint invitation to Martin Rees, the President of the Royal Society, asking him to convene a high-level Scientific Panel to comment on ‘the state of the science’ two years from the publication of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report at the end of 2007.

Does it still stack up? What should people make of all these recent revelations? Is the Climate Change Act (to which all three political parties have signed up) still based on robust scientific foundations? Can people still have confidence in the way climate science drives climate policy?

Martin Rees would be asked to recruit three or four top scientists (reflecting different shades of opinion), a couple of business people (like James Dyson or Richard Lambert of the CBI), and a couple of scientifically-literate ‘pillars of the community’ in whom the general public has absolute trust. No NGOs, let alone campaigners!

Give them two months. Bang out a short, sharp report written for lay people, not for scientists. Blitz the media. Run a full-page ad in the Mail and Express for weeks on end – instead of today’s highly questionable ‘Act on CO2 ‘ ads.

Overkill? Possibly. It seems ludicrous that what is still by any standards a rock-solid scientific consensus should have to be shored up by such extreme measures. But if we don’t, might we be looking at an Aussie-style meltdown in public opinion in the near term?

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on February 5, 2010 4:27 PM | | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

March 18, 2010 - The war of words over home-produced electricity feed-in tariffs could cost dearly

On March 2nd, Guardian columnist George Monbiot launched an extraordinary attack on feed-in tariffs and on solar photovoltaics (PV) in particular. Even for George, who has honed his invective skills to a fine point over the years, his language was remarkably intemperate: “pricey conceit … great green rip-off… scam…comically inefficient…squandering the public’s money…perfectly useless… a swindle…blinded by sentiment” etc, etc.

A lot of this seemed to be aimed, very personally, at Jeremy Leggett, Executive Chairman of Solarcentury. For years, Jeremy has been flying the flag for the UK solar industry and for the benefits for introducing the kind of feed-in tariffs that have transformed the renewable energy scene in many other countries.

Within a couple of days, Jeremy had mounted a robust defence of PV, feed-in tariffs and the importance of maintaining a long-term perspective. Citing 13 examples of inaccuracy, misrepresentation and hyperbole (reinforced by a further 12 points following up on a response from George), he has set out to set the record straight.

Over the weekend I spent a happy hour reading through this four-phase battle, point by point. It matters. There’s a lot resting on the success of these feed-in tariffs, and that in turn depends on trust on the part of the general public. A George Monbiot polemic is purpose-built to undermine that trust.

I really admire George. He’s a brilliant campaigning journalist, and a deep, persistent thorn in the side of today’s political and business elites. I often end up reading his Guardian articles metaphorically punching the air at the blows that he’s landed – on my behalf, as it were. This week’s article on biodiversity here in the UK is hugely impactful.

But I’m sorry to say, on this occasion, that he’s way out of line. Jeremy Leggett’s detailed refutation of so much of what he was claiming in the original article demonstrates just how poor George’s initial research was, and how (on this occasion, at least) his love of adopting deliberately controversialist positions simply overwhelmed basic journalistic standards.

This too is a serious matter. As one or two bloggers have already pointed out, if he’s got it this badly wrong on feed-in tariffs, what’s to say he hasn’t got it equally wrong on other critical issues?

One of the talking points for me was that George declined on a number of occasions to meet with Jeremy and talk all this through – despite knowing full well the impact his article would have. More than anything else, this reveals a streak of know-it-all arrogance that has always been there in George, but which he usually keeps under control.

But rather than take my word, why don’t you check it out for yourself on the Guardian and Jeremy’s own websites. If nothing else, it will help you get your head around the complexities of feed-in tariffs.

George Monbiot's article http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff
Jeremy Leggett's response http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/mar/09/george-monbiot-bet-solar-pv or http://www.jeremyleggett.net/solar-revolution/

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on March 18, 2010 2:35 PM | | Comments (29) | TrackBacks (0)

April 22, 2010 - Worse than the worst case

There’s a great episode of The Simpsonswhich has been much in my mind this week. Lisa Simpson is asked by her teacher to do an essay on what her hometown of Springfield would look like in 2050. Lisa’s vision is a decidedly gloomy one, with most of Springfield under water as a direct consequence of accelerating climate change and rising sea levels. Her teachers are so appalled that they decide the best thing they can do is prescribe for Lisa a course of ‘Ignorital’ to ensure that she puts all her worst fears behind her!

