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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
"A landmark study in the struggle to contain climate change, the greatest challenge of our era. I urge everyone to read it." --Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States of America Since it first appeared, this book has achieved a classic status. Reprinted many times since its publication, it remains the only work that looks in detail at the political issues posed by global warming. This new edition has been thoroughly updated and provides a state-of-the-art discussion of the most formidable challenge humanity faces this century. If climate change goes unchecked, the consequences are likely to be catastrophic for human life on earth. Yet for most people and for many policy-makers too, it tends to be a back-of-the-mind issue. We recognize its importance and even its urgency, but for the most part it is swamped by more immediate concerns. Political action and intervention on local, national and international levels are going to have a decisive effect on whether or not we can limit global warming as well as how we adapt to that already occurring. However, at the moment, argues Giddens, we do not have a systematic politics of climate change. Politics-as-usual won't allow us to deal with the problems we face, while the recipes of the main challenger to orthodox politics, the green movement, are flawed at source. Giddens introduces a range of new concepts and proposals to fill in the gap, and examines in depth the connections between climate change and energy security.
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THE POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Books by Anthony Giddens:
Capitalism and Modern Social Theory
Politics and Sociology in the Thought of Max Weber
The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies
New Rules of Sociological Method
Studies in Social and Political Theory
Emile Durkheim
Central Problems in Social Theory
A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism
Sociology: A Brief but Critical Introduction
Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory
The Constitution of Society
The Nation-State and Violence
Durkheim on Politics and the State
Social Theory and Modern Sociology
The Consequences of Modernity
Modernity and Self-Identity
The Transformation of Intimacy
Beyond Left and Right
Reflexive Modernization (with Ulrich Beck and Scott Lash)
Politics, Sociology and Social Theory
In Defence of Sociology
The Third Way
Runaway World
The Third Way and its Critics
Where Now for New Labour?
Europe in the Global Age
Over to You, Mr Brown
Sociology Sixth Edition
Edited Works:
Emile Durkheim: Selected Writings
Positivism and Sociology
Elites and Power in British Society (with Philip Stanworth)
Classes, Conflict and Power
Classes and the Division of Labour
Social Theory Today
Human Societies
On the Edge: Living with Global Capitalism (with Will Hutton)
The Global Third Way Debate
The Progressive Manifesto
The New Egalitarianism (with Patrick Diamond)
Global Europe, Social Europe (with Patrick Diamond and Roger Liddle)
THE POLITICS OFCLIMATE CHANGE
Second Edition, Revised and Updated
Anthony Giddens
polity
Copyright © Anthony Giddens 2011
The right of Anthony Giddens to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2011 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5464-5
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Climate Change, Risk and Danger
The sceptics and their critics
The ‘climate wars’
The radicals
Conclusion
2 Running Out, Running Down?
Peak oil
Sweating the assets
The struggle for resources
3 The Greens and After
The greens
Managing risk: the precautionary principle
‘Sustainable development’
Over-development
Polluter pays
Ungreen themes
The politics of climate change: concepts
4 The Track Record So Far
Sweden, Germany and Denmark
Spain and Portugal
The case of the UK
Climate change policy and the US
Lessons to be drawn
5 A Return to Planning?
Planning, then and now
Changing lives
Foregrounding
A political concordat
State and society: business and the NGOs
6 Technologies and Taxes
Technologies: where we stand
The role of government
Promoting job creation
Carbon taxes
Carbon rationing
The re-emergence of utopia
7 The Politics of Adaptation
Adaptation in the context of Europe
Floods in the UK
Insurance, hurricanes and typhoons
Adaptation: the developing world
8 International Negotiations, the EU and Carbon Markets
Further negotiations
The role of the EU
Carbon markets
9 The Geopolitics of Climate Change
An illusory world community?
The bottom billion
Oil and geopolitics
Coalitions and collaborations
The US and China
India and Brazil
In conclusion: why we still need the UN
Afterword
Notes
References
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work grew out of my involvement in a project organized under the auspices of the think-tank Policy Network and the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics. I should like to thank my colleagues in both institutions for their help and advice during the writing process. My gratitude is due in particular to Roger Liddle, Olaf Cramme, Simon Latham and Jade Groves at Policy Network; and to David Held at the Centre. Anne de Sayrah helped the project in more ways than I can count. Karen Birdsall did a marvellous job for the first edition, checking footnotes and assembling the bibliography. Olaf Corry provided some important feedback on a draft manuscript. I owe an especially large debt to Hugh Compston, who commented in a meticulous way on an early version of the book; and to Johanna Juselius, who did the same at a later point. Victor Philip Dahdaleh generously provided the funding for the collective project, so a big vote of thanks to him. I am indebted to everyone at Polity Press, including especially John Thompson, Gill Motley (as always), Sarah Lambert and Emma Hutchinson. I would like to thank Emma in particular for her attention to detail and for the amount of work she put into the project. Sarah was unfailingly helpful in preparing this new edition. Olaf Corry provided further critical comments. Special gratitude is due to Anna Wishart, whose help and involvement were invaluable; Anna made a major contribution in particular to the section on the US in chapter 4. Tom Hale provided a very valuable critical reading of the manuscript. Sarah Dancy has done an excellent copy-editing job on both editions. I dedicate the work to Indie and Matilda, definitely members of the younger generation, in the hope that it might contribute a little to making the world in which they will grow up less daunting.
