Date published: 2006/03/08
The fifth lecture of the university's Fourth Annual Lecture Series in Sustainable Development (2006) was given today by Michael Meacher, a Labour MP who is best known in the UK for having been Environment Minister from 1997-2003. Well anyone who puts the tired word "sustainable" in their title is probably up to no good. But in fact Meacher gave a reasonable lecture (with hardly a single mention of that word). He's obviously reasonbly clued up and reasonably well intended.
But his talk was one of fire and brimstone. At the end he admitted to being a pessimist, but claimed he was an optimistic pessimist since he said he was not cynical.
He went for many of the easy lines. In particular he criticised the current US government several times (and they are certainly an easy target) and also attacked car drivers and airline passengers. So par for the course for these kinds of talks.
His basic point was that we are all doomed, or at least all doomed unless the world changes today. Well, the world is not going to change today. So we can only conclude we are all doomed. He went through the usual litany of disasters: global industrialisation leading to the "rapacious exploitation" of the earth's resources (of course people have been saying this for 50 years); the "explosive" increase in population (and congratulations to Meacher for at least mentioning this, since most people prefer not to); and climate change (brought about by the first two).
We produce too much carbon. Biodiversity is going down the plughole. Half a billion people live in regions of chronic drought (allegedly set to quintuple by 2050 according to the UN). Half of fish stocks have been exploited to the hilt. By 2050 the Amazon will have died back and so will be a carbon source instead of a carbon sink. Common vector borne diseases will almost all get worse with climate change. Etc. Take your favourite environmental disaster story and Meacher probably mentioned it.
And then the punchline: "Well what is really worrying..." [ pause for audience laugh ] "... is that climate change is still in its early stages". All true of course, so it is possible we are all doomed no matter what anybody does. But of course the fire and brimstone types do not want anybody to think that, because they want everything to change, and if we are doomed anyway there is less reason to change.
Of course Kyoto got a mention. He was not that confident that the Kyoto targets would even be met, but even if they are met it would mean that for the top industrialised countries which had signed up there would be only a 5% reduction in emissions by 2010 (relative to 1990). His only relief was that it would have been worse without Kyoto. But of course the US, China and India are not in Kyoto. And their emissions are increasing a lot (especially China and India, because they are industrialising).
Meacher claimed that even if OECD countries cut their emissions by 50% by 2050, the global total would still double. Well this is if you believe everything will continue as now until then. But Meacher also mentioned that oil is running out. We might have already reached peak oil production and he thought we would certainly do so within a decade. But the "business as usual" scenario implies that demand will double in the next few decades. Well that arithmetic does not match up. Prices would rise and demand would be less.
Meacher several times mentioned that he thinks the only way change will happen is in the face of disaster. And allegedly the cost of disasters due to climate change (floods, hurricanes) is increasing at 12% per annum. Of course global GDP is not doing the same. If you extrapolate the figures you get that by 2065 the cost of climate change exceeds GDP. Well that is silly, as Meacher of course pointed out. But it is possible that these huge costs will eventually force change. But the biggest costs are currently being borne by the developing countries, which gives much less incentive to people in the developed countries to care.
Meacher said he wanted three policies: a phasing out of fossil fuel use; a vast increase in "carbon-free" energy sources such as wind, biomass and solar; and an increase in energy efficiency and conservation. Well this is more of the usual litany. Unfortunately Meacher made the usual flip remark that wind (etc.) is "cost free" once you have the infrastructure in place. That indeed ignores the massive amount of energy you need to install this infrastructure in the first place. And with solar power in Britain, for example, the pay back period for solar heating on individual houses is effectively infinite, so more energy goes into making it than is saved in having it. Well if energy prices do indeed shoot through the roof, this massive expenditure of (largely oil-based) energy up front might turn out to be a good investment. But let's not pretend these energy sources are "carbon free".
Meacher said that the only way to avoid global doom was to get universal agreement, and that this must involve the developed countries reducing their emissions and the developing countries increasing their emissions until they converged in a spot which is hopefully acceptable environmentally. He did admit that the chance of this kind of agreement was "slim".
Why do politicians not do anything about this looming disaster? Well Meacher fell into the usual trap here. He blamed politicians for being "feeble" and "vested interests" for riding roughshod over the interests of the public. That really is rather pathetic. Corporations as the big evil force in the universe. Well BP, Shell and Exxon do not really care if they make billions of pounds from oil or solar, as long as you have to come to them for energy. Oil just happens to be the easiest way to make money today.
He blamed the "transport lobby" for allegedly allowing the continuing twin evils of car driving and airline travel. Well he admitted afterwards that it is not just car drivers and airline passengers who should pay a carbon tax, everyone should, including electricity consumers and train commuters. (Why is it ok for people who take the train 60 miles each day from Cambridge to London but evil for people to drive five miles from Willingham to Cambridge?)
Meacher claimed that some American consultancy had calculated that if you added the proper externalities onto the price of oil then hydrogen fuel cell cars would be 25% cheaper than petrol driven ones. Well that is a bit of a joke, since the only way to produce hydrogen now is to consume vast amounts of electricity (generated mainly by oil). The anti-car nutters are just a bit too unbelievable to be taken seriously.
And on airline travel, Meacher was not much better. He said cheap flights were dreadful because allegedly his (Oldham) constituents were not the ones taking them, but only rich people like himself. Well this is rather dismissive of his constituents. No doubt they want to take a holiday in (say) Spain just like everyone else, and presumably many of them already do. And if you make airline travel more expensive the people who lose out are not rich people but the people just at the margins of being able to afford it. Going from 0 to 1 flight per year is much more important for someone than going from 4 to 6 flights. And for rich people the cost of the flight is largely irrelevant, it's finding the time and overcoming the hassle that are far more important. So those people advocating "demand management" of airline travel (i.e. taxing it to death) are no friends of the working class, no matter how much they might pretend to be.
During the questions afterwards, this attack on vested interests even became slightly surreal. Someone wanted to know why the EU was allegedly spending so much money on nanotechnology and allegedly not so much on climate research. Well who is to say that nanotechnology will not help drive energy efficiency?
The real problem with nothing much happening on the climate change front is not vested interests. It is inertia. Nobody wants to change. Nobody has time to even think about change (except for academics, who are so out of touch they can't see why everybody else isn't spending 24 hours a day worrying about things that they worry about).
Afterwards Meacher said he was for not just national carbon quotas but also personal carbon quotas. If someone went over their carbon quota they would have to buy more on the open market. Well this is not a totally crazy idea. Only you can guarantee your last penny that the way government would introduce it would be a disaster. Politically incorrect activities (e.g. driving) would have a high carbon tax and politically correct activities (e.g. commuting by train) would have a low carbon tax. So it would probably just lead to a massive distortion of the economy without actually having much environmental benefit.
You got the feeling that Meacher would prefer to be running a dictatorship where he could tell people what to do. Well he is allegedly an old-styled socialist (if you ignore that fact that he owns many houses). And he was rather dismissive of his fellow MPs ("they are the last people to absorb new ideas"). He seemed to believe that if only the people running the country (a clique surrounding Tony Blair who were too heavily influenced by corporations and the media) were "accountable" to the public (all of who allegedly want to have their lifestyle curtailed) then all would be well. Hey, start a political party and run on this platform and see how far you get, if the public is allegedly so keen on these ideas.
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