Green Thinking on Climate change and Population

I have just read the Green Party election manifesto on climate change and population.
With regard to climate change, the policy is for the UK to reduce CO2 emissions by 90% by 2030.This means that by 2030, and on average, each person in the UK must reduce their CO2 emissions from 9.5 tonnes to about 1 tonne per year. By 2030 the UK would then be emitting 60 million tonnes of CO2 per year rather than the 570 million tonnes at present. It is claimed that this would be Britain’s contribution to the Global effort to stabilise but not reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Each year the population of the planet increases by about 83 million people. Even if each new person were only to emit 1 tonne of CO2 per year, in 2030, the UK’s contribution would be totally wiped out. The figures are not favourable.

The contribution of Britain’s greenhouse emissions to global warming is described well in George Monbiot’s book “Heat. The book also proposes a technical solution, to reduce the UK’s Carbon CO2 emissions by around 90%, to meet the deadline.

I have little doubt that dangerous global heating is imminent. It could strike us, within the next thirty years or so, and surprise us with sudden and unpredicted changes when it does. What would happen, if the Northern latitudes were to freeze for a hundred years or longer, whilst the rest of the planet warms up, even more, to maintain a new balance of energy and temperature? Do not think that this cannot happen because similar climatic changes have happened in the past - at the end of the last ice age- when CO2 levels were much lower than they are now. If you are not convinced that global warming theory is correct then read “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer R Weart.

The problem, that I have, is how are we to going the make the political, economic and social changes needed to achieve CO2 reductions. I also take issue with the reasoning that steadying global emissions will, in fact, halt the global warming that we have set in train.

From a political point of view, most people remain to be convinced by the science and are unconvinced that we must take action. They find it unacceptable that their standards of living or life style should either be reduced or altered to meet the demand for reduced emissions.

The IPCC has failed to convince the general public that their climate models are able to predict the future. Their predictions that the climate and weather will warm up in a gently sloping curve so that we can intervene when it gets a little bit hot are clearly wrong. So, when a cold winter occurs in the Northern Hemisphere, it becomes increasingly difficult to convince the public that global warming is in fact taking place. The Kyoto agreement has failed to reduce CO2 emissions significantly and the Copenhagen conference failed completely. Getting world agreement is a tremendous problem so, if the world cannot agree to a Global solution, how do we expect voters in the UK to agree to the major changes that such drastic reductions in CO2 emissions demand? Who in Britain wants to forgo their car, foreign holiday and new consumer goods when they see other major countries, including China and India, increase their emissions. The argument that “you where the original ‘polluters’ so you take all the hits”, may be justified, but it does not impress voters either in Europe or the US. Let us face the facts.

We need a fresh approach to both IPCC and Kyoto- like conferences. I fear that it may not be possible, in an open and free society, to convince voters to reduce their consumption while all the confusion reigns. To achieve the reductions required, politicians may have to resort to an unpalatable compulsion that would need to be imposed globally. What chance is there of that happening?

From an economic point of view, we need to completely change our economic model; from one of free and easy travel, cheap farming practices, “just in time” production and supply techniques, built in obsolescence and cheap consumer goods, to the reverse of it.

We also need to impose taxes on fossil fuels and change the whole system of the supply and demand for fuel. I do not believe that taxing emissions, just in the UK and developed world, will reduce emissions globally. Making UK fuel more expensive will reduce demand in Britain but decrease the price on world markets. Poorer countries who cannot afford the luxury of “green” energy, will then “take up the slack” by consuming more fossil fuel at the reduced price.

We have seen the disruption caused by the recent credit crisis and changes are required to regulate the financial system to prevent a future meltdown. The economic forces opposing this are enormous and international agreement may take years to implement. Just changing the financial system is difficult enough; so how are we going to change the rest of our economic system, in the time required, without impoverishing both the developed and developing world?

Britain could weaken its economic position if we were to incur the costs of converting to alternative energy whilst other countries do not. The government and people of Britain would not allow this to happen.

There are a number of issues to be solved related to our belief systems. Many writers on the problem of climate change comment that CO2 gas is a pollutant. It is not. If there was no carbon dioxide in the atmosphere most of the plant and animal life on the planet would die. If there is too much in the atmosphere, as there is on Venus, all life would die out completely. It is a question of the right quantity and maintaining a balance of nature. This principle applies to the whole of nature including human beings. For some reason, we humans believe that we are immune to these laws.

The motor car is a wonderful invention, when only a few million people posses one, but when hundreds of millions start to use a vehicle there is a serious problem. The same principle applies to all of the wonderful inventions that modern life has created. The more people there are the more CO2 there will be emitted. We cannot escape from the fact that there are too many people on the planet, who are either, already, consuming at levels which threaten the environment or aspire to do so. In the Western World, we have based our political, economic and social systems on immediate consumption. This has already lead to enormous degradation of the environment and dangerous levels of CO2 gas in the atmosphere. The developing world wishes to aspire to the same level of economic development as the West. It would be immoral to stop them; so while the population of the planet is increasing our problems are mounting and we are living out of balance of nature. The dynamic equilibrium of atmospheric gases, which has kept our climate favourable for the last 8,000 years or so, is being compromised.