INTRODUCTION
This is a book about nightmares, catastrophes – and dreams. It is also about the everyday, the routines that give our lives continuity and substance. It is about the warming of our planet – a phenomenon which, if it proceeds unchecked, constitutes an existential threat to our civilization. The changes we are wreaking on the world’s climate will produce increasingly extreme and erratic weather, subject large areas of the globe to drought and eventually make them uninhabitable. Rising ocean levels will have the same effect upon low-lying coastal zones.
The book is a prolonged enquiry into a single question. Why do most people, most of the time, act as though a threat of such magnitude can be ignored? Almost everyone across the world must have heard the phrases ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ and know at least a bit about what they mean. The two terms can be used interchangeably. They refer to the fact that the greenhouse gas emissions produced by modern industry are causing the earth’s climate to warm up, with potentially devastating consequences for the future. Yet the vast majority of people are doing very little, if anything at all, to alter their daily habits, even though those habits are the source of the dangers in store for us.
It is not as if climate change is creeping up on us unawares. On the contrary, large numbers of books have been written about it and its likely consequences. Serious worries about the warming of the earth’s climate were expressed for a quarter of a century or more without making much of an impact. Within the past few years the issue has jumped to the forefront of discussion and debate, not just in this or that country, but across the world. Yet, as collective humanity, we are only just beginning to take the steps needed to respond to the threats that we and succeeding generations are confronting. Global warming is a problem unlike any other, however, both because of its scale and because it is mainly about the future. Many have said that to cope with it we will need to mobilize on a level comparable to fighting a war; but in this case there are no enemies to identify and confront. We are dealing with dangers that seem abstract and elusive, however potentially devastating they may be.
No matter how much we are told about the threats, it is hard to face up to them, because they feel somehow unreal – and, in the meantime, there is a life to be lived, with all its pleasures and pressures. The politics of climate change has to cope with what I call Giddens’s paradox – a theme that appears throughout this text. It states that, since the dangers posed by global warming aren’t tangible, immediate or visible in the course of day-to-day life, many will sit on their hands and do nothing of a concrete nature about them. Yet waiting until such dangers become visible and acute – in the shape of catastrophes that are irrefutably the result of climate change – before being stirred to serious action will be too late. For we know of no way of getting the greenhouse gases out again once they are there and most will be in the atmosphere for centuries.
Giddens’s paradox affects almost every aspect of current reactions to climate change. It is the reason why, for most citizens, climate change is a back-of-the-mind issue rather than a front-of-the-mind one. Attitude surveys show that many of the public accept that global warming is a major threat; yet only a few are willing to alter their lives in any significant way as a result. Among elites, climate change lends itself to gestural politics – grandiose-sounding plans largely empty of content.
What social psychologists call ‘future discounting’ further accentuates Giddens’s paradox – more accurately, one could say it is a sub-category of it. People find it hard to give the same level of reality to the future as they do to the present. Thus a small reward offered now will normally be taken in preference to a much larger one offered at some remove. The same principle applies to risks. Why do many young people take up smoking even though they are well aware that, as it now says on cigarette packets, ‘smoking kills’? At least part of the reason is that, for a teenager, it is almost impossible to imagine being 40, the age at which the real dangers start to take hold and become life-threatening.
There is a high level of agreement among scientists that climate change is real and dangerous, and that it is caused by human activity. A small minority of scientists, however – the climate change ‘sceptics’ – dispute these claims, and they get a good deal of attention in the media. Many other, less expert, contributors have taken their side. Someone can always say, ‘it’s not proven, is it?’ if it be suggested that he should change his profligate ways. Another response might be: ‘I’m not going to change unless others do.’ Yet another reaction could be: ‘Nothing that I do, as a single individual, will make any difference.’ Or else he could say, ‘I’ll get round to it sometime’, because one shouldn’t underestimate the sheer force of habit. I would suggest that even the most sophisticated and determined environmentalist struggles with the fact that, under the shadow of future cataclysm, there is a life to be lived within the constraints of the here-and-now.
Politicians have woken up to the scale and urgency of the problem and many countries have recently introduced ambitious climate change policies. Over the past few years, a threshold has been crossed: most political leaders are now aware of the hazards posed by global warming and the need to respond to them. Yet this is just the first wave – the bringing of the issue onto the political agenda. The second wave must involve embedding it in our institutions and in the everyday concerns of citizens, and here, for reasons just mentioned, there is a great deal of work to do. The international community is on board, at least in principle. Negotiations aimed at limiting global warming have taken place at meetings organized by the United Nations, in an attempt to get global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. They are still continuing, but have produced little in the way of concrete results so far. There has been far more talk than there has been tangible action.
Much of this book concentrates on climate change policy in the industrial countries. It is these countries that pumped most of the emissions into the atmosphere in the first place, and they have to take prime responsibility for controlling them in the near future. They must take the lead in reducing emissions, moving towards a low-carbon economy and making the social reforms with which these changes will have to be integrated.
We do not as yet have a developed analysis of the political innovations that have to be made if our aspirations to limit global warming are to become real. It is a strange and indefensible absence, which I have written this work to try to repair. My approach is grounded in realism. Some authors say that coping with climate change is too difficult a problem to be dealt with within the confines of orthodox politics. Up to a point I agree with them, since quite profound changes will be required in our established ways of political thinking. Yet we have to work with the institutions that already exist and in ways that respect democracy.
