It is a testament to the power of money that British economist Nicholas Stern's report on the economic effect of climate change should have swung the argument for drastic action -- even before anyone had finished reading it. He appears to have demonstrated, as many suspected, that it would cost much less to prevent runaway climate change than to seek to live with it.
Useful as this finding is, I hope it doesn't mean that the debate will now concentrate on money. The principal costs of climate change will be measured in lives, not dollars. As Stern reminded us on Monday, there would be a moral imperative to seek to prevent deaths on a massive scale even if the economic case did not stack up.
But at least almost everyone now agrees that we must act, even if they do not agree on the speed that actions should be taken with. If we're to have a high chance of preventing global temperatures from rising by 2oC above preindustrial levels, we need, in the wealthier nations, a 90 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The greater part of the reduction must be made immediately.
To see why, picture two graphs with time on the horizontal axis and the rate of emissions plotted vertically. On one graph the line falls like a ski jump: a steep drop followed by a shallow tail. On the other it falls like the trajectory of a bullet. The area under each line represents the total volume of greenhouse gases produced in that period. They fall to the same point by the same date, but far more gases have been produced in the second case, making runaway climate change more likely.
So how do we do accomplish a 90 percent reduction without bringing civilization crashing down?
I would like to propose a plan for drastic but affordable action that the British government, to name but one, could take. It goes much further than the proposals discussed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday, for the reason that this is what the science demands.
First, set a target for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions based on the latest science.
The UK government is using outdated figures, aiming for a 60 percent reduction by 2050. Even the annual 3 percent cut proposed in the motion calling for a new climate change bill does not go far enough. Time scale: immediately.
Second, use that target to set an annual carbon cap, which falls on the ski-jump trajectory.
Then use the cap to set a personal carbon ration. Every citizen is given a free annual quota of carbon dioxide. He or she spends it by buying gas and electricity, petrol and train and plane tickets. If an individual runs out, he or she must buy the rest from someone who has used less than his or her quota. This accounts for about 40 percent of the carbon dioxide we produce.
The remainder is auctioned off to companies. It's a simpler and fairer approach than either green taxation or the EU's emissions trading scheme, and it also provides people with a powerful incentive to demand low-carbon technologies. Time scale: a full scheme should be in place by January 2009.
Third, introduce a new set of building regulations with three objectives.
A: Impose strict energy-efficiency requirements on all major refurbishments. Time scale: in force by next June
B: Require landlords to bring their houses up to high energy-efficiency standards before they can rent them out. Time scale: to cover all new rentals beginnning in January 2008.
C: Require that all new homes in the UK to be built to the German Passivhaus standard (which requires no heating system). Time scale: in force by 2012.
Fourth, ban the sale of incandescent light bulbs, patio heaters, garden floodlights and other wasteful and unnecessary technologies. Introduce a stiff "feebate" system for all electronic goods sold in the UK, with the least efficient products taxed heavily and the most efficient receiving tax discounts. Every year the standards in each category would rise. Time scale: fully implemented by November next year.
Fifth, redeploy money now earmarked for new nuclear missiles towards a massive investment in energy generation and distribution.
Two schemes in particular require government support to make them commercially viable. The first scheme would build very large wind farms, many kilometers offshore, connected to the grid with high-voltage direct-current cables. The second scheme would build a hydrogen pipeline network to take over from the natural gas grid as the primary means of delivering fuel for home heating. Time scale: both programs would commence at the end of next year and would be completed by 2018.
Sixth, promote the development of a new national coach network.
Under this scheme, coach stations in city centers would be shut down and moved to motorway junctions. Urban public transport networks would extended to meet them, and coaches would travel on dedicated lanes and never leave the motorways. Journeys by public transport would then become as fast as journeys by car while achieving a 90 percent emission savings. This scheme would be self-financing through the sale of the land now used for coach stations. Time scale: the program would commence in 2008 and be completed by 2020.
Seventh, oblige all filling station chains would be required to supply leasable batteries for electric cars.
This would provide electric cars with unlimited mileage: as the battery ran down, you would pull into a forecourt where a crane would lift your old battery out out and drop in a fresh one.
The batteries would be charged overnight with surplus electricity from offshore wind farms. Time scale: fully operational by 2011.
Eighth, abandon the road-building and road-widening program and spend the money on tackling climate change.
The government has earmarked ?11.4 billion for road expansion. It claims to be allocating just ?545 million a year to "spending policies that tackle climate change." Time scale: immediately.
Ninth, freeze and then reduce UK airport capacity.
While capacity remains high there will be constant upward pressure on any scheme the government introduces to limit flights. We need to implement a freeze on all new airport construction and introduce a national quota for landing slots, which would be reduced by 90 percent by 2030. Time scale: immediately.
Tenth, legislate for the closure of all out-of-town superstores and replace them with a warehouse and delivery system.
Shops use a staggering amount of energy (six times as much electricity per square meter as factories, for example), and major reductions are hard to achieve: UK supermarket Tesco's "state of the art" energy-saving store at Diss in Norfolk, England, has managed to cut its energy use by only 20 percent. Warehouses containing the same quantity of goods use roughly 5 percent of the energy. Out-of-town shops would offer delivery by vehicles that use 70 percent less fuel. Time scale: fully implemented by 2012.
These time scales might seem extraordinarily ambitious. They are, by contrast to the current glacial pace of change. But when the US entered World War II it turned the economy around very quickly. Automakers began producing aircraft and missiles within a year and amphibious vehicles in 90 days -- and that was 65 years ago.
If we want to slow and then reverse climate change, we can make it happen. The plan outlined above would require more economic intervention than we are used to, and some pretty brutal emergency planning policies with little time or scope for objections. But if you believe that strict planning and limiting objections are worse than deaths on a large scale, then there is something wrong with your value system.
Climate change is not just a moral question: it is the moral question of the 21st century. There is one position even more morally reprehensible than denial: to accept that climate change is happening and that its results will be catastrophic, but to fail to take the measures needed to prevent it.
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