I fear that the problem of over population and the perception that we are immune to the laws of nature will not be overcome before it is too late. For decades, there was a need to have a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean, nothing was done about it until 250,000 people died. Global warming will probably hit us with a crisis of much greater proportion. By then, it might not be possible to mitigate the effects of climate change and environmental degradation. The realisation that we must all change our opinion might come too late.

Getting the whole world, let alone the UK, to reduce its thirst for energy is a colossal and task. It might only be achieved by some form of dictatorship. We would also have to deny poorer countries the means to develop their economies. By 2030, at an emission rate of only one tonne of CO2 per person, the world will be emitting 8 billion tonnes per annum, if a population growth of 83 million per year is maintained. The ecosystem is able to sequester 4 billion tonnes per year, at best. The emissions balance sheet does not look good.

By 2030 the Arctic Ocean will probably not be covered by ice in the summer or the ice will have substantially reduced. This, in itself, presents a huge problem as the reflectivity of a vast area of ocean will be reduced from about 80% to 20%: the ocean will, therefore, absorb and retain more of the Sun’s energy. The planet will warm up more and more as a result. Not even the Green party has a policy for this, so we are faced with extra warming even if we could steady CO2 emissions by 2030. The prospects are not good.

To reduce man’s thirst for energy and consumer goods is almost an unsolvable problem. It would probably require complete cooperation between the competing nations. What are the chances of this happening?

The only way to get back to preindustrial levels of emissions and restore the CO2 concentration to safe levels will be too reduce our population to perhaps a billion people or fewer - whilst we rely upon fossil fuels. One might argue that soon the oil and gas will run out but there are ample supplies of coal and methyl clathrates just waiting to be exploited. More carbon in fact than we have burnt already.

How are we going to reduce our population? Some major religions are completely opposed to contraception. It is a difficult human rights issue and the drive to reproduce is as strong as the fear of death. Our economic, social and political systems are based on population growth. This is where the Green Party policy becomes unrealistic and wish washy: how can persuasion work? The Green party is, however, very brave to raise this issue as all other politicians seem to be frightened to tackle it. This is why Caroline Lucas is needed to point out the dangers; her eloquence and rationality are at least keeping the issue in the public eye.

I am of the view that it is now time for everyone to consider the position regarding the population growth of the planet. I am opposed, however, to families being forced to curb their reproduction. I urge every person to consider the future of our human species. If we all agreed to limit our families then we could help to reduce the problem of resource shortages along with, atmospheric pollution and the excess production of green house gases. I do not regard CO2 as a pollutant; we simply need it at the right concentration in the atmosphere for our species to flourish. Unfortunately, my hopes are probably in vain.

Where does this leave us? I could be accused of being a merchant of doom. Everyone, however, is doomed. Seven billion people will die of old age whether there is global warming or not. None of us will live for ever. We have to find a way to curb our population growth to maintain a reasonably good quality of life for everyone whilst they are alive. If we do not, the planet will do it for us. It will simply become uninhabitable, in most regions of the world, as the planet heats up and drought sets in. The ecosystem will not be able to support several billions of people. The evidence from palaeontology suggests that the human population was once reduced by climate change, in this case during an ice age, to around two thousand individuals. It happened without human intervention. The same could happen again because of our actions: we could even become extinct. We face the possibility of millions of children being born only to die in the first four or five years of their life. We face the prospect of mass migration, starvation, resource wars and global disease which could kill millions of weakened people. Do we really want this to happen? There is considerable risk that this undesirable consequence could occur. Over population does not only threaten us with climate changes; it threatens the degradation of the very environment which sustains us.

What do we do? Is there hope? I believe that the proposals of the Green Party will not solve the problem of Global Warming. They are a start, however, and they are more relevant than most other political parties’ propositions.

What do we do? I agree with James Lovelock. We must plan a contingency for the possible coming crisis. This planning might be more important than striving to reduce carbon emissions. But the emissions issue must be tackled eventually. Somehow, we must persuade everyone to reduce their fertility as a managed reduction of the population will be much more desirable. Nature is not cruel, in a human sense, it simply does not care whether we exist or not. Nature will be able to continue without us. We must change our view that we are immune to the laws of nature for we are an integrated part of them. Then, it might be possible to workout a solution.

Much as I hate to say this, we are faced with the prospect of having to “geo-engineer” a solution, but if climate change pulls out a surprise it may be too late to implement mitigation. We might have to consider carbon sequestration or pumping millions of tons of sulphur compounds into the atmosphere to artificially reduce the temperature. Such projects would be very expensive and difficult to maintain and in the long run might further upset the balance of nature. Perhaps, there will be little choice but to accept the additional risk.

The Green Party’s solutions are unrealistic but of course they have the right, if not the duty, to raise them. No other political parties are portraying the sense of urgency that is needed or perhaps, just like me, they despair that there is a solution.