The state will be an all-important actor, since so many powers remain in its hands, whether one talks of domestic or of international policy. There is no way of forcing states to sign up to international agreements; and even if they choose to do so, implementing whatever is agreed will largely be the responsibility of each individual country. Emissions trading markets can only work if the price of carbon is capped, and at a demanding level, a decision that has to be made and implemented politically. The one major supra-national entity that exists, the European Union, is heavily dependent on decisions taken by its member nations, since its control over them is quite limited.
Markets have a much bigger role to play in combating climate change than simply in the area of emissions trading. There are many fields where market forces can produce results that no other agency or framework could manage. In principle, where a price can be put on an environmental good without affronting other values, it should be done, since competition will then create increased efficiency whenever that good is exchanged. However, active state intervention is once again called for. The environmental costs entailed by economic processes often form what economists call ‘externalities’ – they are not paid for by those who incur them. The aim of public policy should be to make sure that, wherever possible, such costs are internalized – that is, brought into the marketplace.
‘The state’, of course, comprises a diversity of levels, including regional, city and local government. In a global era, it operates within the context of what political scientists call multilayered governance, stretching upwards into the international arena and downwards to regions, cities and localities. To emphasize the importance of the state to climate change policy is not to argue for top-down government. On the contrary, the most dramatic initiatives are likely to bubble up from the actions of far-sighted individuals and from the energy of civil society. States will have to work with a variety of other agencies and bodies, as well as with other countries and international organizations, if they are to be effective.
One can’t discuss the politics of climate change without mentioning the green movement, which has been a leading influence on environmental politics for many years. It has had a major impact in forcing the issue of climate change onto the political agenda. ‘Going green’ has become more or less synonymous with endeavours to limit climate change. Yet there are big problems. The green movement has its origins in the hostile emotions that industrialism aroused among the early conservationists. Especially in its latter-day development in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, the greens defined themselves in opposition to orthodox politics. Neither position is especially helpful to the task of integrating environmental concerns into our established political institutions. Most green parties have now joined the mainstream. Yet just what is and what is not valuable in green political philosophies has to be sorted out.
It isn’t possible – or so I shall argue – to endorse any approach which tries in some sense to ‘return to nature’. Conservationism may be a defensible value, but it has nothing intrinsically to do with combating global warming. Indeed, it may even hamper our efforts. As a result of the advance of science and technology, we have long since crossed the boundaries which used to separate us from the natural world. More of the same will be needed, not less, if we are seriously to confront problems of climate change. Partly for this reason, I reject one of the core ideas of the green movement – the precautionary principle: ‘Don’t interfere with nature.’ Moreover, in seeking to stem climate change, no matter what is often said, we are not trying to ‘save the planet’, which will survive whatever we may do. The point is to preserve, and if possible enhance, a decent way of life for human beings on the earth.
The word ‘green’ is in such widespread use that I have no hope of dislodging it. But it is now more of a problem rather than any help when it comes to developing policies to cope with climate change. I shall avoid using the term in what follows.
A whole range of questions has to be asked and answered. I list only a few briefly here. Later in the book, I try to respond to all of them, no doubt with varying degrees of success.
To cope with global warming, a long-term perspective must be introduced into politics, domestically and internationally. There has to be some sort of forward planning. ‘Planning’ is not a word with particularly pleasant connotations, since it conjures up images of authoritarianism on the one hand and ineptness on the other. Planning fell out of favour partly because it was oppressive and partly because it didn’t work. If there is to be a return to such an endeavour, what form should it take?
And then there is the issue of coping with risk and uncertainty. Climate change politics is all about risk and how to manage it, and the notion appears on almost every page of this volume. We can’t know the future; the philosopher Karl Popper used to say that if we could, it wouldn’t be the future. The long-term thinking needed to counter climate change has to operate against the backdrop of uncertainty. It is often possible to assign probabilities to future events; but there are many contexts where existing knowledge is stretched thin and large areas of uncertainty loom. What political strategies are needed to confront this range of problems?
In democratic countries governments come and go. Moreover, in real-life contexts many issues jostle for attention, including immediate questions of the day, which at the time may seem overwhelmingly important. In such circumstances, how is continuity of climate change policy to be maintained? Climate change, I shall argue, is not a left–right issue. There should be no more talk of ‘green being the new red’. A cross-party framework of some kind has to be forged to develop a politics of the long term, but how? Countering climate change will cost money – where will it come from? Countries that are in the vanguard of climate change policy, as the developed countries have to be, could face problems of competitiveness. Their industries could be hampered by having to compete with goods that can be made more cheaply elsewhere where there are no environmental taxes or regulatory restrictions. How big a problem is this likely to be? Certainly, many business firms and employers’ groups have used it as a basis for dragging their heels as far as climate change initiatives are concerned.
