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Climate
for Change - Is England
Serious About Global Warming
According to the prestigious
journal Nature, 2004 was the fourth-warmest year on
record. And January 2005 was the second-warmest January
of the past 27 years, says the Earth System Science
Center at the University of Alabama.
Despite
evidence like this, climate change has yet to make it
onto the radar screens of most Americans. The opposite
is true in England, where the science is hotly debated.
In the Daily Express newspaper, for instance, David
Bellamy, a much-beloved figure in Britain for his TV
shows about plants and other natural phenomena, recently
weighed in with a treatise. He claimed that global
warming is a lot of hot air, but even if it was true the
increase in carbon dioxide would simply be good for
plant growth. Bellamy had apparently missed a 2002
article in the respected journal Science, which
concluded that “elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide
(CO2) actually reduces [emphasis added] plant growth
when combined with other likely consequences of climate
change—namely, higher temperatures, increased
precipitation or increased nitrogen deposits in the
soil.”
But
Bellamy is definitely in the minority in England, a
country that is fast recognizing its responsibility to
do something about global warming. Last September, Prime
Minister Tony Blair made a major speech on the subject,
pointing out that the 10 warmest years on record have
all been since 1990, and that the planet has experienced
the most drastic temperature rise in more than 1,000
years in the northern hemisphere. “Glaciers are
melting,” he said. “Sea ice and snow cover is
declining. Animals and plants are responding to an
earlier spring. Sea levels are rising…Apart from a
diminishing handful of skeptics, there is a virtual
worldwide scientific consensus on the scope of the
problem.”
Unlike
the U.S., which refuses to sign the treaty, England is
on target to meet its Kyoto goals, thanks to a
determined carbon reduction effort underway on the
federal and municipal level. Typical of the commitment
is Allan Jones, the new head of the London Climate
Change Agency. Jones came to London after achieving
revolutionary change in Woking, a city of 100,000
people. With combined heat and power (CHP) cogeneration
systems and solar energy (10 percent of Great
Britain’s installed capacity), Woking has reduced its
energy use by 48 percent since 1990, which means 5.4
million pounds of CO2 kept out of the atmosphere. The
city is now nearly 90 percent independent of the grid,
with its own energy services company.
Woking’s
reductions will be scaled up for Greater London, which
has 7.2 million people. Nicky Gavron, the city’s
deputy mayor, is confident that this world capital can
reach the ambitious goal of a 20 percent reduction in
CO2 emissions by 2010. It doesn’t have much choice,
she adds, since rising tides are an imminent threat.
“The Thames Barrier, built to close against rare storm
surges, has been forced to shut 19 times in a month,”
she says. “With rising tides we would lose most of
South London, The City [London’s Wall Street] and the
tube [subway].”
London
is addressing its transportation-based emissions with a
£5 ($9) “congestion charge” for vehicles entering
the city. Imposed in 2003 by London Mayor Ken
Livingstone, the scheme has already reduced traffic
delays by 30 percent. An estimated 18 percent reduction
has been achieved on traffic entering the zone. Bus
ridership is up. Although some taxi drivers are sour on
Livingstone as “anti-car,” 70 percent of businesses
(initially the biggest opponents of congestion charging)
are now supportive.
Gavron
estimates that only 20 percent of London’s CO2
emissions is caused by vehicles; buildings produce more
than 70 percent. London is learning from partners like
Toronto how to implement energy audits and make new home
construction (necessary because of rising population)
more efficient. Woking’s CHP model—high-efficiency
localized units that combine power generation with
heating and cooling—will also be studied. “We’re
going for big CO2 hits,” she says.
And
Britain is also leading the scientific charge. Opening
the UK Conference on “Avoiding Dangerous Climate
Change” in Exeter, Dennis Tirpak pointed out that
“there is evidence that rising greenhouse gases are
affecting rainfall patterns and the global water
cycle.” These same gases “are probably increasing
river flows into the Arctic Ocean, consistent with the
observational record since the 1960s.”
The
scientists at the conference were struggling with the
use of the word “dangerous,” since their work
demands objectivity. But there was little doubt that the
evidence they presented threatens our future. Stephen H.
Schneider of Stanford University (who was privately
contemptuous of the Bush administration’s go-slow
approach to global warming) reiterated the global
effects predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC): more frequent heat waves, more
intense storms, a faster spread of disease, inundation
of small island nations, species extinction and loss of
biodiversity.
Schneider
detailed such speculative effects as a possible collapse
of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation (the Day
After Tomorrow scenario, though on a much less dramatic
timetable), and the deglaciation of polar ice sheets in
Greenland and the West Antarctic, causing many feet of
additional sea-level rise. Then there are what he called
“true surprises,” dramatic events like rapidly
forced climate change that we can’t accurately foresee
(despite the rows of climate-dedicated supercomputers on
display in the Hadley Centre, where the conference took
place).
