The challenge

• The principal greenhouse gas of concern is carbon dioxide (CO2). Other direct and indirect greenhouse gases are important, but for this synopsis, focussing on CO2 provides an adequate sense of the scale of the problem.

• There is no international agreement as to what constitutes the threshold between acceptable and dangerous climate change. However, within both the EU and the UK a threshold has been defined in the form of ‘limiting average global temperature increases to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels’.*

• In very broad terms, the latest science suggests 2°C can be correlated with atmospheric concentrations of CO2 of between 300 and 450 parts per million by volume (ppmv). The current CO2 concentration is 381ppmv and, as an outcome of the ongoing combustion of fossil fuels, is rising at about 2ppmv each year.

• Global CO2 emissions are increasing at approximately 2.5 per cent each year. Even within those countries driving the international climate change agenda, CO2 emissions continue to rise, with the UK and the EU no exception to this trend.

•  CO2 remains in the atmosphere for over 100 years. Consequently, long-term emission targets are essentially irrelevant. What is important are the cumulative emissions over the next 50 years or so. Each year’s emissions will add to those emitted during the preceding years. It is only when the analysis is conducted on the basis of cumulative emissions that the scale of the challenge and the urgency with which CO2 emissions need to be reduced become truly evident.

* Defra (2006), Climate Change: The UK Programme 2006. Defra. London, p.20.

Kevin Anderson gives a personal view

As an academic whose employment and conscience are dominated by climate change, it is disheartening to observe the sterile economic framing of the public debate on the issues, and the absence of meaningful policy arising from it.

The outlook

Put simply, carbon dioxide (CO2) is the principal greenhouse gas and global CO2 emissions are increasing at a rapid rate (see blue text). More alarmingly, there is no indication that this rate is likely to change significantly in the coming decade. A major world recession notwithstanding, it is difficult to envisage global emissions peaking before 2020 at the earliest. Even within the UK, it would require a radical sea change in attitudes towards CO2 emissions for any substantial reduction to occur over the coming decade. Should this happen, the UK’s CO2 emissions will, nevertheless, probably continue to rise for the next four or five years.

Current global emission trends suggest there is a very high probability that the world will enter a prolonged period of what some have referred to as ‘dangerous climate change’. The sooner deep reductions in global CO2 emissions can be achieved, the less we will venture into this ‘dangerous’ and unpredictable territory.

Stern review

Within the UK, 2006 provided several important indicators that the government was prepared to begin to consider seriously the issue of climate change. The first was the lengthy energy review process, within which climate change was a principal factor.

The second was the Treasury-commissioned Stern review: the economics of climate change, the headline message of which was that scientific evidence for significant human impact on the climate is overwhelming and demands an urgent global response. Moreover, Stern stated categorically that ‘the benefits of strong and early action on climate change outweigh the costs’. In Stern’s view, acceptable levels of atmospheric CO2 (450 ¬500 parts per million by volume [ppmv] CO2) could be achieved at a cost of approximately one per cent of global GDP by 2050, whilst the cost of inaction would probably be in the region of 5 to 20 per cent of GDP. Stern proceeds to detail a series of recommendations for stabilising emissions at or around the 500ppmv CO2 level.

I don’t wish to trivialise the depth and detail of Stern’s analysis, but he essentially foresees carbon prices and the subsequent development of carbon markets as providing the cornerstone of carbon dioxide mitigation policy. This economic foundation, he suggests, should be buttressed by a comprehensive suite of complementary measures, ranging from, for example, ‘the removal of barriers to behavioural change’, to ‘creating the conditions for international collective action’. Stern concludes with a relatively upbeat message that ‘there is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change if strong collective action starts now.’ 

Economics, not science

The publication of Nicholas Stern’s thorough and, at times, solemn review has served to catalyse both public and private concern over our escalating emissions of CO2. Whilst the broad acknowledgement of climate change as a serious and urgent policy issue is certainly welcomed, I, and I suspect many climate scientists, see the response to the Stern report as another sad indictment of society’s privileging of economics over science.

For more than a decade, dedicated climate scientists have attempted to provide public and private policy makers with reasoned and accessible arguments as to why our emissions of CO2 should be curtailed. Despite the wealth of reports from, for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK’s own Hadley and Tyndall Centres, it has taken a relatively narrow financial interpretation of the science to alert policy makers to the repercussions of a climate-induced collapse of existing human societies and ecosystems. In policy parlance science, and even society and nature, have simply become subsets of contemporary market economics.

Unique scale

If this were just the sour grapes of scientists wishing to be regarded with the reverence accorded to economists, it would be of little relevance to the climate change debate. However, not only does the severity of climate change only gain currency within policy realms when couched in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, but so does the debate on how to control our CO2 emissions. Policy makers will only contemplate seriously mechanisms for mitigating CO2 emissions that can be demonstrated not to threaten short-term economic competitiveness and preferably offer early monetary returns.

Again, this accountant mentality would not be a concern if it could be reconciled with the direction and scale of the message emerging from the scientific analysis of climate change.  Unfortunately, there appears no scope for reconciliation, despite valiant attempts by some to characterise climate change and the mitigation of CO2 in terms of win-win opportunities.

Certainly, there have been cases in which responses to looming environmental crises were achieved at small economic cost, or even on the basis of win-win opportunities (for example, acid deposition and ozone destruction respectively). But these are poor analogies for climate change and CO2 emissions.

Three aspects of the scale of the problem collectively negate the appropriateness of analogies. Two of these scale issues work in conjunction: the global pervasiveness of the fossil-fuel energy system, and the quantity of fossil fuel that has, is and will probably be combusted. The other arises from the disjunction between political timescales and those associated with the carbon cycle. 

The dilemma

We are faced with a dilemma. Do we continue to pay lip service to the issue of climate change, and hope our children will understand our preference for barely-veiled hedonism over stewardship? Or are we prepared to respond genuinely to the scale of the challenge we have brought upon ourselves?

If it is the former, we should carry on as we are; with a weak European Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme, the expansion of aviation with token green gestures and offsets, installing a few wind turbines and several nuclear power stations, buying the occasional hybrid car and swapping to energy-efficient light bulbs – all with a self-congratulatory, but ultimately insincere, pat on our own backs.

If it is the latter, we need to begin by revisiting urgently the financial accounting model that has come to dominate our lives, and re-establish society’s dominance over economics. Has the tripling of our economic wherewithal since the 1950s brought about a tripling in our sense of wellbeing? Do we really gain significant benefits from our daily access to mange tout? Are the noise, pollution, accidents and physical division of communities by busy roads adequately compensated by our easy access to private transport?

If we are prepared to exchange our current self-delusion for a more honest recognition of the scale of the challenge, the message is one of hope not of despair; with a potentially prosperous future measured, if at all, by a range of metrics of which money is just one.

Dr Kevin Anderson is Director of the Tyndall Centre’s Energy and Climate Change research programme and is based at the University of Manchester