Finally, there are many difficult questions surrounding technology. Investment in renewable energy resources is crucial in countering climate change. Yet those resources won’t develop in some sort of automatic way, nor will they be stimulated by the operation of market forces alone. The state has to subsidize them, in order for them to be competitive against fossil fuels and to protect investment in the face of the fluctuations to which the prices of oil and natural gas are subject. Technological change can only be predicted to a limited degree. How should governments decide which technologies to back? Like climate change, energy has suddenly come into the limelight as a fundamental problem for many nations and for the world as a whole. The underlying causes are to some degree the same. The energy needs of the industrial countries have created most of the emissions that are causing global warming. The rapid economic growth of developing nations, especially China and India, given their immense population size, is putting further strain on available energy sources, as well as increasing the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Responding to climate change has to be closely integrated with questions of energy security. It has become conventional to say so these days, but I have been struck by how loosely connected in most writings they actually are.
At what point will the world begin to run out of oil? There is intense discussion about when world oil and gas supplies will peak – in other words, when half or more of them will have been consumed. If the peak in world oil supplies is in fact approaching, then serious problems loom. Modern society is very heavily based upon oil not only insofar as energy is concerned, but also because oil figures in so many of the manufactured goods which figure in people’s lives. Some 90 per cent of the goods in the shops involve the use of oil in one way or another.
Whether oil production is close to peaking or not, we are living in a civilization that, as far as we can determine future risk, looks unsustainable. It isn’t surprising that the past few years have seen the emergence of a doomsday literature, centred on the likelihood of a cataclysmic breakdown. Other civilizations have come and gone; why should ours be sacrosanct?
Yet risk is risk – the other side of danger is always opportunity. We must create a positive model of a low-carbon future – and, moreover, one that connects with ordinary, everyday life in the present. There is no such model at the moment and we have to edge our way towards it. It won’t be a green vision, but one driven by political, social and economic thinking. It can’t be a utopia, but utopian strands will be involved, since they supply ideals to be striven for. A mixture of the idealistic and the hard-headed is required. No quick fix is available to deal with the problems we face – it’s going to be a slog, even with the breakthroughs we need, and in fact must have. The prize, as I shall argue below, is huge. There is another world waiting for us out there if we can find our way to it. It is one where not only climate change has been held at bay, but where oil has lost its capacity to determine the shape of world politics.
Where do we stand at the moment in terms of the risks posed by global warming? What are our chances of limiting or containing them? A great deal hangs, of course, upon our assessment of just how serious those risks actually are. Here we are dependent on the findings, and the prognostications, of science. Perhaps the risks have been exaggerated and we haven’t got too much to worry about? Could the sceptics be right to say the dangers are much less than the majority of climatologists believe? The possibility does exist, but it is slim. The scientific findings are very robust, and based on many different types of observation. Moreover, as I shall discuss in what follows, it is at least as likely that the dangers of climate change are actually greater than the majority of scientists think. Unlike most of the sceptics, disturbingly, those who make such arguments are practising scientists – some of them very eminent ones.
Containing climate change is quintessentially an issue that we cannot put off – and yet at the moment we are doing just that. The volume of greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere continues to mount. Since current trends are out of kilter with what is needed if we are to bring emissions under control, we are essentially looking for breakthroughs. Where might they occur?
They could happen at the international level. The role of leaders is to lead, and where necessary to be well ahead of most of the citizens they serve. There are at least some encouraging signs. Until recently, the leaders of the developing countries argued that reducing emissions should be solely a concern of the industrial states, which got rich on the basis of the indiscriminate use of fossil fuels. That attitude has now changed rather dramatically. It is still incumbent on the developed countries to accept the main responsibility. However, the leaders of some of the large emerging economies, most notably China and Brazil, now accept that their countries have a key role to play. It is possible that in some ways they could come to be in the vanguard, as China already is in terms of investment in certain areas of renewable technology.
There might be breakthroughs in the economic conditions affecting low-carbon technologies, hence transforming the energy field. The Middle East is the site of about a third of the world’s recoverable oil. For a century or so, Western, and then more specifically American, power maintained a certain stability in the otherwise volatile region – and protected the flow of oil. The price of oil never remotely reflected the true economic cost of keeping that flow going – billions of dollars were spent on sustaining that military and diplomatic presence. That situation is currently unravelling, hopefully as part of a process of the democratization of countries that had become frozen in time. The price of oil could rise, and stay high, whether through protracted instability in the region, or other factors. Such an outcome could possibly give a dramatic new impetus to concerns about energy security, and hence to much greater investment in renewable technologies.
There could be breakthrough innovations in various areas of technology. Technological innovation, at least of a far-reaching kind, is not itself always, perhaps not even usually, predictable. The history of technology shows that most transformative innovations came out of the side-field. Their inventors initially had no idea of the impact they came to have – this was true of the cluster of innovations that created the internet, for example. So innovation relevant to climate change policy could come from anywhere, and be of a form that no one has even thought of as yet. Short of that, there are some areas where it is known that advances could make a major impact. For instance, if it became possible to store electricity cheaply and on a large scale, it would make an enormous difference, given the intermittent nature of some low-carbon energy sources. If nuclear fusion suddenly became a reality, it could provide endless cheap, renewable energy. A further possibility is so-called geo-engineering, above all discovering some way of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere on a large scale.
There could be an event, or set of events, clearly attributable to climate change, that cause a surge in activism around the world. These might be weather episodes which, while falling short of the cataclysmic, stimulate a breakthrough in consciousness. It is hard to think how such a scenario could avoid Giddens’s paradox; but it is possible that unusual and extreme weather in a particular region could become a driving force of activism there, which could then spread elsewhere.
