There is a problem with the climate crisis that effects are locked-in before they are noticed. For example, we are basically at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels now but it is likely that 2.0C is already “locked-in” so that if we were to stop all emission of climate gases now, we would still reach 2.0C. This is a serious problem because it means that real, effective change to avoid climate disaster is likely to be to late. That raises the question is it worth the bother trying to prevent further climate disaster and the planet becoming uninhabitable: if it’s wasted effort shouldn’t we just enjoy our final years instead?
22.35pm GMT There’s more to it than that. There’s the problem that the climate-destroyers are in ascendance and now blatantly disregarding climate destruction. It’s then more of a question should we continue campaigning if we’re not being effective, achieving. I consider that we are achieving and the situation would be worse otherwise. It appears that we are achieving in UK despite Ed Miliband being so taken with the carbon capture false solution promoted by fossil fuels.
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy.
There are plenty of ways we could enter a new global crisis. One might stem from a pandemic, a cyber attack, or any one of the current wars escalating out of control. Already underway, though, is the crisis of accelerating climate change.
That unfolding global catastrophe has long existed but is becoming more urgent week by week, as climate scientists issue increasingly strident warnings over what is happening and we see hard evidence in the form of extreme weather around the world.
The crisis is not remotely being met by the changes required to turn things around, and certainly not by the essential rapid economic decarbonisation.
The one saving grace is that there may still be time to make the changes, which raises the question of whether individual countries can push them forward. In a previous openDemocracy column, I briefly explored this question in relation to the UK, which was thought to be in a strong position to push change last July, when the apparently climate-focussed Labour Party had just won the general election.
Yet within a few months, there was bitter disappointment among climate activists and many others as Labour’s plans were scaled down and replaced by the dominant theme of ‘growth at almost any price’.
But, still, it is worth taking a more thorough look at what could be done by a country such as the UK – which is wealthy and has huge national potential for developing renewable energy resources – if it had a government determined to respond to climate breakdown in time.
We start with the need to implement an immediate and sustained acceleration of wind and solar power at a considerable scale, effectively trebling the rate of development within at most a couple of years. It will be supported by heavy investment in the power grid and by expanding the national skills base.
In parallel to this, the UK should immediately begin national investment in home and workplace insulation, as well as increasing the use of solar panels and solar thermal systems.
The experience of the late Noughties and early 2010s is relevant here, showing how modest fiscal measures can act as effective catalysts for wider progress. Before leaving office in 2010, Labour had set out to encourage home-based solar panels with a generous feed-in tariff system. That scheme survived and indeed thrived during the 2010-15 coalition government, mainly because of the Liberal Democrats’ insistence, but collapsed when the Conservatives came to power in 2015 and cut it back.
The UK could also speed up the transition from petrol and diesel transport to electric power, coupled with much-increased investment in public transport. There are many other steps to take relating to issues such as methane emissions and food production, but these are also areas where investment will pay off handsomely.
Of course, even if we succeed in curbing carbon dioxide emissions, it will take at least another 30 years to reverse the effects they’ve had, so we will need to invest heavily in the many resources needed to minimise the impact of storms, floods and wildfires to come. Coping with these will require increases in emergency services, which can be aided by a substantial change in the role of the military.
One eye should be kept on Donald Trump and the likely damage he and his people will do in the next four years. As well as head-hunting sacked US climate researchers (which will do much to restore optimism across the whole climate science community), the UK and other rich nations can do much to plug the research gaps that will inevitably emerge as the US president uses his wrecking ball.
We should at least treble our funding for key research into the whole global ecosystem, including atmospheric, oceanographic and polar studies and those in relatively under-researched regions of the world. Funding for carbon capture and storage, meanwhile, should be scaled back, as this will take far too long to have an impact.
A further task will be to boost the transition to renewables across the more marginalised parts of the Global South, especially if that enables states to make the transition to low-carbon economies by leap-frogging their current mix of energy uses.
All of this will be hugely beneficial in straight political terms, with the impact increasingly obvious within two or three years. Energy prices will fall, fuel poverty will ease, and effective political leadership will act as an effective catalyst. The UK would get a reputation for a truly relevant response to a manifest global security challenge.
The costs will not be exorbitant, either. Money could be redirected from the military, which is expected to cost UK taxpayers £59.8bn over the next financial year, up from £56.9, despite climate breakdown exceeding just about every other security challenge facing us.
