How are we to deal with climate change? If you had asked that question 10 years ago the answer would have been simple: plant lots of trees.
If, however, you had asked that same question four years ago you would have been told that nuclear energy and wind farms were the solution. More recently still you might have got yet a third set of answers: biofuels, carbon capture and trading.
Each of these apparent answers has had or is having its 15 minutes of fame. However, the reality is that none of them has actually achieved anything much in terms of cutting carbon emissions. Take that tree-planting craze. In the late 1990s and early 2000s billions of pounds were invested in forestry projects around the world in the belief that they would suck carbon dioxide from the air and make everything all right again.
Then someone asked what might happen when the trees died and all that carbon was released. The bubble popped.
Nuclear energy was one of the biggest next “solutions”. A decade ago it seemed finished but thanks to a clever lobbying campaign by the nuclear industry it dominated the 2005 election campaign and has remained on the agenda ever since.
Nuclear energy could indeed make a difference – but not on the scale that the industry would like us to believe. Just a third of the 670m tons of CO2 Britain emits each year comes from the power sector, and nuclear comprises just a fifth of that. If we doubled our capacity it would make only a small dent.
Even the most apparently promising of technologies, the construction of wind farms, is proving to be an illusion. As fast as we build them the demand for energy rises and sucks that renewable power away. It means that, instead of substituting green power for fossil fuels, wind farms are just meeting the extra demand generated by our increasingly gadget-packed homes and expanding economy.
There is even an argument that by meeting growing demand with a heavily subsidised supply we are keeping prices artificially low – and so guaranteeing that demand will keep rising.
More recently we have seen a similar hype over biofuels, only to realise that growing crops for fuel raises food prices for the world’s poorest people. Carbon sequestration – which involves capturing carbon from smokestacks or other emissions and then burying it, probably underground – is promising but it will take decades to put in place on the scale required.
What lies behind this cycle of hype followed by disappointment?
At the heart of the problem lies a simple delusion. We have all convinced ourselves that our energy profligacy is a natural and undeniable entitlement. In fact we want more of it – as witnessed by the surging demand for more power, more air travel and more cars.
In reality, however, we are living through a unique period of history: a time when carbon-based fossil fuels are plentiful and cheap. Does this endless search for a technical fix to guarantee those energy supplies and save us from climate change reflect our psychological inability to accept that this wonderful party might be coming to an end?
Such flawed thinking is leading us into contradictions at every level. As individuals we might recycle our rubbish, switch our gadgets off rather than leave them on standby and even avoid using disposable plastic bags. These things do make a tiny difference. But millions of us will also fly all over the world on holiday, drive thousands of miles a year and eat food flown to our tables from farms the other side of the globe. The carbon generated by such activities makes all those small savings meaningless. Recycling 150 plastic bags, for example, will save about 2kg of CO2 flying to New York will generate about two tons.
At government level the contradictions are even more blinding. Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have made speeches declaring climate change to be the biggest threat mankind has ever faced. Yet both men have approved huge expansions to our road network and airports.
What’s more, Brown’s government is poised to approve something that will utterly undermine his claim to leadership on climate change: a new generation of coal-fired power stations.
The green lobby plays along with the same delusions and doublespeak. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds pontificates about climate change but its membership magazine carries adverts for long-haul bird-watching holidays. The National Trust’s business model is based on encouraging members to drive long distances to visit its properties. Many leaders of green groups have admitted flying on holiday even while calling for cuts in aviation.
What we are witnessing is a slow realisation about taking climate change seriously. As individuals it means making less use of cars, aircraft, central heating and so on. For businesses it means changing the way we work – and recognising that a low carbon economy presents as many opportunities as obstacles.
For governments, above all, it means showing genuine leadership. It also means accepting that there really is no way of reconciling genuine climate change policies with new runways, roads and coal-fired power stations.
The first step is simply to realise that there is no technological saviour about to come galloping over the horizon. Adapting to global warming is no longer about changing our technologies: it is about changing our minds.
Jonathan Leake