Finally, these possibilities could combine in various ways. Could, could, could – the ‘coulds’ indicate the open nature of the future, but no amount of ‘could happens’ necessarily add up to a ‘will happen’. In the meantime, humanity lives in the shadow of risks that are real, unprecedented and all the more dangerous because the changes they signal appear irrevocable. Chapter 1 looks at these risks in more detail.
1
CLIMATE CHANGE, RISKAND DANGER
Our understanding of the origins of global warming in current times dates back to the work of the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier in the early part of the nineteenth century. Energy reaches the earth from the sun in the shape of sunlight; it is absorbed and is radiated back into space as infrared glow. When Fourier calculated the differential between the energy coming in and that going out as infrared radiation, he found that the planet should, in theory, be frozen. He concluded that the atmosphere acts like a mantle, keeping a proportion of the heat in – and thus making the planet liveable for humans, animals and plant life. Fourier speculated that carbon dioxide (CO2) could act as a blanket in the atmosphere, trapping heat and causing surface temperatures to increase.
Later observers, most notably John Tyndall, a scientist working at the Royal Institution in London, worked out just which atmospheric elements trap infrared. The gases that make up most of the atmosphere, nitrogen and oxygen, offer no barrier to heat loss. Those producing what came to be called the greenhouse effect, such as water vapour, CO2 or methane, are only present in relatively small amounts. Scientists use the calculation of ‘parts per million’ (ppm) to measure the level of greenhouse gases in the air, since the percentage figures are so small. One ppm is equivalent to 0.0001 per cent. It is because a tiny proportion makes such a large impact that greenhouse gases created by human industry can have profound effects on the climate (CO2 makes up less than 0.04 per cent of the composition of the air, and the other greenhouse gases even less). Since CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas in terms of volume, it is sometimes used as a standard of measurement when assessing emissions. The notion of ‘CO2 equivalent’ is also often employed. It is the amount of CO2 emission that would be involved to produce the same output as all the greenhouse gases combined. It is usually written as CO2e.
Over the past 150 years or so, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have progressively increased with the expansion of industrial production. The average world temperature has grown by about 0.8 degrees since 1901. The temperature of the earth is not only rising, it is doing so at an accelerating rate. From 1880 to 1970, global average temperature increased by about 0.03ºC every decade. Over the period since 1970, the increase has averaged 0.13 degrees per decade. Data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the US (NOAA) showed that 2010 tied with 2005 as the warmest year since reliable records began in 1880. Every decade since 1950 has been warmer on average than the one before.
We know from geological studies that world temperatures have fluctuated in the past, and that such fluctuations correlate with CO2 content in the air. The evidence shows, however, that at no time during the past 650,000 years has the CO2 content of the air been as high as it is today. It has always been below 290ppm. By 2010, it had reached 389ppm and is currently rising by some 2ppm each year.
The growth rate for 2010 was 2.14ppm, as measured by scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii. It was the seventh year out of the previous nine to see a rise of more than 2ppm. This increase was considerably higher than scientists at the observatory had expected. It could indicate that the natural sinks of the earth are losing their capacity to absorb greenhouse gases. Most climate change models assume that some half of future emissions will be soaked up by forests and oceans, but this assumption therefore may be too optimistic. Warming is greater over land areas than over the oceans, and is higher at northern latitudes than elsewhere. Very recent studies show that the temperatures of the oceans are rising several times faster than was thought likely a few years ago. Higher temperatures produce more acidity in the water, which could seriously threaten marine life. Warmer seas release more CO2, accelerating the global warming effect.
Figure 1.1 The global surface temperature is rising Global annual average temperature measured over land and oceans. Grey bars indicate temperatures above and black bars indicate temperatures below the 1901–2000 average temperature. The black line shows atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration in parts per million.
Source: NCDC/NOAA
Satellite data, available since 1978, show that the annual average Arctic sea ice coverage is shrinking by nearly 3 per cent per decade, with larger decreases in the summer of over 7 per cent. The Arctic ice-cap is less than half the size it was 50 years ago. Over that time, average temperatures in the Arctic region have increased by about seven degrees, a result of a specific feedback cycle that exists there. The sun’s rays strike the Arctic at a sharper angle than elsewhere over the summer, at a time when the ice is giving way to open water, whichabsorbs more solar radiation. Until recently it was thought that ice-free Arctic summers would occur at some point near the end of the century. However, the actual melting has been faster than was anticipated and appears to be accelerating. Hence summers free of ice might occur much sooner.
Figure 1.2 The sea level is rising Annual averages of global sea level. Light grey: sea level since 1870. Dark grey: tide gauge data. Black: based on satellite observations. The inset shows global mean sea-level rise since 1993 – a period over which sea-level rise has accelerated.
Source: NCDC/NOAA
Commercial trans-Arctic voyages could then be initiated. It would be possible to go from Northern Europe to East Asia or the north-west coast of the US avoiding the Suez and Panama Canals.
Mountain glaciers are retreating in both hemispheres and snow cover is less, on average, than it once was. Sea levels rose over the course of the twentieth century, although there is considerable controversy among scientists about just how much. Warming is likely to intensify the risk of drought in some parts of the world and lead to increased rainfall in others. Evidence indicates that the atmosphere holds more water vapour than used to be the case even a few decades ago – a major influence over unstable weather patterns, including tropical storms and floods. Over the past 40 years, westerly winds have become stronger. Tropical cyclones in the Atlantic have become more frequent and more intense over that period, probably as a result of warming.