There are plenty of other sources of funding, too. One symbolic if small option would be to remove all subsidies for fossil fuel production and transfer them to renewables. A more substantial one would be to increase efforts to prevent tax avoidance, and beyond that will be to greatly increase the control of illegal tax evasion, including the myriad forms of tax havens in which the UK is a world leader.
Beyond that there is plenty of scope to increase tax on those best able to bear it, undoing the cuts made under Thatcher in the 1980s, when the top rate of tax was slashed from 83% to 40% and even now is only 45%. Given the obscene levels of wealth that we have in 21st century Britain, largely down to the changes of those Thatcher years, just a thousand people now possess close to a trillion pounds of wealth. That surely calls for the introduction of substantial wealth taxes.
Devil’s advocates might say that the changes required are too big and too expensive, but that misses one key point. A decade or two ago, one might have reasonably argued that we needed proof that something was going wrong before we took such ‘extreme’ action. But we can now see with our own eyes that climate breakdown is happening.
This point will only be reinforced every time a catastrophic weather event hits any part of the world. The UK could be at the forefront of the necessary transformation that has to come globally. It could finally have found a worthwhile post-imperial role.
Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, has asked Ofgem to crack down on inaccurate and large bills. Photograph: Ina Fassbender/AFP/Getty Images
Exclusive: Whitehall source expects bills in England, Scotland and Wales to rise by about £9 a month over the next three months
Ed Miliband has urged the energy watchdog to take swift action as it emerged that the typical energy bill could soar by more than £100 a year amid a rise in global gas prices.
A Whitehall source said they expected bills in England, Scotland and Wales to increase by about £9 a month over the next three months in another challenge to government plans to tackle the cost of living.
They blamed volatile global gas prices linked to the end of the transit deal that enabled gas to flow to Europe, through Ukraine, from Russia.
Miliband, the energy secretary, has written an urgent letter to Ofgem, saying the price rise means the energy regulator must move faster to protect consumers.
This month, gas prices hit a two-year high, exacerbated by the lack of gas storage in Britain and Europe, combined with colder weather though prices have begun to stabilise. Cornwall Insight, a consultancy which produces closely watched forecasts for the energy price cap, is set to release its latest forecast on Tuesday.
Gwynt y Mor, the world’s 2nd largest offshore wind farm located eight miles offshore in Liverpool Bay, off the coast of North Wales
NEW public cash for green energy may be a “step in the right direction” but is “nowhere near enough” to meet the government’s own jobs and manufacturing targets, unions warned today.
The rebuke came as Energy Secretary Ed Miliband invited applications to the £200 million Clean Energy Bonus scheme, offering financial support for green developers on condition they funnel investments and jobs into into areas suffering from deprivation or reliant on the fossil fuel sector.
The government had set targets to boost domestic production in the green supply chain by 60 per cent by 2030, hoping to create 35,000 jobs in areas essential to a transition from fossil fuels, which are often reliant on imports such as wind blades and transmission cables.
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TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “We should be making the towers, foundation and cables for zero carbon energy here – instead of paying other countries and importing them.
“The Clean Industry Bonus is an essential step in this direction. It will help the North Sea workforce find good quality, secure jobs and boost UK industry.”
Protests against the Rosebank oilfield in Edinburgh in 2024. Labour pledged in its manifesto to halt new North Sea licensing, but Rosebank was awaiting final approval when the party won the general election. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Lobbyists argued it was unfair for their industry to be treated the same as others as end product – oil and gas – inevitably produced emissions
Experts have accused the fossil fuel industry of seeking special treatment after lobbyists argued greenhouse gas emissions from oilfields should be treated differently to those from other industries.
The government is embroiled in a row over whether to allow a massive new oilfield, Rosebank, to go ahead, with some cabinet members arguing it could boost growth and others concerned it could make the goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 impossible to reach. Labour made a manifesto commitment to halt new North Sea licensing, but Rosebank and some other projects had already been licensed and were awaiting final approval when the party won the general election.
Documents seen by the Guardian show the industry group Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) asking for Rosebank and other oilfields’ “scope three emissions” – those caused by the burning of extracted oil and gas – to be treated differently because that was the point of their business.
A court case recently found the licence granted to Rosebank by the previous government was unlawful as it failed to take these emissions into account.