I encounter a lot of people who have clearly been on ‘Ignorital’ for quite a long time – and I sometimes wonder whether I’m self-medicating myself when I’m not concentrating! I find it hard to imagine what life would be like if I had genuinely come to the irrevocable conclusion that it was too late to do anything serious about preventing runaway climate change. I can’t imagine how I would persist with (let alone continue to feel excited by) the kind of advocacy work that I spend most of my life doing with Forum for the Future and the Prince of Wales’s Business & the Environment Programme.

For me, this has been an ongoing internal dialogue for at least the last five years. It gets a little bit more painful, every year, with spikes of self-doubt obliging me to keep on checking the state of the science.

And having just finished reading Clive Hamilton’s excellent (but deeply disturbing!) Requiem for a Species, I’m now going to have to think it all through all over again.

Clive is one of those who has come to the conclusion that it is indeed too late – whatever we now do – to ensure that average temperature increases can be held below that 2C degree threshold by the end of the century.

The truth of it is that this is a view that is gaining ground amongst more and more scientists and informed commentators. The worst case in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assumes emissions of greenhouse gases increasing by 2.5% per annum. In fact, they are currently increasing by 3% per annum.

What’s more, that ‘worst case scenario’ takes no account of what are known as ‘natural feedback loops’ – where natural systems (such as the permafrost in the Arctic, or rainforests in the Amazon) begin to ‘adapt’ as a direct consequence of the warming that we humans have already set in train. And there’s now growing evidence of these feedback loops beginning to kick in.

The IPCC has estimated the temperature increase that would result from its worst case as going as high as 4.6C degrees . More than twice the 2C degree threshold. And it’s worth bearing in mind here that at 3C degrees, the Greenland Ice Sheet is definitively in irreversible meltdown.

We know all this. It’s the kind of analysis that underpined the Kyoto Protocol all those years ago, and which now informs the UK’s Climate Change Act and other policy interventions. But Clive Hamilton argues that:

“Despite our pretensions to rationality, scientific facts are fighting against more powerful forces. Apart from institutional factors that have prevented early action – the power of industry, the rise of money politics, and bureaucratic inertia, we have never really believed the dire warnings of the scientists. Unreasoning optimism is one of humankind’s greatest virtues and most dangerous foibles”.

The reasons not to subscribe to the ‘too late’ hypothesis get just a little bit weaker every year. Countervailing scientific (and majority) opinion indicates that we’ve still got a ‘window of time’ to ensure first that emissions peak as soon as possible and then reduce dramatically from that point on. That still allows us to think that we might manage this transition into an ultra low-carbon world without the traumatic dislocation that is otherwise going to beset us.

This countervailing view depends, of course, on the assumption that the politicians will be able to do what needs to be done before that window comes crashing down on us.

I haven’t entirely given up on that possibility. Clive has. With painful intensity, he describes how he went through that barrier himself, renouncing spurious optimism and ending up in profound mourning for the loss of hope, for his children, for the Earth, for the future of humankind – hence the Requiem.

He is still sympathetic to those still on the other side of that line of hopefulness, but indirectly challenges our integrity:

“Denial requires a wilful mis-reading of the science, a romantic view of the ability of political institutions to respond, or face divine intervention. Climate Pollyannas adopt the same tactic as doom-mongers but in reverse: instead of taking a very small risk of disaster and exaggerating it, they take a very high risk of disaster and minimise it”.

But it is not all as bleak as it may sound. Following Joanna Macy’s powerful dictum, “Despair, Accept, Act”, the book ends with a very positive message as to how we just need to re-orientate ourselves in this more realistic world.

But all very challenging stuff.


Clive Hamilton’s Requiem for a Species; Why we resist the truth about Climate Change is published by Earthscan

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on April 22, 2010 1:00 PM | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

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