Figure 1.3 Glacier volume is shrinking Cumulative decline (in cubic miles) in glacier ice worldwide.
Source: NCDC/NOAA
The most authoritative body monitoring climate change and its implications is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the UN (IPCC), first established in 1988. Hundreds of scientists and reviewers are involved in its major publications; few scientific documents ever can have been subjected to such exhaustive scrutiny. The IPCC has had an enormous impact upon world thinking about global warming. Its declared aims are to gather together as much scientific data about climatic conditions as possible, subject it to rigorous review and reach overall conclusions on the state of scientific opinion. In several authoritative reports, it has mapped the changing world climate in detail, showing that the potential consequences range from the worrying to the disastrous. In the fourth of such reports, published in 2007, the IPCC says, ‘warming of the climate system is unequivocal’. It is the only part of the document where such a term is used. All the rest is couched in terms of probabilities. There is a ’90 per cent probability’ that observed warming is the result of human activity through the introduction of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, these coming from the consumption of fossil fuels in industrial production and travel, and from new forms of land use and agriculture.1 Records of global surface temperature date back to 1850. Since that date, 11 of the hottest years have occurred during the past 13. Observations from all parts of the world show progressive increases in average air and sea temperatures.
Figure 1.4 Energy from the sun has not increased Global surface temperature (top, dark grey) and the sun’s energy received at the top of the earth’s atmosphere (bottom, light grey). Solar energy has been measured by satellites since 1978.
Source: NCDC/NOAA
The IPCC assesses the implications of climate change in terms of a number of different possible scenarios for the period up to the end of the current century. There are six different scenario groups – in other words, future possibilities – depending upon factors such as levels of economic growth, resource scarcities, population increase, the expansion of low-carbon technologies and the intensifying of regional inequalities. Under the most favourable scenario, global warming will still occur, within a range of between 1.1 and 2.9ºC. Sea levels will rise between 18 and 38 centimetres by the end of the century. If, on the other hand, the world continues to run, as is the case now, on oil, gas and coal, and to strive for high levels of economic growth, world temperatures could increase by more than 6ºC by 2100. In these circumstances, the sea level might rise by between 26 and 50 centimetres.
The ‘most probable’ scenario distinguished by the IPCC, in which fossil fuels are quite widely used, but are balanced by cleaner forms of energy generation, and where population growth is brought under control, is still worrying. In this scenario, temperatures could rise by more than 4ºC, with an increase of 48 centimetres in sea levels. There would probably be a decrease in rainfall of 20 per cent in sub-tropical areas, while more rain would fall in the northern and southern latitudes.
The IPCC and the European Commission have both stated that the aim of emissions control policy should be to limit global warming to an average of 2ºC, and that to have even a 50:50 chance of achieving this outcome, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases must be stabilized at 450 CO2e. However, given the existing build-up of emissions, some regard this target as already impossible to achieve.
The effects of climate change are almost certainly already being felt. The 2007 report of the IPCC states that we can assert with ‘High Confidence’ (an 8 in 10 chance or above of being correct) that global warming has led to more and larger glacial lakes, faster rates of melting in permafrost areas in Western Siberia and elsewhere, changes in some Arctic and Antarctic ecosystems, increased and earlier run-off from glacier and snow-fed rivers, earlier springtimes in northern areas and a movement of some plant and animal species towards the poles.2
The IPCC says that resource-based wars could dominate the current century; coastal cities could become flooded, provoking mass destitution and mass migration, and the same could happen as drier areas become more arid. Given their location and lack of resources, the poorer parts of the world will be more seriously affected than the developed countries. Yet the latter will have their share of problems, including more and more episodes of violent weather. The United States, for example, has greater extremes of weather than most other parts of the world and these are likely to intensify further.
The sceptics and their critics
Scenarios are about future possibilities, so it is not surprising that there are those who question them, or who object to the very thesis that current processes of global warming are produced by human activity at all. Since the sceptics are in a minority, they see themselves not only as questioning a broad scientific consensus, but as tilting against a whole industry that has grown up around it.
Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, for example, advance the thesis that ‘modern warming is moderate and not man-made’.3 Their view, they complain, does not get much of a hearing, because of the attention that surrounds the claims made by the IPCC. ‘A public relations campaign of staggering dimensions’, they say, ‘is being carried forward to convince us that global warming is man-made and a crisis . . . environmental advocacy groups, government agencies, and even the media have spared no expense in spreading [the] dire message.’4
For them, there is nothing new about the increasing temperatures observed today. The world’s climate has always been in flux. A moderate but irregular 1,500-year climate change cycle, driven by shifts in sun-spot variations, is well documented by the work of geologists. We are in the warming phase of just such a cycle at the moment. The chief worry we should have for the long-term future is, in fact, a coming ice age, as our relatively mild period draws to a close.
Other climate change sceptics take a somewhat different tack, while also emphasizing that heretical views don’t get much of a hearing, let alone research funding. Patrick Michaels, for instance, claims that the findings and projections of the IPCC are intrinsically flawed.5 Too many individuals and groups, he says, have a stake in predicting disasters and cataclysms to come. Only about a third of those producing the IPCC documentation are in fact scientists; the majority are government bureaucrats. Facts and findings that don’t fit the main storyline are suppressed or ignored.
