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victoria-root
5th March 2012

Let’s go low carbon

Victoria Root tells us how easy it would be to move to a greener economy. A recent surge in renewable technology shows that a solution to climate change is possible, so why is nothing being done about it? The planet’s temperature is predicted to rise by around 1.9 degrees Celsius and we must cut carbon […]
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Victoria Root tells us how easy it would be to move to a greener economy.
A recent surge in renewable technology shows that a solution to climate change is possible, so why is nothing being done about it? The planet’s temperature is predicted to rise by around 1.9 degrees Celsius and we must cut carbon emissions by 80-90% before 2050 in order to reduce the harmful consequences, like the extinction of up to 40% of all animal species.
Despite these shocking figures there is still a lack of public awareness about the potential human causes of mass climate change. The US’s decision not to air the climate change themed episode of Frozen Planet last year can only have helped the subsequent poll which showed that a majority in the US believe that if climate change does exist then it is not caused by humans. Measurement of solar activity, however, has shown a marked decline since the mid 1980s and therefore cannot account for rises in global temperature. Plus, ice cores show that carbon dioxide (CO2) has remained constant for the past half a million years, until recent centuries where levels have risen sharply. Human contribution to CO2 emissions may be small, but it is enough to have pushed nature off-balance.

Yet the world’s leading governments still have not taken appropriate action to address this critical issue. Most are afraid to invest in and develop renewable technology for fear of losing money due to a lack of public acceptance; at the moment the US still invests $79 bn a year into shale gas fields, which is three times the amount invested into renewable energy. What’s more, the recent incident at Fukushima in Japan has caused people to lose confidence in nuclear power, even leading the German Bundestag to completely rule out the use of nuclear power in their country (costing them €53 billion in the process).

What commitments we do see at climate change conferences are half-hearted, like the Kyoto Conference in 1997 and every other one since. Worldwide atmospheric CO2 emissions have increased by up to 35 percent since then and Canada withdrew from the treaty earlier this year, with their Environment Minister Peter Kent stating, “Kyoto is not the path forward for a global solution to climate change”. This was mostly due to the main emitters of C02 excusing themselves from the treaty (notably the US and China).
Even though the EU has argued to extend targets from Kyoto to 2017, most countries will now allow their targets to expire unfulfilled by the end of this year.
Many argue that the recent climate-change conference in Durban, South Africa presents a plausible global solution to the climate problem. This new treaty requires both developed and developing countries to cut carbon emissions, but these CO2 targets do not gain legal force until 2020, leaving several years for governments to get caught up in lines of text and board meetings about how far and how quickly countries need to cut their emissions. Keith Allot, head of climate change at WWF-UK, argues that much stronger and much more urgent action is needed to reduce the impacts of global warming.
Sir Nicholas Stern stated that what we do in the next 10 – 20 years can have a profound effect on the climate in the second half of this century; a solution to climate change is needed now, not some time in the future. In the years that we have to wait for the Durban treaty to come into action, we are committing ourselves to a potential four degree increase in global temperature, which is likely to affect global food production and threaten millions of people with floods and drought.

But there are still ways this dystopian future can be avoided and world leaders need to realise that a green economy is both inexpensive and easy to achieve.

Home insulation can be done quickly and efficiently whilst also providing jobs and Carbon-Capture Schemes (CCS), where CO2 is removed from power-plant emissions and injected in reservoirs deep below ground, are promising inventive and new technology. The world’s first CCS was planned for the UK by ScottishPower and had the potential to act as the leading example of CCS in North-West Europe; arguments arose around money and contingency funding due to a lack of government support and the plan fell through.

A recent surge in geoengineering also shows green promise; leading scientists have developed a variety of ways to reduce global warming, ranging from spraying sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere to create a sunshade to turning carbon emissions into rock. There is clearly no lack of solutions, but only a lack of supporting politics and legislation.
The UK is currently aiming to reduce emissions by 80 percent, which would cause the cost of a pint to rise by only six pence and overall consumer goods prices would increase by less than 5 percent. The Stern Report determined that reducing emissions would only cost 1 percent of global GDP; compared to the economic impacts unabated climate change will bring about of up to a 20 percent cut in GDP, this is nothing.
The report concludes by stating that a low-carbon world can eventually benefit the economy by $2.5 trillion per year. In today’s economic climate, low-carbon technology provides an opportunity for investment, jobs and sustainable, well-founded economic growth. It has the potential to transform societies the way railways and information technology have done in previous centuries. If we invest in green technology now it has the potential to benefit us in the long run as, no matter what happens, climate change is happening and it needs to be addressed. The more we delay, the more CO2 is released into the atmosphere and the greater the issues we will be confronted with in the future.

 

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