The
collapse of thermohaline circulation is a fancy way of
saying that huge amounts of Arctic ice melt will affect
the flow of warm water in the Gulf Stream, plunging
Europe into dramatically colder temperatures. Will it
occur? Opinions at the conference were divided. Richard
Wood of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and
Research described it as a “high impact,
low-probability event.” He predicted a shutdown of
“from zero to 50 percent” over the next century.
“Loss of the thermohaline circulation is possible, and
it could be irreversible,” Wood said. “But there is
no detectable weakening yet.”
An
even scarier scenario was presented by Michael
Schlesinger of the University of Illinois. He predicted,
“The likelihood of the collapse of thermohaline
circulation in the next 200 years is two in three. Even
with rigorous human intervention to stop it the risk is
one in four.” He gave the numbers as a four-in-10
chance by 2100, and 65 out of 100 by 2200.
Sir
David King, the Blair government’s chief science
advisor (and a professor of physical chemistry at
Cambridge), concluded, “Kyoto is just a beginning for
dealing with climate change. The UK will take a leading
role, but true global action is necessary. We have to
bring India, Brazil and China [which will build as many
power stations in 2005 as exist in all of England] into
the process. And we have to persuade people to worry
about this for their grandchildren’s sake. We’re not
talking about long-term scenarios anymore. The impacts
over just the next 30 years could be quite severe.”
CONTACTS:
UK
Environment Agency
Phone: (011)00-44-1709-389-201
Greater
London Authority
Phone: (011)020-7983-4000
International
Initiatives
The
response to the potential threat of global warming has
differed among the nations and regions of the world.
Some countries have taken the call to reduce
anthropogenic GHG emissions very seriously, and have
implemented national emissions standards and emissions
reduction targets.
Emissions trading schemes have been established
and tested, new carbon taxes have been imposed, and
‘sustainability’ and
‘environmental externalities’ have become
factors of consideration in economic development
schemes. However,
not all nations have jumped on the bandwagon.
While 186 countries have ratified the UNFCCC,
only 74 have ratified the, arguably, more legally
binding Kyoto Protocol.
There
are several reasons for the ‘holdout’ nations’
reluctance to make an emissions reduction commitment.
One is the belief that there is not enough
scientific evidence to prove that human activities and
increased carbon dioxide emissions are in fact
responsible for rising temperatures.
Numerous scientific studies can be used to back
up claims on both sides of the argument, and it is
therefore difficult for some policy makers to justify
potentially costly actions that may or may not yield the
desired results. Beyond
simple cost is fear over the greater potential economic
impacts of forced compliance in the arena of a global
market where not all the players are being monitored.
Because developing countries do not, at this
time, have GHG emissions reduction commitments or
monitoring requirements, some believe they have a
competitive advantage for production of goods and
services that are energy and GHG intensive.
Therefore some nations, including the United
States, have declined to even consider ratification of
the Kyoto Protocol until developing countries are forced
to make commitments and the overall potential economic
impacts of Kyoto Protocol implementation can be more
thoroughly studied.
For
a detailed look at what other nations have been doing to
meet their UNFCCC obligations, see the collection of
National Communications available at http://unfccc.int/resource/natcom/index.html.
Below
find examples of what is being done outside the United
States to study and combat global warming.
CANADA:
Climate Change - Québec Action Plan on Climate Change
2000-2002
Québec Action Plan on Climate Change 2000-2002
www.menv.gouv.qc.ca/air/changement/plan_action/index-en.htm
Canada's
National Climate Change Process - National
Strategy/Business Plan
National Implementation Strategy & First National
Business Plan In October 2000, Joint Ministers of Energy
and Environment* publicly released the National
Implementation Strategy on Climate Change and the First
National Climate Change Business Plan
www.nccp.ca/NCCP/strategy_bus/index_e.html
Canada's
National Climate Change Process - Media Room
The Media Room provides access to news releases,
speeches and other documents related to Canada's
national climate change process. News Releases -
National Climate Change Secretariat National Stakeholder
Workshops on Climate Change 2002 Media
www.nccp.ca/NCCP/media/index_e.html
EUROPE:
EU and Climate Change
Go to links page for reports on what individual
countries within the EU are doing.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/climat/home_en.htm
OTHER:
Global Climate Change and Africa
USAID's approach : timeline
http://africagcc.gecp.virginia.edu/USAID/
Major
Climate Change Studies undertaken in Indonesia
www.ccasia.teri.res.in/country/indo/proj/projects.htm
Malaysia
and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change
http://www.kjc.gov.my/~ccm/
New
Zealand Climate Change Programme
http://www.climatechange.govt.nz/sp
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