The Danish author Bjørn Lomborg is often lumped with the sceptics, and indeed entitled his first book on climate change The Skeptical Environmentalist.6 His is an unusual form of scepticism, however. He accepts that global warming is happening and that human activity has brought it about. What is much more debatable, he says, ‘is whether hysteria and headlong spending on extravagant CO2-cutting programmes at an unprecedented price is the only possible response’.7 Lomborg questions the idea that climate change risks must inevitably take precedence over all others. For the moment, world poverty, the spread of AIDS and nuclear weapons pose greater problems.
The arguments upon which Lomborg builds his case have been examined by Howard Friel, in his book The Lomborg Deception. Friel looks at Lomborg’s book citation by citation and finds it seriously wanting. Lomborg’s main thesis (echoed by some others of the more moderate sceptics) is that climate change ‘will not pose a devastating problem for our future’.8 Friel documents how selective are the materials Lomborg cites, as are his interpretations of them.9 Presumably partly in response to such critiques, Lomborg has modified his earlier position, or appears to have done so. In a book published in 2010 he says that ‘we all need to start seriously focussing, right now, on the most effective ways to fix global warming’.10
Other authors, writing about risk more generally rather than only about global warming, have suggested that we live in an ‘age of scares’, of which climate change is one. Our worries and anxieties, as Christopher Booker and Richard North put it, mark the emergence of a ‘new age of superstition’, resembling episodes of mass hysteria in the past, such as the witch-hunts of the post-mediaeval period. Scares, nearly all of which have turned out to be unfounded, have become part of our everyday lives, ‘from mysterious and deadly new viruses and bacteria in our food, or floating about in the environment, to toxic substances in our homes and workplaces; all culminating in the ultimate apocalyptic visions conjured up by the fear of global warming’.11
Should one pay any attention to what the sceptics say, given that they are a small, albeit vocal, minority? Many scientists believe their writings are irresponsible, since they convey to the public that there is extensive space for doubt about the origins, and probable consequences, of warming, when in fact there is little. There was a furore when the UK’s TV Channel 4 produced a documentary in March 2007 called The Great Global Warming Swindle, which featured several of the most prominent sceptics.
Yet the sceptics do deserve and must receive a hearing. Scepticism is the life-blood of science and just as important in policy-making. It is right that whatever claims are made about climate change and its consequences are examined with a critical, even hostile, eye and in a continuing fashion. There is no doubt that ‘big science’ can attain a momentum of its own. The IPCC is not simply a scientific body, but a political and bureaucratic one. The sceptics are right to say that in the media, and sometimes in the speeches of politicians, climate change is now often invoked as though it explains every weather episode: ‘Whenever there was any kind of unusual weather event, heat-waves, storms, droughts or floods, some broadcaster could be relied upon to describe it as “further confirmation of climate change”.’12
However, the sceptics do not have a monopoly on critical scrutiny. Critical self-examination is the obligation of every scientist and researcher. The fact that the findings of the IPCC are almost always expressed in terms of probabilities and possibilities gives due recognition to the many uncertainties that exist, as well as gaps in our knowledge. Moreover, the scientists contributing research findings to the IPCC have differences among themselves about the progression of global warming and its likely consequences.
The ‘climate wars’
The conflicting views of the sceptics and the mainstream scientific community reached a new level of intensity when emails emanating from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in November 2009 were hacked and their contents made public.13 More than 1,000 emails passing between a group of climate researchers working in the UK and the US were leaked in this way. The emails were released only a short while before the UN meetings at Copenhagen, at which world leaders gathered to try to reach agreements on curbing carbon emissions (see below, pp. 185–95). It is not known who hacked into the scientists’ computers, or why, but the timing strongly suggests that the endeavour was an attempt to undermine the summit by casting doubt upon the scientific findings underlying it.
To the sceptics, the emails showed that the scientists in question were deliberately manipulating their data to bolster their thesis that humanly induced climate change is occurring. The scientists also seemed to be reluctant to make public the full range of research findings on which their claims were based. In addition, the critics argued, they sought to manipulate the peer review process so as to block the publication of papers critical of their work.
The whole episode received a great deal of attention in the media across the world. Two of the scientists concerned, Professor Philip Jones of the CRU and Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University in the US, found themselves at the centre of the storm of controversy thus provoked. In both cases, the universities involved were swamped with emails, phone calls and letters accusing the scientists of deception and even fraud.
Each was subject to several investigations. Professor Jones appeared before three such inquiries – the House of Commons Science Select Committee; a committee of inquiry chaired by the scientist Lord Oxburgh; and a tribunal set up by the University of East Anglia. Pennsylvania State University established an investigatory committee to examine the conduct of Professor Mann.
All the inquiries exonerated the scientists from any substantial misconduct. The University of East Anglia report underlined the ‘rigour and honesty’ of the scientists. The investigatory committee in the US concluded that Professor Mann ‘did not engage in . . . any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities’.14
The scientists didn’t escape all censure. The Pennsylvania inquiry commented, for example, that it was ‘careless and inappropriate’ of Professor Mann to share unpublished manuscripts with third parties without having received permission from the authors of those manuscripts to do so. The East Anglia report criticized Professor Jones and his colleagues for insufficient openness in response to requests for their data sources. The report also made the observation that, in the age of the internet and legislation about freedom of information, there is a ‘transformation in the need for openness in the culture of publicly funded science’.
Jones and Mann were among the many scientists contributing to the work that produced the publications of the IPCC. Independently of the affair of the emails, but overlapping in time, the IPCC also became embroiled in controversy. Two errors came to light in the 2007 IPCC report on the progression of, and dangers represented by, humanly induced climate change. It was stated that the glaciers in the Himalayas might disappear by 2035. In another place the claim appears that 55 per cent of the Netherlands lies below sea level, and hence is particularly susceptible to flooding if and when overall sea levels rise across the world.
In fact, were the Himalayan glaciers to vanish by 2035, they would have to melt 25 times faster than currently is the case. In the case of the Netherlands, the report should have read that 55 per cent of the country is prone to flooding – 26 per cent of the country is at risk because it lies below sea level, while a further 29 per cent is at risk of being vulnerable to river flooding.
Partly because the discovery of the mistakes coincided with the debate over the leaked emails, they also provoked something of a furore, and were very widely reported. To many of the sceptics, they confirmed suspicions about the lack of objectivity in the IPCC procedures – in spite of the fact that these were isolated errors in a very large and detailed volume.
The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency launched an investigation into the 2007 IPCC report in order to see if further questionable statements could be unearthed. The Agency found nothing that would place in question the main conclusions drawn by the IPCC. The IPCC methods and findings were found to be ‘robust’ and ‘well-founded’. The inquiry noted, however, that the summaries in the IPCC report ‘tended to single out the most important negative aspects of climate change’. For instance, the possibly positive implications of climate change for forestry in North Asia are indicated in the body of a chapter, but are not referred to in the summary that appears at the end. The investigators concluded that more could be done in future IPCC publications to heighten transparency and clarity as to how the experts had reached their specific judgements and assessed different risk scenarios.
It seems unlikely that the IPCC procedures will remain intact – not because of the errors or other problems that have come to light, but because of their cumbersome and slow-moving character. The IPCC’s vast reports appear about every six years. For the 2007 volume, governments and reviewers submitted some 90,000 comments on the draft text, all of which had to be assessed by the expert panels. Some scientists have called for shorter reports, to be produced more frequently, and which would therefore be more able to keep abreast of the flow of new research and data. Others have proposed a review process based upon Wikipedia, allowing free access to data. Yet it is difficult to see how entries could be scrutinized and monitored for reliability or accuracy.
Since the episode of the leaked emails, not just Jones and Mann, but other prominent climate scientists too have received emails and other communications threatening them and their families.15 In a television interview, Michael Mann described the following as typical of some of the emails he had been receiving: ‘Six feet under with the roots is where you should be. I was hoping I would see the news that you’d committed suicide. Do it, freak.’ Jones received many death threats, as well as other highly aggressive emails, and at one point he felt so much under attack that he contemplated killing himself. A well-known climate scientist based at Stanford University, in California, stated that he received ‘hundreds’ of abusive emails when the debate about the leaks was at its height. Together with other climate scientists, his name figured on a neo-Nazi website where threats were made against them because of their Jewish ancestry. Clive Hamilton has described comparable hate mail received by climate scientists in Australia.16
In response to such attacks, groups of climate scientists have published statements affirming the need to defend science and the scientific method. In Britain, scientists from 121 universities and scientific institutions signed a statement ‘from the UK science community’. It stated that they ‘have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities’. ‘The evidence and the science’, they continued, ‘are deep and extensive . . . coming from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across the world who adhere to the highest standards of professional integrity.’17
A similar statement was put out by members of the US National Academy of Sciences. It declared:
We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and climate scientists in particular . . . Many recent assaults on climate science . . . are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence. . . . There is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.18
The activities of at least some of the sceptics have been not only funded, but directly organized, by special interest groups. The author of one study of such groups says that, although they knew of these links before they started their research, they never expected to uncover, as they did, a campaign so ‘huge, well-funded and well-organised’.19 Several of the large oil and coal companies have been directly involved, as well as a range of other corporations and political groups. Their concerns have not been to promote open and rational debate, but to exploit uncertainties surrounding the dangers posed by climate change to create the impression that the scientific evidence is far more suspect than it actually is.
Scepticism, to repeat, is essential to the scientific method, and there are some sceptics who are prepared to submit their work and their claims to the same rigorous process of examination by critics that they (rightly) demand of the mainstream scientific community. The trouble is that the majority are not, setting up a clear double standard. Attacks on science, or individual scientists, cannot only become quite vicious, but proceed in quite another dimension from that of science as such.
The internet has a problematic and complex role in all this. On the one hand, it is a driving force for openness and transparency. Climate scientists will have to get used to making their data, and the grounds for the conclusions they draw, available for public scrutiny. In principle, the cause of science is advanced by such a process. Yet the internet also creates a world where anyone can be an ‘expert’, without having to master the canons of professional expertise – and can command a large following, as well as influencing public opinion.
It is worth drawing a distinction between those climate change sceptics who are in the business of ensuring the scrupulousness of science and policy-making based upon it, and those who merit the name of deniers. Martin McKee identifies six tactics which deniers use:
